“An Angry female catawyld? Conquered.An outraged female dragon? Defeated.A woman who might pin him to the wall with green-eyed fury? Out of the question.”

“She was a woman with red hair and green eyes— the traits which Satan supposedly relished most in mortal females.”

“Question for your life: Would you rather be the first female U.S. President, the first woman to walk on the moon, or the first woman to be courted by two clones who looked like Christian Bale?”

“And if he presses, tell him it’s a female matter. That stops any question.”

“Cocoa-buttered girls were stretched out on the public beach in apparently random alignments, but maybe if a weather satellite zoomed in on one of those bodies and then zoomed back out, the photos would show the curving beach itself was another woman, a fractal image made up of the particulate sunbathers. All the beaches pressed together might form female landmasses, female continents, female planets and galaxies. No wonder men felt tense.”

“Are you my daddy?”Ricky Lee Reed, originally of Smithtown, Tennessee, and only replanted to New York City a few years back, gawked at the child who’d asked him the question for a mere moment before he turned his attention to the adult female who held the child.He’d admit it wasn’t a question he expected to get, you know, ever. For a bunch of reasons, too, but mostly because he didn’t know this woman. He wasn’t one of those guys who nailed so many females he forgot their faces or names. So then . . . why was this child asking him this question? And even stranger, why was the female raising her brows and suddenly asking, “Well . . . are you?”Wait. Wouldn’t she know? Shouldn’t she? Good Lord, this city.”