No Greater Gift: A short story from The Secret Lives of People in Love

By Simon Van Booy

The Secret Lives of People in Love is the first short story collection by award-winning writer Simon Van Booy. These stories, set in Kentucky, New York, Paris, Rome, and Greece, are a perfect synthesis of intensity and atmosphere. Love, loss, human contact, and isolation are Van Booy's themes. In radiant prose he writes about the difficult choices we make in order to retain our humanity and about the redemptive power of love in a violent world.

Included in this updated P.S. edition is the new story "The Mute Ventriloquist."

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Feb 23, 2010
• ISBN: 9780062001962

Simon Van Booy

Simon Van Booy is the author of two novels and two collections of short stories, including The Secret Lives of People in Love and Love Begins in Winter, which won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. He is the editor of three philosophy books and has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, and the BBC. His work has been translated into fourteen languages. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.

Book preview

No Greater Gift

A short story from The Secret Lives of People in Love

Simon Van Booy

Dedication

To Maddie

Contents

Dedication

No Greater Gift

Acknowledgments

An Excerpt from Tales of Accidental Genius

About the Author

Praise

Credits

Copyright

About the Publisher

NO GREATER GIFT

Way above the Park, traffic has stopped. A fat woman in tight clothes pushes twins in a stroller. The eyeballs of the twins slide up to the elevated train. The train grieves into the station.

Gabriel watches the twins and then looks into the space they are being pushed. Gabriel looks down at his watch and shuffles into an alley behind a bakery. His package should be ready.

A steel door opens separating a word sprayed in white. Two trembling hands emerge holding a box tied with string. There is a bird tattooed on one of the hands. Gabriel places his hands on the top and bottom and only when the other hands feel the responsibility of weight transfer do they release and disappear back behind the steel door. Gabriel taps twice and looks around.

As Gabriel makes his way through the alley toward the subway, he pauses beside a motorcycle lying on its side. He is tempted to open the box for a quick peek at what’s inside.

Two men waiting for the train look Gabriel over. Their pants are baggy and remind Gabriel of sails. Their eyes want to know what he is carrying and why he is handling it with such care. They look at the hole