Smile was at Pandora’s when Dori arrived, cached quietly at a corner table and nursing a Coke. He was wearing a gray coverall she’d never seen before, and his hair was tied back. “Hey,” she said, swinging past the table before she punched in. “How’d you get here?”
“Khalid rented a car,” he replied, all but spitting the name out.
Dori made a sad-face, sympathetic to the upset in his voice. “He’s holding all of this over you, isn’t he?”
Smile shook his head, looking over Dori’s shoulder at one of the ceiling fans. “Go clock in,” he said.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Nothing. Go clock in.” Read More →
Brian wanted to come, but he had some other unspecified thing to do. Liz, on the other hand, seemed perfectly cool with the idea of taking her only day of the week off to wander around with Dori on her random business. This didn’t make her feel any less weird. But then, it was probably …
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Dallas’ Lizard Lounge hosts a couple of noisy-stuff nights a week, under the name The Church. On Thursdays and Sundays, the DJs spin neo-gothic, industrial and electro (that’s according to The Church’s website) tunes in one of the cooler club environments I’ve experienced.
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Being accused of kidnapping Taylor was too big a piece of news to be kept from Aunt Andrea, so Dori told her over brunch. Okay, so it wasn’t really brunch, just the usual super-late breakfast, but still. For some reason, telling on herself felt a lot like going to the teacher to announce that a …
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Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey, William Least-Heat Moon: I’m having a hard time putting my finger on why I didn’t enjoy this book. I loved Blue Highways, Least-Heat Moon’s solitary journey through the forgotten backroads of America. Though Roads to Quoz is very similar in content, and the flowery prose is both creative and …
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Liz and Nikki were getting together with some other friends for dinner, and Dori had to work, so they said their goodbyes and promised to meet again. Dori got to work feeling positively buoyant; Nikki was back, and her friend seemed cool, too. Nikki’s parting words had been to suggest that she and Dori go …
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I’m not 100% certain about this one, which strikes a balance between too vague and too specific, and might not be as arresting as the previous challenges. It leaves the field a bit wider open, and presents less opportunities for mindless gore than before, though there are certainly interesting places to take it. But in …
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All in all, Nikki was one big happy surprise. She was still her moody, gothy self and that was okay with Dori, but she’d lost most of the hesitant, insecure girlishness that she’d been full of two years ago. In fact back then Nikki reminded Dori of the way Taylor was now, a little. Now …
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Taylor insisted on coming with when Dori went to meet Nikki. There was no way she was going to leave the girl at Aunt Andrea’s house all day, so it made sense to bring her with, but then it turned out that the restaurant Nikki wanted to meet at was on the way to Taylor’s …
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The Leland City Club is the first club I ever went to, and quickly went on to become the nighttime place that I unashamedly call home. City Club’s not like any place else, for better or worse. The club is ancient (it’s been open since the 1980s), and single-purpose. It exists at the whim of …
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