Fiction

ACREMONIUM by Shira Moolten

Gina didn’t believe Sam when he said he’d discovered mold inside the air duct. “What do you mean, mold?” she said from the couch, not looking up from her phone. “It’s probably dust.”Sam got down from his perch on the bar stool. “I’m going out,” he said, then went to Walmart and bought painting masks and rubber gloves and vinegar. Within 20 minutes he was back, reexamining the duct in their condo with a flashlight. “It’s everywhere,” Sam said. “Come look.”“That’s okay,” Gina said. She was reading a really interesting New York Times article. Besides, Sam was always on about something. If it wasn’t mold it was chemicals, or bacteria, some foreign agent that would consume his brain and make him unrecognizable to the people he loved if he didn’t root it out and kill it first. He’d recently stopped kissing Gina because she didn’t use mouthwash. Her mouth was a bacteria incubator, he explained. She hadn’t wanted to do anything about it. “No kissing, fine by me,” she’d said, then shut her incubator mouth and went to sleep.Sam put on the white mask and gloves and took off his shirt so it didn’t get contaminated. He looked like a sexed up exterminator. He asked Gina to hand him paper towels, which she did without looking up. Then he scraped mounds of white dust into a trash bag before dousing the whole duct with vinegar. Finally he returned to the ground from up above, sweat glistening on his forehead.“Phew,” Gina said. “Glad it’s over.”“It’s not,” Sam said. The remaining mold was now volatile, loosened from where it had clung to the walls. If he turned the air conditioning back on, it was going to shoot out everywhere and fill their lungs. Did she not realize how dangerous that was? So he left it off. The whole condo became hot and began to smell like vinegar. Finally, Gina looked up from her phone.“Can you turn the air on?”“I just explained why we can’t do that,” Sam said. “We need to get a hotel.”“I’m sure it’s fine,” Gina replied. “If it’s mold then it’s probably not the toxic kind. Most mold is harmless.”“Okay,” Sam said. He went to the bedroom and began to fill his suitcase with clothes.“So you’re leaving me to die then?” Gina said, for even though she had no inclination to join him, she felt vaguely that this was not how boyfriends should behave.“You don’t want to live, you just want me to die with you,” Sam said, then walked out into the night, alone. Gina got up and turned the air on. Nothing flew out, of course. She settled back into her article, where a scientist was explaining why moose numbers were dwindling in Vermont. Even if there is mold, she told herself, I’d rather breathe it in alone than share a hotel bed with him, have another argument and not get any sleep.Sometimes Gina wondered how things had gotten so drab. Sam used to kiss her like he was eating a dense piece of chocolate cake, take her on walks and lift up rocks and show her salamanders he had found, cupping them in his hands as they breathed rapidly, afraid. As she reminisced, her throat began to itch. Psychosomatic, she thought.The next day, Sam came back with a mold remediator, a muscly guy in a wifebeater who seemed like the no-nonsense type.“Oh good,” Gina said. “Are you going to fix it? My boyfriend won’t spend the night until it’s gone.”“A little mold never killed anybody,” the mold remediator said. Finally, someone with sense, Gina thought.The mold remediator told them to leave for an hour while he sprayed a chemical into the duct that would slowly starve the mold. Then it would be good as new.Relieved, they waited, walking around the neighborhood. It was October and still extremely hot. They talked about the lack of seasons, how that made Gina sad but Sam didn’t mind.When they returned, the mold remediator was gone and the condo smelled violently chemical, like a Sharpie.“Please just try,” Gina said to Sam, though the smell had already given her a headache.“I can’t,” Sam replied.Gina opened her mouth to speak again, but before she could, something lurched inside the walls and the air conditioning came on with so much force that the grate flew off. Chunks of white dust shot out all around them like snow, snow that tasted bitter, burning their lungs and eyes. Sam lunged for Gina, who stood frozen under the duct, white flecks landing in her eyelashes and hair. She blinked as if just waking up, then followed him, coughing, down the stairs, into the car, all the way to the hotel, where they showered until they were red and raw and brushed their teeth and gargled mouthwash and spat it out again and again like a lifetime of nightly rituals. Then they put on fresh white hotel bathrobes and closed the curtains and got into bed even though it was the middle of the afternoon. The sheets felt good on their bare, clean skin. After a little while, Sam gave Gina a kiss. As he leaned over her, his minty breath cool against her lips, she wondered for a second if she should refuse him, give him a taste of his own medicine. Oh, what the hell, she thought. There wasn’t much else to do in the dark room. They had no home to go back to and nothing else to destroy, only each other’s bodies, breathing, like the beginning.  
Fiction

