Cover

Colophon

Also By

ALSO BYANTONYANELSON

Living to Tell

Nobody’s Girl

Talking in Bed

Family Terrorists

In the Land of Men

The Expendables

Title Page

Copyright

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2002 by Antonya Nelson
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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used under license by Simon and Schuster, the publisher of this work.


ISBN-10: 0-7432-4234-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-4234-9

Some of these stories have been published, sometimes under different titles and in slightly altered forms, by the following magazines: “Ball Peen” (Harper’s), “Female Trouble”(Epoch; Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, 2001), “Goodfellows” (American Short Fiction), “Happy Hour” (Redbook), “Incognito” (American Short Fiction), “Irony, Irony, Irony”(TriQuarterly), “The Lonely Doll” (Epoch), “Loose Cannon” (Prairie Schooner), “One Dog Is People” (Redbook), “The Other Daughter” (Columbiamagazine), “Palisades” (Ploughshares), “Stitches” (The New Yorker), “The Unified Front” (The Midwesterner; Best American Short Stories, 1998).

Dedication

For Robert

Epigraph

The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle, complimentary way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.

—F. SCOTTFITZGERALD

Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.

—OSCARWILDE

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