In the kitchen, Lora, wiped her fingers of the quiche on her apron as the scent of fondue gurgled from a small cauldron-pot on the stove—slow simmering now like archeology—its bubbles rising and popping—then sighing—with a pathology of tonight's...

Her fingers twitched against the marble counter in the kitchen. Jeanette, a 47-year-old raptured endowed member of the neighborhood's debauched coven of decadent insomniacs, and bowling widows. Stirring the fondue, calling the kettle black as the cheese bubbled over...

  The Mexicans hated when the Spaniards and French said, "you people"Native Americans learned to hate these very same wordsThe term was placed on a historic reel and ran like a sequelTwo innocent words placed together and wished that they...