TICK by J. Eagleson

You are a tick. You fly through the air on an arc of static electricity, in hopes of landing on something alive and real. Your travel is always a courtesy of others, or an unexpected spark of nature. Purgatory for you is a blade of grass or a dark sock that renders you a shadow in the night as you crawl towards your heaven of soft flesh. You latch onto the shadow of her ankle, monosyllabic in name and purpose. People around here tend to wear socks — she does not. A waft of odor floats up from her shoes, but you are not picky. (It is, in fact, almost attractive to you.)Feared for your promiscuity, you extend the two rods slowly from your mouth — the left with its two hooks, the right with its three. You lost one in a final confrontation with your last lover, a testy deer, who in its final moments, blind and searching, kept trying to scrape its remaining teeth against you, largely in vain (except for your lost hook.) But you only left when you were good and ready.It is difficult to love life so much, or to be so strongly motivated by the primal urges you were born with, that you risk your life with every expression of it, at risk of being burned to a crisp by a lighter, smothered in vaseline, or scraped off and left precariously dangling. To cling, to follow, to have their life in you — there is no more intimate connection. But you are also feared for the intensity of your love.There is a sonic boom in the air that shakes you. You feel the two of you - you and her - falling towards the ground. There is some soft sensation in your body screaming that there is life nearby — she is not alone. There is someone else there. The hope of a new love. You feel a warm shroud of air cover you as he gets closer. Yes, yes! Your body vibrates — there are spikes coming from his mouth too, but they are words, not hooks. Though perhaps you are both embedded in her in some way.For you, time is measured by the number of your lovers. A new life to take on each time- their body, plus you. You do not care for gender or age or species— you love all equally.Sprinkles of dark fall across your body like rain. They are all around you as well — on the floor, on the edge of the light chair. There is one drop dribbling down across the corner of your eye. But they do not smell like the sterile sand that you were born in — they smell hopeful. Beautiful. They smell of life. Of life leaving her. The drop teases you as it caresses your face. If only you had that pink and fatty organ that the animals do, that they lick things up with. At least the taste lingers in your mouth for longer— the taste of love. You imagine her and you swimming in it, swimming in love, kin forever. Your brown shell glistening with it. You will never need to risk your life again for another host, another partner. She will always be there waiting for you. But there is always an urge to move on, always a feeling at some point that it’s been too long. Your little half-a-centimeter body is not big enough to contain and drink in the love of the whole world, but it will try.There are sharp and bright noises coming from her now, buried somewhere deep within her neck, exiting quickly and piercing the air. Maybe there is something else latched inside of her? She is beginning to move now. Quickly. She is beautiful and large with soft steps. She has learned to camouflage herself as well, to disappear. Her presence echoes against the hollow steps as she quickly makes her way up them — you are jostled frantically up and down. She secrets herself away in another room, reflexively, loudly, defiantly slapping the door closed. You hear a click. Just the two of you now. Her blood is thicker now, sweeter now, rushing more quickly. You wish it could always be this way, but soon it slows and she sleeps. Her silence and unknowing lulls you to sleep as well.There is the sound of fumbling and then that high-pitched click again whose sound hurts your body. He is here. You can smell him. Your body begins to loosen, the hooks move back slowly into your mouth and away from her, as they always seem to eventually. They reluctantly linger as they cherish their last grazing of her ankle.There is a softness now, little movements of her mouth are creating suctions of air. Whispers or kisses or something else. The man’s voice is not spiky anymore— it is low and dark and deep. Barely there, but his presence fills the room. (To you, he is the edge of the universe.) She is there too, breathing slower now, blood pumping slower now. (This is what you know from your last taste of her.) Her light ankle is resting on his now as they sprawl across the dark sheets. They remind you of the vein of moonlight cast on the beach that you were born under many lovers ago. (You are full of her now. You do not hunger for her anymore.) You crawl across the desert between them, pulling yourself towards him. You detect some delectable beads of sweat buried within his seagrass hair. In the dull sound of his exhales, you have found the ocean again. You have found someone new to love. (Love is in your nature.)
Fiction

