“flagrant, adj. I would be standing right there, and you would walk out of the bathroom without putting the cap back on the toothpaste.”

“ commonplace, adj. ... But then I'll walk into the bathroom and find you've forgotten to put the cap back on the toothpaste again, and it will be this splinter that I just keep stepping on.”

“The police, he imagined, were now walking around the parked car. He imagined their bandit chaser was parked beside the car and now they were walking around it and looking at it and not saying anything. Now they were inside it. They would see the interior of the automobile. They were tremendous, these police, because the next thing they would do was to look at each other. They would look around at the night air. They would just stand there. The police, he told himself, were marvelous when it came to just standing there. Sometimes they elaborated on it a little and pushed their caps back and forth on their heads. Nobody could push a cap back and forth on his head like a policeman.”

“antsy, adj. I swore I would never take you to the opera again.”

“And after, when it was bedtime, I would sing, “We love you, Conrad, oh yes we do. We love you, Conrad, and we’ll be true” into the bathroom mirror with a mouthful of toothpaste. I would sing my eight-nine-ten-year-old heart out. But I wasn’t singing to Conrad Birdie. I was singing to my Conrad. Conrad Beck Fisher, the boy of my preteen dreams.”

“Someone would have to be out of their mind not to come back to you. I walked through a blizzard to get here.”