But I was not in the band, because I suffer from the kind of tone deafness that is generally associated with actual deafness

I didn't know what to say to her - I was caught in a love triangle with one dead side.

But if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably happen to each of us.

We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.

Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home.

Just spend a few more months playing video games. That hand-eye coordination will come in handy when you get to third base.

Right. I'd forgotten about her.' He shook his head. 'That keeps happening.