“I’LL DO” by Sacha Francis

“I’m not doing a reading for you.”“You do have the cards, though,” Drew sneered. He was laying the deck out in four piles - the way he shuffled Magic.“Yeah,” I said, “but only ‘cause they’re dads.”“And you know how to do it.” He conjoined the sets, his thumbs bending around the feathered edges at first, joking like he wanted to riffle them. I shot him evils and he shot back worse, his nose and eyes scrunching up to mock me. He was like a girl.“Sort of,” I said. I’d never done it for anyone but myself.“‘Cause of your dad,” he reiterated. He positioned the deck on the carpet ceremonially to suggest my position of seer, as if innate.“Go on.” There was a leering satisfaction that flashed on his mouth belonging specifically to the curious and the cruel. “Why not? ‘Cause you can’t or what?”“I don’t appreciate that,” he knew how I was about challenges.In tarot, dad said that the trick is all in the pictures; never to use a book because it makes you look stupid.I laid his old deck the way I remembered: two precise strokes, spreading the cards like butter in two neat lines. I did a halfhearted flourish with my hands after and flushed with embarrassment. I’d performed my little show quite well.Drew told me to wait, got up to lower the dimmer-switch before settling back down, then told me he was ready. I halted him with one hand. I wasn’t. Still seated and without a word I leaned to the side, stretching to root around the rubbish under my bed for a stick of incense. I rarely had a use for the incense I stole from mum, so I never thought to also steal a holder. I balanced the stick in an empty cup and dug up a dirty plate for ashes. Her lighter was already in my blazer. I didn’t smoke. I had it because the idea of being able to provide fire for the kids at school who lit up on their lunch break gave me a bit of a rush.Drew pulled out an inhaler from his own pocket and took a hard-eyed protest puff as the first little flame died off into a steady white plume of patchouli smoke. Ashes started to curve over the plate as the warm curl of orange slowly made its descent. I scrunched up my nose and eyes at Drew like a girl. I told him he had to pick three cards and put them face down and he did. The problem with this game was that I was honestly still too scared to touch dad’s deck, so I also told him that it wouldn’t go right if he wasn’t the one to turn them over. He scoffed.“Why’s that?” he asked.“What do you mean? It’s tradition.” I lied.“Well, ok, but it’s not like it’s going to change the outcome,” he said and flicked the crazy pattern on the back, “the pictures are already in there, aren’t they..? A bit silly, really.”I said if he’s going to be pedantic I wasn’t going to play. Drew flipped his first card, and on it was a drawing of a sweet little pink-nosed cat, all white and sat aside a golden cup with a fish peeking out. The cat was upright for me, which meant its meaning was reversed for Drew. It wasn’t one of the major arcana so I honestly had no fucking idea about it. The title said this cat was the page of chalices. What was cups again? Oh well.“Do I turn the other ones over now or do you do them one by one?” Another quest for the measure of my answer. The mystique relied on the build-up, but I would have seriously preferred to read them all at once. Things never make sense in bits. I thought I might hurt dads feelings if I didn’t do well.“All will be revealed,” I intoned obliquely, and nodded for him to overturn another. Looking up at me was a bent-eared cat pawing the top of a prize-wheel that was dressed in its own strange symbols. This too was reversed.“You’re such a crap fortune teller if you aren’t going to do it one-by-one.”Finally, he turned his last card. It was upright, a tabby falling from a great stone tower in the midst of a raging storm, the deathbound cries seeming to blow from the picture - they echoed and twisted like a banshee around my dark little bedroom.“Fuck my life.”“Fuck your life.”“So what does it mean?” He was looking at the cards instead of me, small eyes seeking, searching. I packed away this expression to keep and open later. I knew it was something he hadn’t meant to do.The essentials were bare. The tower was the only up-facing card, things were not looking up but he knew that, I knew that. Drew was a man of equations and the solutions don’t make themselves. Here we had a science that I had studied. His fate determined an emptied cup and some noxious roulette to spin him to death - possibly. Much of a reading's meaning was in the dressing of it. I thought of the way I was taught these things and placed my hand over Drew’s, where I found it was pressed hard into the carpet. He was as afraid of the mystic as everyone else. With my eyes serious as lit matches and the law in my voice, my finger moved over the cards one by one:“Bad news, bad changes, bad outcome,” I put my face to his. “I’ve just seen into your future. Now you know what’s coming, you know you can change it.”“Bullshit,” he laughed, looking boyish in this low light, “you have not read my future, Liz. It’s a stupid predetermined game made to make money off idiots. Like Ouija boards. It’s confirmation bias, it’s a psychological trick.” He swept that sallow, sweating hand over his lot and adjusted his glasses, “That’s just bad luck, that’s what that is.”“Sure,” I teased, “fine,” and I prodded him on the nose.
Micros

