212
confinement
A young tree strait-jacketed by ice.
contorted
In black and white film: the grace of a ballerina and the grip of polio.
engulfed
A snow drift has swallowed up another small business.
fluffy
Sinking a fork into a marble chocolate cheesecake.
outsourcing
It's scary when you realize how much other people have staked their happiness on you, convincing you along the way that you're responsible for their moods.
tribunal
This is the dynamic at the table: there are those who can do no wrong, those who can do nothing right, and those who are judged right or wrong without consistency, based on how their hair looks at a given moment or on what shirt they picked out to wear.
untouched
Sometimes at a restaurant the best moment is when the food just arrives. It looks delicious. At that moment, you think there can be nothing wrong with it.
213
befogged
Smoke from a manhole obscures the window of an antique store.
caricature
The mannequins are slender and brittle. Some of them blink at you with huge girlish eyes.
dupes
His goal is to make something careless and ugly, call it art, and then watch in satisfaction as others fall over themselves to defend it.
epicurean
Briny delicacies and bruised fruit at a gourmet supermarket.
pensive
Billie Holiday's voice coming at us from a first-floor window. Inside, a man stubs his cigarette slowly on a dolphin-shaped ashtray.
psychical
At the back of the bus, a man tells his friend about a woman he's slept with. She's shown up repeatedly in his dreams, hounding him. A curse of some kind, he suspects. He tried to consult a book on curses, but as he did so, the phone rang, and it was her. Clearly, she was interfering with his attempt to free himself.
slinking
Rats crossing the subway tracks in a furry slither.
