collection of short stories by Karl Iagnemma

• "On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction"
  • Sometimes I wish you'd cool it a little bit, Joseph. I mean, I love you, I love all the nerdy things you do, I just don't understand why you feel the need to control me. We can love each other and still lead normal, semi-independent lives. I could hear the soft rush of her breathing, a sound that made me dizzy.
    • I don't want to control you, I explained. I'm just a little uncomfortable with the idea of you having sex with strange men.
      • ("I explained" is not in italics.)
• "The Confessional Approach"
  • There's a stillness in the car, the stillness you sometimes feel after a thunderstorm.
  • Freddy slips the car into park, leans across the Volare's bench seat, and kisses me firmly on the lips. I'm too shocked to kiss him back. He pulls back and searches my face--grimly, the way a doctor examines a troubling X-ray--and I find myself holding my breath.
  • Without looking at him I fasten down a pair of bench dogs and clamp the head against the workbench. I select my shapest carving knife. In the silence of our stifling workshop I carve delicate grooves into the soft pine, working away from my body, and soon I've uncovered the impression of a cleft chin, the bridge of a bumpy, beautiful nose. The shallow rise of an eye emerges, then another, then a comma-shaped scar in the right cheek.
  • There's a photograph I'm remembering, from a long time ago: ... We're squinting at the camera, expressionless, as if we know what is coming and are not afraid.
• "The Indian Agent"
  • Ochipway apparently satisfied, yet strolled away without a good-bye. Ochipway, meaning "Bird in Everlasting Flight."
  • I never realized there are so many forms of loneliness .... Each has its own bittersweet savor.
• "Kingdom, Order, Species"
  • And I swore I'd never again make love to a mathematician.
  • David dons a pair of mirrored aviator shades (the international symbol of jackasshood)
  • As a graduate student, I wanted my research to be a grand symphony of ideas--I'd explore all of forestry, all of botany, all of ecology--but even the tiniest problems, I soon found, are a maze of thorns. I swallowed my disappointment and plodded onward. Now my research lingers over a few narrow topics; I'm like a deranged pianist, repeating the same three-note melody.
  • This is what I admire: the admixture of whimsy and precision. Do we admire in others what we wish for in ourselves? (I lack any trace of whimsy, and possess only marginal precision.)
  • "Don't you ever enjoy something inexplicably?" I ask. "For example, those sunglasses?"
  • (As I babble, I peer through the half-open door into the living room: red maple floors, a sofa draped with brown wool afghans, a fieldstone fireplace streaked with soot. Against the wall a wide cherry bookcase, elegantly half-full. Beside it, a framed juniper frond. Heaven.)
  • Pavel was Bulgarian, a legal theorist, a spectacular cook (and therefore a spectacular lover), with an infectious, easy smile and a tendency toward melancholy silence.
  • I was twenty-eight with an embarrassing fear of thirty; I'd just finished my dissertation but felt profoundly less intelligent than when I'd begun.
  • Pavel and I, together, possessed bad luck.
  • Our discussion ended with Pavel resting his chin in his hands on the kitchen table, utterly calm. He said, "You witless bitch."
  • Is he serious? It's difficult to tell: his strained smile is neither earnest nor ironic.
  • "I'd love to." Teflon smile. "But I really should catch up."
  • Kingdom, order, species: as though an elaborate name could describe even the simplest living thing.
  • At times Henry's showbiz voice and courtly manners have fooled me into imagining him as an interesting, respectable person.
  • How can I explain William? We were like two people sharing dessert at the corner table in a restaurant, half drunk on wine but sober enough to talk about poetry.
• "The Ore Miner's Wife"
  • He remembered as a boy sitting beneath a weeping willow near his father's house, watching fireflies carve parabolas into the dusky night. The curves had remained lit up in his mind for hours, and sometimes even now he saw forms as if they'd been etched by a brilliant light. The curves flowed in his mind.
  • And when Craige had recognized his struggle as something notable--something extraordinary, even--he would explain it to Milla. He would introduce her to his problem, as a depraved man might introduce his wife to his lover.