An excerpt from WASTE: a novel

Elvira Moon loved bowling. For four straight years, her team, the Blooming Broads, dominated the women’s league, decimating all opponents until Big Tina quit to start her own team, the South Side Splitters, with that bitch Claudia from Couscous or whatever country she’d arrived from in a banana crate. 

She gave my dog lighter fluid.

She said my dog didn’t drink it because she put it there.

The dog drank it because it was an accident.

Whenever Amanda and I get into a fight she calls me poor. She tells me that, in my country, they sell nappy-headed dark skin girls like me for 20 silver coins and a healthy goat. 

I noticed a tall man in front of me with a long umbrella hanging from his arm. He was watching the priest and listening. When we began the preparations for communion, the tall man threw himself onto his knees. 

Look at those fucking crows, Mona said.  She and Dan and I were sitting on our porch, drinking vodka tonics and staring at the view, which was pretty good with the sun going down and the corn in the field between our two houses almost ripe and ready to harvest. 

He was riding down the street like you, contramano, and the image came of you on your bike, and I wished for the dream of the flying bicycle to return, the one where I find you again. 

My friend, she wants to win a man over with a story. “He loves to read,” she says, “and I want to impress him. Could you write me something?”

When Sophie arrived home from the Strange Charm concert, she realized she was now in possession of an uncomfortable secret. The next day at work it replayed in her mind at least a hundred times. 

After the funeral, Dakota drove straight to the airport; there was nowhere else to go. Her brother was the only remaining soul in the Rocky Mountains she’d known.

There’s hardly anywhere like Norton’s anymore, and no one like Norton. He sold phrases for special occasions out of a shop in Queens.

Chesterfield knocked with two eczematous knuckles—only a courtesy warning to let her know he was coming on in. This time he walked into a locked door.

Sarah squeezed into a bathroom stall with Ralph. Outside her boyfriend sat at the bar, nursing yet another domestic beer.

Hector was lucky and he knew it. And everyone else knew it too.

He wasn’t expecting how strong they’d be with their pale soft hands and their petticoats and their bowties and their cummerbunds. But when they stormed the ship, they threw aside lacy parasols and let fall monoculars.

Sometimes the two memories grow conflated in her thoughts, especially in her dreams.

She almost said yes until she saw the stain.

Scrawled across the garage door in big red letters are the words "Die Snake!" 

Aimee looks back to how things were.

Nighttime near Fort Jesus.  We point our phones heavenward and hear about the latest rave death.

The killer dispatched the boyfriend easily in the kitchen, and then he had an idea.

This was a painstaking choreography of getting whacked in the balls.

The one and only time I saw Herman French naked was when he was toweling off after a shower.  Herman was my bunkmate two years ago at Camp Thunderbird.  He had the smallest penis I’d ever seen. 

Maybe I dropped it as I struggle to hold the box of Munchkin donuts and the lukewarm cup of coffee in my hands that I brought for you. Even after you told me not to. Even after you told me you needed space.

I couldn’t sleep when we shared a bed anyway, so most nights, when he was deep enough, I wriggled out of his armpit to lay on the floor, play Pokémon until sunrise caught on spots in the window.

I start with which would you rather as an opportunity to open up the conversation for a set piece I've prepared. In summer I might ask how does everyone like their air.