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Refusing to eat, he will only allow himself to suck the hot mustard from the plastic packets – self-punishment. No one stops him.

“When are you leaving?” Jane asks.

“Friday.”

I pass another packet of mustard to George.

Later, in private, Claire tells me not to leave Jane alone – it’s all too strange. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she comes home one night and the family of the family is camped out on her lawn, or worse, inside her house. George destroyed them – he took their lives and they’re going to want something back. Do Jane and George have a gun? If not they should get one.”

“What are you saying? You sound paranoid. And even if it were true, you’d want me to be there to do what – scare them away or shoot them?”

“She’s very vulnerable. Imagine if it were you: if you went nuts wouldn’t you want someone to stay home with me and keep an eye on the house?”

“We live in an apartment with a doorman. If I went crazy, you’d be fine.”

“That’s true, but Jane is not me. She needs someone. Also you should visit the surviving boy. The lawyer is going to tell you not but just do it. There is a reason I’m a lawyer,” Claire says, “I’m always thinking.”

And so without telling anyone I do it. I go and visit the boy.

“Are you from the insurance company?” someone asks.

I nod – is a nod the same as a lie?

“Do you have everything you need?” I ask, and I’m not sure why.

They don’t answer.

Taken from A.M. Homes’ short story “May We Be Forgiven” in Granta’s 100th edition.

Originally I danced at the Jewel Club in Chicago, for Ned Small. Ned was a shrewd businessman who made all his money by what we would now call “stealing.” Of course, in those days it was quite different. Yes, sir, Ned had great charm–the kind you don’t see today. He was famous for breaking both your legs if you disagreed with him. And he could do it, too, boys. He broke more legs! I’d say fifteen or sixteen a week was his average. But Ned was sweet on me, maybe ’cause I always told him straight to his face what I thought of him. “Ned,” I told him over dinner once, “you’re a mealymouthed grifter with the morals of an alley cat.” He laughed, but later that night I saw him looking up “mealymouth” in a dictionary. Anyhow, like I said, I danced at Ned Small’s Jewel Club. I was his best dancer, boys–a dancer-actress. The other girls just hoofed, but I danced a little story. Like Venus emerging from her bath, only on Broadway and Forty-second Street, and she goes night-clubbing and dances till dawn and then has a massive coronary and loses control of the facial muscles on her left side. Sad stuff, boys. That why I got respect.

– Woody Allen, Without Feathers

Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised? — for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except “Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it”? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a business man, getting his living, like other business men, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which is is impossible to grow rich.

– George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London