Peaceable Kingdom (21 page)

But I—that is, the girl I was—couldn’t possibly have heard. She was too busy listening for the mewing of cats, or bats. To have even tried to tell her would be like rising up out of the audience just when those angelic voices are praying for gentle winds, a calm ocean, like interrupting the opera to comfort or warn the singers: Don’t worry, there is no journey, no one is going away, there is nothing to fear but your own true love, disguised as an Albanian.

Francine Prose is the author of sixteen novels, including
A Changed Man
, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and
Blue Angel
, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed
Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife
, and the
New York Times
bestseller
Reading Like a Writer
. A former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Prose is a highly regarded critic and essayist, and has taught literature and writing for more than twenty years at major universities. She is a distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, and she lives in New York City.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

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

The following stories appeared, in slightly different form, in these publications: “Talking Dog” in
The Yale Review
; “Cauliflower Heads” in
The Michigan Quarterly Review
; “Rubber Life” in
The North American Review
and
The Pushcart Prize XVII; “
Amazing” in
TriQuarterly
; “Ghirlandaio” in
Tikkun
and
The Tikkun Anthology
; “Amateur Voodoo” in
Boulevard
and
The Sophisticated Cat
; “Potato World” in
Boulevard
; “Dog Stories” in
Special Report
and
The Best American Short Stories 1991
; “Imaginary Problems” in
Antaeus
; “The Shining Path” in
The Indiana Review
.

Copyright © 1993 by Francine Prose

Cover design by Jason Gabbert

978-1-4804-4510-9

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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