I looked up at Rudy, his back hitting the air like a ruler. The mind is an act of balance, he said, looking at me. It is a lever for the body.

Who could need this much flesh? Four pounds of Louisiana crawfish, one pound of Alaskan king crab legs, six pounds swordfish steaks, a pound of oysters, three pounds lobster tails, five ribeye steaks, three New York strips, six T-bones, four packs of stew beef, two family packs of chicken drumsticks, and enough shrimp to fill five plastic shopping bags.

Last summer everyone was wrestling. Claudia started it. She said It’s been so long since I touched someone and threw Tobias on the ground.

HEY THERE, Bill Baxter. This is your friend Sue Parnet. I just now saw your name pop up and decided it is time to see how you are doing.

At the Metropolitan Ave Kmart, there was a parking lot in the sky.

DAY 10:

The part of the novel where your character goes to Applebee’s to forget.

He told me he was in the process of determining the next stage of his life.

There was a frog in our house.

We’d thought he only taxidermized celebrities’ pets. But then we saw him crossing the yard carrying Mickey Rooney.

She smiles and waves at me. I return her smile, mine more faint than hers, and I see her catching sight of something or someone behind me.

A couple was making love outdoors while a grizzly bear watched—it was a tv show— and I thought, this reminds me of me.

Even in death, I would make a showing of my conscientiousness. I would step into a black trash bag, first removing my heels to avoid a snag. I’d put a note on the outside of a second bag before pulling it over my head.  “Please do not open; call the police.”

The water witch said that if I cut my hair and killed the prince and his new bride she would turn my legs back into fins and I could go home. I didn’t have to think about it very hard.

When I was dead, I returned to my father’s house, an old farmstead in Northwestern Ohio, and I stood alone in the gravel drive, satisfied to see that the house was just as I remembered it—small and gray, rising on a plot of land west of a moonlit apple orchard.

The old man kicked us out after the fight.

The Class of 1953 Tachikawa Air Base Bride School girls were fertile, well-fed and rested.

"Me, all scatter-shotted words I tried out in the air ..."

But the shortstop is still bothered.

So obviously I couldn’t do it. She would have known it was real.

Beautiful, the flat-forever fields of Wisconsin as I barrel on through flurries, gobbling cheese curds, until, through the fluff, the end appears.

Our Man, as we now call him.

It’s really Freudian, that. Turning a doctor into a parent for a few minutes. That’s why Maeve likes him.

I Googled things that bond people. Google said trauma.

Ken pounded out three novelty songs on his busted up acoustic guitar, looking like a knock-off Daniel Johnston.

‘Le Trou Normand,’ I said to the Garçon, winking knowingly at him.