"New Teeth", "Witch Week"

[fiefoe]

Simon Rich's story collection has more hits than misses. The coparenting pirates and the toddler noir detective ones are particularly well-executed.

• And he said, “Arr, then I guess I will be the one of us picking her up, even though I be having a hook hand, and it be harder for me to be lifting things.” And I knew he be trying to be passive-aggressive, but I did not say anything, because when he be doing that, I just be ignoring it.


• I asked him what he be doing, and he said, very quietly, “Arr, I be building a doll bed for her peg-leg doll, because it be needing a bed, like how she be having a bed. It be part of the game that she be playing with her doll. And also, just so you know, the name of her peg-leg doll be Peggy, so if she be asking for Peggy, that be what she means.”


• she held up her hands and said, “Up?” And I gave her a crooked grin and said, real ominous-like, “Arr, I be lifting you up all right.” And she smiled, because she be too young for understanding subtext.


• So it turned out that the girl knew letters, and not only that, she knew all the sounds that they be making, like “P” be for “princess,” and “S” be for “sparkles,” and “L” be for “lollipop.” And using this inside information, we were able to sound out some words on the map, and start to make it tell its golden tales.


• And the moment I said it, I knew that I be pushing things too far, but it be too late to take it back, so I just be doubling down, and from that point on, the fight just grew and grew, getting darker and murkier, like the waves in a mighty squall. And it got so bad we decided to bunk in different berths that night.


• And that’s when I felt a hook on me shoulder, and I turn around, and there be Rotten Pete. And he says to me, “Arr, just calm down, it’s not her fault.” And I said, “Arr, what are you talking about? She just lost all our treasure!” And Rotten Pete said, “Arr, I have heard about this, it be called ‘limit testing.’ She be acting out because she be craving discipline, and this be what happens when the environment be too permissive-like.”


• And I said, “That be ridiculous, she hates rules!” And Rotten Pete said, “Arr, or maybe you just hate giving them to her?” And the whole crew went “Ooh,”


• There was something about that screwy kid. The world had done her rotten, but somehow it hadn’t made her cynical. She still believed in justice. She still believed in hope. She still believed that objects disappeared when you put a surface in front of them and then reappeared by magic when you took away that surface. She even believed in him. No one ever had before. It was enough to keep him going. But everywhere he looked, he came up empty. He searched the couch for clues, but all he found were Cheerios. He interviewed the doggy, but as usual, he wasn’t talking.


• “Whoa,” I said. “In that case, never mind. We’ll be humiliated!” I withdrew my hand, and we stood there in silence for some time. But as the music grew louder and more raucous, I felt something loosen inside me, like the stone in the castle wall, and I turned to Lundy and stretched out my hand once again.


• The peasants got their pardon, although they had to make several concessions. In addition to releasing me, they had to return the stolen goods, pay for the wine they’d drunk, and also take a formal oath in which they promised to “give up hope in general.”


• He still wasn’t fully confident in his executive look. At twelve feet tall and nineteen hundred pounds, shopping for business clothes had been a challenge. Mimi had managed to find him a pair of XXXXL khakis, but when he’d tried them on at dawn, the seams had exploded, leaving him no choice but to tie the garment over his crotch like a diaper. In lieu of a tie, he’d painted a red stripe on his chest. His shoes were buckets.


• Lauren had asked them to limit Haley’s screen time, but they let her watch as many cartoons as she wanted. They claimed it was because they didn’t understand what screens were and had no way of differentiating between an iPad and any other reflective surface, like a puddle or an eye.


• In wolf years, they were four hundred years old. She wondered what their upbringings had been like. They’d been raised by wolves, too, of course.


• she said I didn’t have to take her out and instead we should “get straight to screwing,” because her curfew was at nine and she wanted to “go hard.” So I turned to Junior, who was standing right there, and asked him if he minded sleeping on the couch, and he said it was fine because “life has no meaning,” so I said, “Great.”

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Diana Wynne Jones is reliably interesting. Her kids have all kinds of flaws but are always relatable.

• Surely Miss Cadwallader was not going to eat runny rice pudding with just a fork? But she was. She dipped the fork in and brought it up, raining weak white milk. Slowly, Charles picked up a fork too and turned to meet Nan’s and Nirupam’s incredulous faces. It was just not possible. Nirupam looked wretchedly down at his brimming plate. “There is a story in the Arabian Nights,” he said, “about a woman who ate rice with a pin, grain by grain.”


• “So what did it?” Charles asked the nameless hanging clothes. “Magic?” He meant it to be a scornful question, the kind of thing you say when you give the whole thing up. But, somehow, it was not. As he said it, a huge, terrible suspicion which had been gathering, almost unnoticed, at the back of Charles’s head, like a headache coming on, now swung to the front of his mind, like a headache already there. Charles began shaking again.


• “Are you sure? They all want me to do things,” said Nan. “Theresa doesn’t,” said Nirupam. “Besides, you can’t please everybody. Someone will get annoyed before long. I know this, because my brother tried to please all the servants. But one of them thought my brother was giving more to the other servants and told the police. And my brother was burned in the streets of Delhi.”


• He didn’t have the heart to explain all the trouble Nirupam had caused him. “Those were my spikes,” he said sadly. He wobbled along on the mop rather awed at the thought of iron spikes passing through Dan’s stomach. “He must have a digestion like an ostrich!”


• “The spikes were turned into cherries,” said Nirupam. “The soles were the cream. The shoes as a whole became what is called a Black Forest gâteau.”


• “I know Brian is nasty, but I had always thought it was his situation before this,” Nirupam remarked, in jerks, as the hoe kangaroo-hopped down the field. Charles could not answer at once, because he was not sure that a person’s character could be separated from his situation in quite this way. While he was wondering how you said this kind of thing aboard a speeding, wallowing mop, when you were hanging on with one hand and holding your glasses with the other,


• Each of these huge men had a gun holster, a truncheon, and a folded whip in his belt. At the sight of them, Charles’s burned finger doubled itself up and hid inside his fist like a guilty secret.


• His blue suit did not fit him very well, as if Inquisitor Littleton had shrunk and hardened some time after the suit was bought, into a new shape, dense with power.

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