In the open office, everyone has questions. Now you have questions.

Moments before we depart for his fifty-fourth birthday bowling extravaganza, King-King decides he would rather eat lunch at Fat Nancy’s

I miss your piercings, Mina, I say. 

Don’t, she says. 

Me too. Jordan brightens. You looked like a suicide girl. It was hot. 

I took to wearing your ring again because everybody likes dealing with a woman who’s married. They want a winner.

You empty your bank account of the $1,326 and sink it all into Facebook advertisements.

I want Paula to feel the pain I’ve felt, the pain of being left behind, and not by someone who has died, which would be less painful, in my opinion. Because when someone leaves you in life, they’re still out there; they just have a new life you’re not a part of.

Tomorrow he will crash from the sugar buzz. I will not look at him with eyes that suggest I told you so, which is part of love. 

If we add three points to Athleticism, we have three left to spend on our son. We already have 8 points toward Intelligence. Virtue is a 7, Athleticism would be an 8 if we add those last three. 

Larry didn’t try to talk to me, but whenever the silence got too thick, he would squeeze my knee or knead my shoulder. I was pretty fucked up on cold medicine, and it felt like he was grabbing a hold of my bones.

It starts like this: Hirsch leans over the sandwich board at the P&S Lunch just after the rush and feels faint.  A little touch of the queezywheezies, says Pinskey. Lie down for a little, says

Ivan told me that the minute you step off the plane in America they hand you money. I keep waiting for someone to hand me money. No one has handed me money.

I took a ferry there with Babas—I was calling her Babas—she was calling me Clod I think.

That this was the case for him. 

He writes a bad poem and it’s a love poem and it’s for her and he sits down on the floor and then he stands up and goes into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator door and sees that there’s an apple in the bottom drawer.

He watched the door, and saw that it wanted to open.

She had grown up and now lived in a cold climate that encouraged looking down.

Yoda sat atop the wreckage of his escape pod, still creaking from skidding into the murky swamp hours prior

The day my brother died, my mom ran naked in the street.

The guy at the hardware store convinced me to buy a bag of concrete mix.

I remember playing some songs at four in the morning and asking if you liked them. What the songs sounded like doesn’t matter now. I only knew a little about songs back then but I know a bit more

A few of the Greater Mosquitoes jogged by with their boards across the flats, all chest and teeth and bleach-brown hair and headed joyous to the break.  They ran full on down the slope, stepped high

It’s weird at first. The tenants through the wall. Inhabiting what used to be one-half of their home. The clanging pots and toilet flushes, heavy footsteps. The second truck in the driveway beside

Trigger

Up north she took her daughter for a walk to see the woods. Their host’s big yellow dog came along. The snow was deep. The dog was off and ranging. She crept under a fir tree and showed her

At midnight there was a knock on our door, and though our hallmates often knocked at this hour

The film was a Disney re-release, full of rollicking creatures with wide-flung arms emitting human sounds through smiles that hummed and flickered like radio speakers.  Blake was too drunk to follow what was going on, but he ate his popcorn and drifted in and out of sleep, and the things were laughing and singing to him.