Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“I think you mean a public failure. Because we all fail in private. I failed with you, for example, but no one posted an online review about it, unless you did. I fail with my wife and with my son. I fail in my work every day, but I keep turning over the problems until I’m not failing anymore. But public failures are different, it’s true.”

She liked hotel rooms, thick towels, cashmere sweaters, silk dresses, oxfords, brunch, fine stationery, overpriced conditioner, bouquets of gerbera, hats, postage stamps, art monographs, maranta plants, PBS documentaries, challah, soy candles, and yoga.

But to find someone who you wanted to talk to for 609 hours—that was rare. Even Marx—Marx was devoted, creative, and bright, but he was not Sadie.

Many things had changed about her, but he was pleased to discover that her basic laugh was untouched, aside from an inevitable, slight change of key. She had, he thought, one of the world’s great laughs

“I suppose,” Dong Hyun said, “because her parents can buy her anything she wants.”

That Love is

But I noticed, and I am proud of you.”

“Next time, we fail better.”

“Don’t worry, kid. If it turns out you are in trouble, cry and say your sister has cancer.”

Sam looked at Sadie, and he thought, This is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.

You make everything harder than it needs to be. You always have.