It was still dark, but Terrence's eyes adjusted enough that he could sense the movement of his hand before his face. "Charles," he said. "I believe we are in a small box."
     "Indeed," Charles said, from the darkness. Terrence judged him to be about five feet away, but when he reached his arm out, he touched Charles's knee, which startled them both. The knee was cold and hairy. Charles's knee made Terrence more nervous than the existence of the small box.
    He leaned back and startled again when he touched the soft walls of the box. The thick velvet felt deep enough to sink his fingers into, but he didn't want to know what was down there and instead let his hand rest on the surface.
    Terrence considered the letter he would write to his girlfriend when he was free. He thought fondly of the time they ate cotton candy and she vomited. (AM:30)

Andrew's problem with women was that he was analytical and they were always, always emotional. Women made fun of him for measuring out salt and spices when he cooked. Even the ones who never cooked would criticize him, leaning against the doorway of the kitchen as if they knew they shouldn't trespass but teasing him anyway. At the movies they smacked him with popcorn buckets for commenting on an incongruous detail while they were building the stamina to cry. None of it made sense to Andrew. He was very loving, and concerned, and simply knew where to place sadness and fear and anger, so that it could be accessed with great efficiency when needed.
     "It's just you and me, house," Andrew said.
    The house was not so sure. (A.M. 34)

And may the women hold their brave faces to the sun as the men become afflicted with a terrible pestilence, and may their flesh rain upon the heads of the chosen people. May their hair clog the sewers of the streets, and their broken bodies tumble into the sea! May their useless fury fail to stir the tapestries in the temple, and may the LORD find solace in their swift destruction! (49:PM)

Olivia dreams that her body becomes pliable enough that she can stretch very thin and cover most of the rooms of the house. Her body is so thin that the bones are clearly visible, and the veins stretch, and the blood has more distance to travel and as a result, the edges of her body are very cold. Reginald opens the front door, removes his shoes, and takes only one step before recoiling in horror at the chilly mass that is Olivia's body, stretched and waiting. In her dreams, she controls every aspect of her life. (43:PM)

Frances needed a man she could sink her life into. The perfect man, she observed, would like her but not really enjoy her friends, and the feeling would be mutual. She and her perfect man would eventually stop going to their friends for advice. They would eventually see each other only, and one morning, they would wake up to find that they had fused together, just slightly, at the upper thigh. The fusion would not be uncomfortable, and would allow for some level of privacy for each. the days of uncertainty, and annoyance, and misunderstanding, would not be entirely over, but whenever such feelings arose, Frances or her perfect man would simply reach to their thigh area and gently pluck the shared skin like a harp string. (AM:68)

Are you growing mistrustful of others? Do you suspect your wife does not actually have cancer? Is every trip to the mailbox and exercise in loathing and remorse? Are your coworkers having trouble finding anything interesting to say when they talk about you behind your back? Do you deeply despise people who possess many of the same opinions and motives as your own? (AM:72)

Olivia sees a butter knife on the banister atop the stairs. She fantasizes wildly about the ways in which it might plunge into the ones she loves.
    The butter knife makes the entire room feel dangerous. An intruder might not have any desire to stab her until he reached the top of the stairs and felt the butter knife under his hand. Olivia cannot go on until she collects the butter knife and puts it in the sink, where it belongs. (AM:76)

     "They're gold flakes," Wallace said, reaching to touch them on his back. "Genuine."
    Tess held her hand against the textured gold on Wallace's tattoo. She drew her fingers back. "Are not," she said.
     "Indeed they are. The artist was fantastic. He literally fused the metal to my skin, and I have to get it retouched every five years."
    The gold leaf made a pattern of fish scales across his spine.
     "It's beautiful," she said.
     "You're beautiful," he said, turning his head halfway.
     "Not as beautiful as a gold flake."
    He considered it. "Maybe not. It was a very special process."
     "Must have been," Tess said. She felt sure she would die alone. (79:PM)

They were in love! Carla wore her hair up and Andrew saw everything as a sign. They spent an entire afternoon sitting side by side in a coffee shop, taking more meaning than necessary from the world around them. A man wearing boxing gloves walked down the sidewalk in front of them and they took that to mean they would be together forever. (AM:111)

Why does the rain make us feel so romantic and strange? Maybe it's the fact that we are unnatural spectators of it, from inside our homes, and it is a reminder that we have the power to live our whole lives like this, if we choose. It's not the smell of fertile ground kicked up by raindrops, or the slick leaves, or the way we must amplify our voices to be heard over this larger presence. It's the power of the rooftop that makes us want to fuck under it. (AM:82)

Olivia's whole body shook, not like a leaf but like the tree itself, a deep kind of shudder that only happened at the hands of loggers. A tree feels its deepest movement in those final seconds. She once watched a program on television where a falling tree snapped at the trunk, creating a ten-foot-long catapult that tossed a logger fifty feet into the air. The called it kickback. (99:PM)

Frances's pale skin felt stretched so thin that if she scratched her face or her arms, she would mangle herself. She imagined the skin would peel up underneath her fingers like lacquer from a table. Perhaps she wasn't drinking enough water, she thought, perhaps she was sleeping too much again. When she slept, she had wonderful dreams. (103:PM)

Tess kept a secret: her left hand was turning into a claw. She felt the tendons tightening up in her forearm the week before, and had written it off as the onset of carpal tunnel but the tendons continued to tighten. The feeling spread to her hand, which began to curve like a scythe, the bones lengthening a little and then bending, almost imperceptibly, until her fingers hardened into one immobile point and her left hand was fully a claw.
    Tess kept the secret, but compensated by repeating it to herself. She would lie in bed, curled around her left hand, holding it gently to her knees. My hand is a claw. My hand is a claw. (109:PM)

June woke up covered in seeds. They were small, toasted sesame seeds, thousands of them all over her body. She had never been covered in seeds before and it was a strange feeling, like a snake might feel in sand. There was no explanation, as far as she could see, for the sudden appearance of all the seeds. It was a comforting feeling, and June turned over three times in the slippery weightlessness before falling back asleep. (AM:110)

One day everyone stopped over-thinking. We started thinking just as much as we should, and not any more than necessary. There were no more misunderstandings whatsoever. Minor disagreements were forgotten, not turned into proof of larger things. Trivial errors of speech or judgment were just as important as items on the breakfast menu: one chose waffles and the other chose eggs and it was a god damn miracle. (AM:120)