Cargo of Orchids Read online

  The night I received her letter, I dreamed I died. I found Angel alive and woke up in Heaven, believing we could both live forever.

  In this world there is an unending supply of sorrow, and the heart has always to make room for more.

  Acknowledgments

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  Excerpt from American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. Reprinted by permission of Vintage Books.

  Excerpt from The Dwarf by Pär Lagerkvist, translated by Alexandra Dick. Translation copyright © 1945 by Hill and Wang, translation copyright renewed 1973 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

  Excerpt from The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. Copyright © 1986 by Pat Conroy. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

  Every effort has been made to source the quote used as an epigraph to part two. Any information regarding its authorship would be welcome and may be sent care of the publisher.

  A version of chapter 7, entitled “Valentine’s Day in Jail,” was published in Fever: Sensual Stories by Women Writers, edited by Michelle Slung, and in The Best American Erotica, 1995, edited by Susie Bright.

  The same story was optioned by Back Alley Film Productions to be developed into a television series called “Desire” for Showcase.

  Selections from the death-row sequences have been published in Monday magazine.

  My thanks to Diane Martin for being my editor, and to Stephen for all the years he saw me through.

  Susan Musgrave is the award-winning author of two previous novels, The Charcoal Burners and The Dancing Chicken, as well as many acclaimed works of poetry, most recently Things That Keep and Do Not Change and What the Small Day Cannot Hold: Collected Poems 1970–1985. She lives near Sidney, British Columbia.