LAST NIGHT I DREAMT WE WERE LOBSTERS by Melanie Mulrooney

Last night I dreamt we were lobsters. I was tucked behind a rock, hiding from the cod swimming overhead. The bright blue of your claw caught my attention; one in two million, deliciously unique.“You’re new here,” I rasped.“Lobsters can’t talk,” you replied.Your antenna twitched in my direction. I crouched in my shadowed crevice, waiting for the light to cease filtering to the ocean floor, for you to come and make me yours.But first, you had to prove yourself—fight your way to dominance.The reigning champion of our rocky oasis charged, his brown-green a stark contrast to your brilliant blue. My antennae twitched at the scent of him. But biology cannot overcome destiny, even for lobsters. I waited—wanting, wishing.You danced him across the ocean floor, kicking rocks with graceful sweeps of your uropods. His crusher claw came down on your abdomen; you bucked, curling your central tail fin to scoot away. He attempted another strike; you ripped through his rostrum, took his beady eye with your massive pincher claw.Your victory was decisive, his retreat swift.I was inundated with the scent of urine released from the sacs along your face. My antennule soaking up the smell of you, pleopods quivering in answer to your dominance. The neurons of my cardiac ganglion fired, heartbeat racing in anticipation of your tiny feelers running over my carapace.Finally—finally—you made your way to me among the rocks. We ran our bodies together, sharing pheromones laced with hope and promises of forever.Then you were gone. And I was alone, as always.Our offspring were many. They all grew to resemble you—perfect, miniature replicas of shining lapis-blue, with searching eyes and a drive to leave.Maybe tonight we’ll be swans, and you’ll stay.
Micros

MAGIC by James Callan

I was doing my damnedest to hide in a mountain of gold coins in the vaults of Gringotts. I was properly concealed, buried in all those glittery riches, all but my rock-hard arousal, which was like the mast of a mostly sunken ship sticking out of a sea of wealth. I couldn’t help it. I was thinking about Harry, his hairy treasure trail, his hot, wet mouth and warm goblet of fire. I moaned beneath the mound of resplendent wizards’ gold, panting within the riches of witches, which brought on the unwanted attention of a little ugly goblin. He wanted to put me out of my delicious agony, eat me up like Doritos, which bear the same triangular shape as the teeth that approached me in the mouth of a squat, bobble-head monster.I fell back onto the mound of gold, the creature falling with me. We got down and dirty in the riches of witches. And bitches, it was wonderful…how I made it with a goblin. Holding hands, we left the vault behind, our pockets stuffed with doubloons and diamonds. I brought the little guy home and, side-stepping my Hogwarts LEGO set that spread out like a Minecraft palace across the floorboards, led him to my bed.At that point I got desperate, realizing that I finally outdid myself, had too many damn Butterbeers, because, boner or no, I couldn’t hold back a dire piss that needed to be taken. I grabbed my magic wand --3 inches long, made of “wood,” a phoenix feather tucked in my bush-- and said the magic word: Riddikulus!Sometimes a piss feels as good as fellatio.Like a champ, Shorty took it right in the mouth. I found myself in awe, wishing I could dispel my issues as easily as the wastes that pass through me umpteen times a day. If only life were that easy. Gosh, wouldn’t that be magic?
Interviews & Reviews

