“Laurie Colwin was the best kind of master: human and humorous, full of wisdom and love.” —Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of All Adults Here In these fourteen tales, Laurie Colwin explores love and marriage, friendship and loyalty, and obligation and desire with the compassion and wit that earned her the devotion of legions of readers.  When Passion and Affect was first published in 1974, Colwin was anointed as a young writer to watch. Now, a new generation has the opportunity to encounter some of the most charmingly complicated and beautifully drawn characters in modern fiction: a music critic whose orderly life is threatened by her flirtation with a married cartographer; an ornithologist perplexed by human mating rituals despite his expertise in the natural world; and two young men, best friends and cousins, whose relationship is disrupted by the sudden arrival of Misty Berkowitz in their lives. Passion and Affect is a dazzling must-have collection from "a wise, big hearted writer. A deft and funny one, too." ( Washington Post ) "[Colwin] has single-handedly revitalized the short story." - Los Angeles Times “I would love. . . to start a Colwin renaissance.” - Elin Hilderbrand, on NPR’s “All Things Considered” Laurie Colwin is the author of five novels: Happy All the Time ; Family Happiness ; Goodbye Without Leaving ; Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object ; and A Big Storm Knocked It Over ; three collections of short stories: Passion and Affect , Another Marvelous Thing , and The Lone Pilgrim ; and two collections of essays: Home Cooking and More Home Cooking . She died in 1992. Passion and Affect By Colwin, Laurie Perennial Copyright ©2004 Laurie Colwin All right reserved. ISBN: 0060958952 Animal Behavior Nothing is more easy than to tame an animal and few things are more difficult than to get it to breed freely in confinement, even in the many cases when the male and female unite. -- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species On the roof of the East Wing of the American Naturalist Museum wasa greenhouse, blocked from public view by turrets and facades. The skylights could be opened with a brass pole. Every third pane was a window. In midmorning, and sometimes in the afternoon, Roddy Phelps went up the spiral staircase to the finch room of the greenhouse and took a nap. It was the middle of March, and Roddy was feeling slightly but constantly chilled. The weather made no sense to his body, although he knew it was supposed to be cold before the beginning of spring. Even on the coldest, rainiest days, the greenhouse was warm and faintly tropic. Birdcages were arranged on rows of pine tables, and on an empty table in the farthest row, by the window, Roddy took his naps. He had stashed a car pillow under a shelf in a paper bag. The greenhouse was filled with potted ferns, palms, and heather. Ivy hung from crossbeams in mossy wire baskets. Each species of bird had its own room. Drifting off to sleep, Roddy was soothed by the diminutive, random noises the birds made -- twitters, clacks, and cheeps, which he thought of as auditory litter. Once in a while, he brought a transistor radio with him and listened to the birds counterpointing Mozart. The year before, Roddy's wife, Garlin, had left him, taking their child, Sara Justina, and retired to the country. At Thanksgiving, New Year's, and Easter, Roddy drove to Templeton, New Hampshire, and collected Sara Justina, who spent these holidays and a part of the summer with Roddy and his parents in Westchester. The rest of the time, silence was generally maintained between NewYork and Templeton, except for legal occasions when separation, alimony, divorce, and child-support papers passed between Roddy and Garlin. These entailed long conversations with the lawyers for both sides, and expensive, jagged long-distance calls from New York to New Hampshire. The last week in March there was a brief hot spell, and Roddy's chill became more acute. Dampness settled in his bones. He began to think that he was suffering from eyestrain and spent dizzy, unfocused, and dislocated days feeling as if he were hung over. The naps in the finch room sometimes helped, but often they made his unfocused condition worse and he staggered off the table while the room went black, yellow, and dazzling gray in front of his eyes. After Garlin's departure, Roddy had gone into a work spurt that produced two papers on the social behavior of caged finches -- one for Scientific American and one for American Birds. The uncorrected galleys of both had been lying on his desk for several months. Then he started on the breeding and nesting patterns of the African finch in captivity. He had been studying this aspect of the finch since December but had run into trouble, as his finches seemed unwilling to breed in their large Victorian cages and appeared uninterested in building nests out of the pampas grass, string, and clover he provided for them. Roddy h