In frustation, a lady told me she just might kill a particular person. If she had to, I replied, bathrooms lack cameras, and people might believe the person in question had simply drowned. Visibly shocked, the lady decried both me and my suggestion as terrible. But I wasn't the one who brought up the subject of murder, I retorted. I merely supplied a way to lessen the likelihood of a prison sentence should she feel compelled to actually kill that person. Neither did this mollify her nor make her feel her complicity in my jest, for the implicit absurdity of my suggestion did not impress itself on her mind so much as the image of the act, offering further evidence for Hitchcock's maxim that it is best to leave violence largely to the imagination of one's audience. You've foist a horrible image upon me, she declared. Later on, I laughingly told this story to a friend of mine. She seemed earnestly troubled by my conduct. There's too much premeditation there, she tol
Anything, everything, and nothing at all for years at a time.