1. “Chester looked at the smug sonofabitch sitting there in his eight hundred dollar Zegna sport jacket and perfectly buffed alligator loafers. Never created a damn thing in his life outside of a bowel movement, and now, after polishing off a forty dollar piece of veal and two seventy dollar bottles of Chilean cabernet sauvignon, was about to hold forth on the topic of tortured artists. Prick.”

2. “Chester aimed the telescope at her. He focused in on the left breast. Looked at that one for a while, then switched to the other. Such perfect breasts. And nipples.”

3. “‘Yeah Genatto,’ Bongo said. ‘It’s bad enough ya hadda bring the monkey along, did ya haveta bring the old man too?’”

4. “Years later, having a writer’s curiosity, Chester would look up ‘abracadabra’ in Websters Unabridged Dictionary and discover, in one definition, that it was a magic word used to ward off calamity. But that was much later. As he sat in the audience that night watching the young girl on stage—so beautiful and mysterious in her black costume—Chester was still unaware of the irony. For that night and many more to come there was only the magic.”

5. “Handing him the phone, she stood listening while Chester called the luncheonette and, per Pandora’s instructions, informed the waitress that he had the clap and was moving to Greenland.”