STUFF YOUR FACE WITH SCOTT LAUDATI by Scott Laudati

A special offshoot of our Recommends series, where Scott Laudati enjoys the planet’s best foodstuffs and eateries.New York City, 2010. It’s a 24-hour city. Budweisers are $3. We complain about the rent but a one bedroom is $950. Something big is happening every night in Brooklyn. The So So Glos are playing in a loft and our friend Dasha knows the door code. The garment building hasn’t been annexed by Netflix yet, its basement is rented by an old Marxist who calls it “The CCCP Gallery” and Drew is having his art show there tomorrow. And most importantly, pizza, which we eat on the way into the party and then again on the way home, is $1.50 a slice, and every block has a lit storefront where men are stretching dough and spreading sauce until last call.This city does not exist anymore. I don’t know when exactly it happened. One day the bodega became a grocery store. Then it was demolished entirely and a one story building became a ten floor high rise. The Budweisers don’t come with a shot special anymore, they are just $7 now. And your friends, who you sat in parks with, helped move couches down impossible flights of stairs, they just disappear. Where did they go? Why didn’t anyone invite you? Suddenly you’re all alone with no friends, nowhere you can afford to drink, no galleries to just pop into on your way home, and you ask yourself, “Did I make it all up?”This is a New York City tale as old as time, though. It’s never been a place anyone stayed ’til the end. And if you’re the last one left it means you didn’t get the girl or the memo, and now you’re forty with roommates. But something is happening here that has never happened before. New York City is losing its pizza. It’s losing it to indifference, to age, to a change in taste, but mainly—it’s money. The landlords have chased out everything else that once made New York great, and now they’re coming for the pizza.Most people won’t care, because most people have terrible taste. You see, not all pizza is being targeted. Every day, in every former working class (ghetto) neighborhood, a small storefront transforms into a hipster-hell zone with pizza at its core, but you would never know that at first glance. Because you’d have to wade through the Japanese models who are never eating or doing anything really but getting their picture taken. Or the other influencers posing with whatever sets this pizza joint apart from the other one-hundred vaguely punk rock, sweaty, mandatory four-hundred pencil tattoos on the cook’s arms. And the gimmick always comes across like it was conceived in a boardroom. Like a cute cup of ice cream, or the merch that repurposes Basquiat’s crown in “fun” new ways. “Edginess.” “No conformity.” Somehow your slice is always charred. It takes twenty-five mins to come out because they have to grate fresh parmesan over one slice at a time. But you can get laid at this place. And a band in Ridgewood will eventually write a song about it. So if that’s your idea of a good time, rock ‘n’ roll. But it’s not my thing. I like real pizza. I like it served by two brothers who took over the business from dad and now their rent’s about to become unaffordable after sixty years. Or a brother yelling at his sister to hurry up with the cup of Coke she’s filling from an ancient soda fountain. He takes the soda, slides two slices over the counter to you, and says, “$6.” Nothing in this city has cost $6 in almost a decade. You can smell old New York emanating off the wood-paneled walls of these joints. The ingredients are always fresh. The pies haven’t been sitting around and getting reheated all day. A man who loved pizza founded this place with his family’s name, and he put his blood into it because as far back as his line went it was all leading to this, and now his children remember that legacy, the struggle, the commitment, what it took to put food onto their tables after grueling hours, and so they put their souls into it, and whether you show up on Monday at 11 a.m. or Saturday at 10 p.m. every slice has been made with the same care and pride.Here are my Top 3, gold-medal, all killer, Peoples’ Champ winners of Williamsburg: Tony’s Pizza (Graham Ave.)I wanted to start with my favorite. This is the place I walk my dog to. Somehow they’ve kept this small room looking exactly like the Italian restaurants you remember from your childhood. The ones you went to after basketball games when your coach was buying for the whole team. They’ve got the small tables with the red-checkered table cloth. The old-timers from the block drink espresso and dunk a biscotti in like it’s Pisan fondu. They look a little side-eyed when you walk in with a dog, because this is an old-school neighborhood, but they break when she jumps on them and looks for a pet. Two brothers run around doing the prep work, if you want to talk they stop and talk, they’re funny, they’re tough, and two very pretty girls take your order, pet your dog, and if you’ve said the right thing you might even get a wink and a smile as they hand you your plate. And this triangle that’s on the plate, it’s a Mona Lisa, it’s a hug from your mom, it’s perfect. It unravels in your mouth with each bite. It’s not just mozzarella, there’re hints of other cheeses, like parmesan, maybe pecorino, a sharp cheese but a subtle note, and little flakes of oregano to round it out. There’s good distance between the crust, the sauce, and the cheese. Light on the oil, no char. It’s a clean slice you can eat in front of someone and not need a napkin. A famous pizza critic gave this place a 7.9. Only someone from Boston would miss the subtleties that make this pizza exquisite. Tony’s gets a 9.5 every time. No debate.     