The fact of his wariness stops her; Viv gathers the remaining clumps of her hamburger, squeezes them between her fingers but no juice comes out. She stares at the clumps. 

No good relationship, if you could call it that, ever started in a bar.

I remember Ian saying I was not a novelist and I think, as much as it pained me at the time to hear this, he was correct.

I will watch you kill the cat.

She picks a bony honeysuckle blossom off the bush and sticks the stem under the elastic of her bathing suit bottom.

He stands so close I can make out the threads on his polo shirt.

She can't remember the important bad things. I ask her about the divorces and the dead dogs buried in the woods and the cracks in the bathroom tile and the negative, blood red balance in her checking account and her eyes go blank and she shakes her head like she's been overcome by some faint neurological chill. 

“They were getting ‘the talk,’” Carmen says, pausing dramatically, “and in walks a huge nurse wearing a robe.”

Looking back, the efforts we made were desperate. We took walks. In bed, he fed me grapes; chilled, out of the refrigerator. We took weekends off work, spending money in small towns where there was

My perverse compassion had destroyed all traces of a once-in-a-lifetime trip. 

Do you remember everything I said last night? she asked. 

You mean do I remember you crying and saying you loved me?

She needs a quick blowout, so I comb and press her golden hair until is a sheer curtain fluttering around a face thrown open to love.

“I love watching you get dressed.”

“More than you love watching me undress?”

When I am not exercising or performing space walks or cleaning or developing vehicle software, I watch the sun rise 16 times a day.

Standing in the kitchen the other day, out of nowhere I became disoriented and unsure of where I stood.

This guy’s old school, Roselli says to me over the phone, real old school. How old school can you be, I’m thinking, in a sport that’s already run its course in just a few years.

Everyone picks the chairs up and puts them in a circle. Then they turn the music on and you start to walk along the perimeter.

My family’s eponymous foundation is a donor to Columbia University, in whose MFA program in Creative Writing I was enrolled, but due to some substance abuse problems last semester, I had to drop out . . .

Violette moved away from Calvin toward a group of rhododendrons.

Calvin felt calm.

He thought about God.

I didn’t ask why you spent all that time and energy making a hole with all the wrong tools instead of calling the landlord. 

The Hungarian brings flowers to break up with me. I can see him through the window as he takes them from the trunk of his car in the Starbucks parking lot. 

Skateboarders have to be tough. It’s not if you’ll get hurt but when, not if it will be bad but if it will be bad enough to keep you off the board.

I sent a text to my father, telling him I saw three coyotes. My father is an admirer of the natural world. I sent another text about a nearby house that had been abandoned. I'd noticed the word “SATAN” scrawled across the front door with blue paint that morning.

Ted had started the holidays in Aspen. Well, in the jail in Aspen, awaiting trial for a murder he’d committed in Snowmass.

In the dark we weren’t afraid to show our ugly selves. We admitted we loathed giving up our seats to old people and the pregnant. Don’t you just hate reading?  We both said at the same time.