Prayers for Rain

Is contained in

Canonical title

Prayers for Rain

Original title

Prayers for Rain

Original publication date

1999

People/Characters

Patrick Kenzie; Angela Gennaro; Bubba Rogowski; Karen Nichols; Cody Falk; Devin Amronklin

Important places

Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Epigraph

I heard the old, old men say,
'All that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.'

W. B. Yeats

Dedication

For my friends
John Dempsey, Chris Mullen, and Susan Hayes,
who let me steal some
of their best lines
and don't sue.

And
Andre,
who is deeply missed.

First words

In the dream, I have a son.

Quotations

Tony T, the jokes went, couldn't outwit a can of soup. Put Tony T in a room full of horse shit and twenty-four hours later he'd still be looking for the horse. Tony T thought manual labor was the president of Mexico, and had ... (show all)once wondered aloud what night they broadcast "Saturday Night Live".

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In his twenty-eight years on the planet, Tony had cracked so many safes that anytime an all-night burn job left a gutted shell in place of a bank vault, cops drove over to Tony's Southie apartment even before they stopped at ... (show all)Donkin' Donuts, and judges cut search-and-seizure warrants in the time it takes most of us to write a check.

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They studiously removed the three parts of their respective Raj tea sets, the cream in the tin on top, the sugar below, the tea itself at the bottom, and fixed their drinks in cups so delicate I'd be afraid to sneeze in the s... (show all)ame area code.

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The only thing good Catholics love more than God is a short service. Keep your organ music, your choir, keep your incense and processionals. Give us a priest with one eye on the Bible and the other on the clock, and we'll pac... (show all)k the place like it's a turkey raffle the week before Thanksgiving.

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I wasn't sure if "old man" meant father or husband. These parts, it could mean either. Hell, these parts, it could mean both.

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I took a sip of my beer. It was warm. Popular with Europeans, I know, but so are blood sausage and Steven Seagal.

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She held her cigarette up by her temple and gazed at Blake's "Los" on the east wall, a painting that was about as comforting as a plane crash.

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"Goodbye, Mr Kenzie. Goodbye, Ms Gennaro. I trust I'll never see either of you again." "Trust all you want," Angie said. "But don't bet on it," I said.

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It occurred to me, as we wound our way down the beach road past the site of the old amusement park, that if I ever had kids, and I took them to places that had once mattered to me, all there'd be to show for my youth would be... (show all) the buildings that had replaced it.

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Even in a crouch, Bubba running across your lawn os about as easy to miss as Sputnik would be. He weighs something less than a piano but something more than a fridge, and he's got that demented newborn's face billowing out fr... (show all)om under spikes of brown hair and above a neck the circumference of a rhino's midsection. He kind of moves like a rhino, actually, lumbering and slightly to his right, but oh so quickly.

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Stevie was called "The Pick" not because he carried an ice pick or because he was skinny or knew his way around a lock, but because he was famous for giving his victims a choice on how they'd die.

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She leaned back and cupped her elbow in her hand as she took a drag from a white cigarette so long it could have hit somebody in the kitchen if she'd turned without warning.

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Where have you gone, Burt Lancaster, and why'd you take most of the cool shit with you?

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"I don't give a shit about his rage. I don't give a shit how magnetic he is. I don't give a shit if he can look into your soul and my soul and has God's phone number on speed dial.

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The 1968 Shelby Mustang GT-500 is to American automobiles what Shakespeare is to literature and the Marx brothers are to comedy - that is to say, everything that came before was, in retrospect, a teaser, and everything that c... (show all)ame after could never live up to the standard of perfection achieved in one brief blink of time.

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"You going to cry soon?" "Trying hard not to." "Because real men don't cry?" I shook my head. "I'm afraid if I start, I might not be able to stop."

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"It's a CAR, Patrick, do you get that part? It can't kiss you, cook for you, tuck you in or hold your hand." - "Yes, Sister Angela the Grounded. I understand that."

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"This is the dumbest hunch you've ever had." - "Sure," I said. "Bitch. That helps." - "And you've had some monumentally dumb hunches." - "Would you prefer wine or beer with your crow?" - She buried her head between her knees.... (show all) "If you're wrong, screw the crow, you'll be eating shit till the millenium." - "Thank God it's approaching fast," I said.

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The bugs were angry. [...] For a while I tried the Zen trick of ignoring them, willing my body to seem unattractive. After a few hundred bites or so, though, I thought, fuck Zen. Confucius never lived in ninety-eight percent ... (show all)humidity on a ninety-two degree day.

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I was pretty there'd be trip wires, defenses I couldn't see, Bouncing Betties waiting to make any possibility of Viagra in my future a moot point.

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"Maybe this is how God punishes the bad," he said. "How's that, Doctor?" He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "He lets us live."

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I've learned with women never to take their threats against your clothing too lightly.

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“All right', Bubba said. '... Just remember, the only sin in battle is hesitation. So don't fucking hesitate.”

Last words*

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The sun was beginning to fade, though, and the air - slightly chilled as I slid through the trees - carried with it just the barest hint of rain.