Sal’s Pizza (Lorimer St.)Sal’s is pretty much the same vibe as Tony’s, and at $3.50 a slice, they’ve got a lock on the cheapest pizza in Williamsburg. There’s not as much in way of ambiance as Tony’s, but that’s not Sal’s fault. The stretch of Lorimer Street it’s been on for decades has flipped to the yuppies with expensive baby strollers, so there’re no Italians out front talking about the old days like Tony’s. But that’s okay because the pizza comes out quick, and when you take that first bite the cheese stretches out but snaps before it slops on your chin or shirt. And it’s a great slice. It’s so simple I feel stupid even writing about it. Sal found three things that can’t be improved when you put them together. The hipster spots will hire a guy on a unicycle to spread honey from an upstate bee farm on a slice and charge you $8 for it, and if you’re from the midwest you’ll be dazzled by the spectacle, and if you’re an idiot your brain will tell you it tastes better because you’ve got every color of the rainbow staring at you. But we need you to be better. We need you to realize a great song isn’t just an endless chorus. What makes it a piece of art is your need to return to it. Not just a box to check on your bucket list, but something to live with. To spend your days itching to go back again.  How can Sal’s charge so little for a slice and cover the rent? Well, luckily this ain’t Papa Johns, and the guy who owns Sal’s is usually behind the counter, so you can ask him these kinds of questions. “I bought the business from Sal a long time ago,” he says, “And Sal owned the building when he opened up.” Here we have the American Dream. A man who owes nothing to no one. A man who bet on himself and won. So now the prices don’t have to rise with inflation. The ingredients don’t have to take a hit to cover the bottom line. This is what we call a victory in the game of Capitalism. Sal’s gets a 9. I’ve never had a mediocre slice. Vinnie’s Pizza (Bedford Ave.)Vinnie’s is the correct way to bridge the old and whatever this nightmare is that’s happening now. It’s been on Bedford Ave. since 1960, but if I didn’t just tell you that you’d never guess it’s eligible for Social Security. Aside from the classic New York style pizza, the interior of Vinnie’s is a time capsule of the Williamsburg that existed when I moved here, when it was more like the Lower East Side and less like a tech-boy playground. Street art and pizza paintings decorate the walls, a thousand band stickers are on the door, and a Ninja Turtles bench out front brings a smile to the face of everyone born in the mid-’80s. There’s a body type I associate with Vinnie’s that I never even see here anymore—a fat dude in skinny jeans, in a tight band shirt with a balding head and big full red beard. Does that make sense? It’s punk rock but I can’t really tell you why. Maybe it’s because I ran into Andrew W.K. there once at 2 a.m. Vinnie’s has none of the Italian thing that I usually require with my food. This should be a deal-breaker, especially where I’m from. We require authenticity here in New York above everything else, but there’s this ability skateboarders and artists and punks and trans kids have when they find a neighborhood that’s been abused and neglected by time. They take all the influences, the blank spaces, the garbage, the possibility of redemption, and through raw power they build their own thing, and this hustle brings a level of cool that supersedes any idea of what a neighborhood or restaurant is “supposed to be.” This is Vinnie’s. It’s the original punk rock pizza of Williamsburg, on a block that less than two decades ago was the raddest place in New York. And though it’s become one of the most expensive pieces of real estate on earth, Vinnie’s is actually still pretty close to the roots. A slice is less than $4. It tastes exactly like a slice of pizza should. It’s like a Budweiser. It’s consistent every time. There are no frills. It’s just awesome tangy cheese over a sweet sauce. And it’s open late. Fun fact, last time I was there Kieren Culkin was dragging a kid and a kid’s basketball hoop angrily past the Ninja Turtles bench looking like every choice he’d ever made was the wrong one. I’ve also seen Rosamund Pike on that corner as well as Michael Cera, Nas, Sean Penn, and Willa Ferryra. If you’re visiting, grab a slice at Vinnie’s and sit on that Ninja Turtles bench. You’ll see someone.

by Mike Topp

$25 | Perfect bound | 72 pages
Paperback | Die-cut matte cover | 7×7″

Mike Topp’s poems defy categorization. That’s why they are beloved by seamstresses, pathologists, blackmailers and art collectors.

–Sparrow