There was a bump on his head, and that’s what made him crazy. That’s the story he tells whenever anyone asks about it, the Doctors, the Police, the Park People, the Guy Who Sort of Looked Like

At nearly 2am, I took my trumpet down to the ocean, slung down against my leg like a weapon. I live across the street. A last minute decision leaves my drink on the stove. I only have so many

You never know when you’ll turn the corner to find it staring you in the face. You might be on your way to dinner at the kosher restaurant at 9th and South when you’ll notice someone has painted a

The boy wore a powder blue tuxedo and he tap danced around the house in shiny shoes. He wiggled the long tail of his fancy suit. When a stranger, a soon-to-be-new-relative took his picture, he hid

In bed with the wife of a guy that I work with, and this isn’t the beginning of the story, but the end of it, and then she calls me a month later and says she’s pregnant. Says she’s left him, and

When Isabel Araya was born in the southern tip of the pampas, twenty-one years, three months, and seven days before she would hold Juan Diego’s warm hand in the candlelight of the church, the

Ernie peered over the dash with a cigarette in his left hand and a can of spiked Pepsi in his right, fingertips grazing the ribbed underbelly of the wheel as he steered. He and Blume were on the

"Now Mr. Nguyen, here, he could benefit from a little trip over to Harold's Running Bull. Quaff a few, soak up the local culture, and shake hands with the biggest griz ever shot down in this

At dinner your friend took your cell phone from your bag and took a photo of me and put your cell phone in your bag. Everyone noticed and I think everyone thought about it too but no one said

Melissa and I have been together for almost a month, descending through the center of Australia from Darwin near its north tip, sliding below the belly of the globe to Adelaide. Somewhere down the

And then somebody said the magic word. Whale. It echoed and bobbed up and down the beach, and into the dunes, where I was relieving Victoria of her secrets.

‘Whale,’ she hummed,

Truth:

Once upon a time there was this balls-out bike rider out to visit all the Cistercian monasteries in this here good old USA, because something told him he had to. His name was Michael.

The Robot is constructed from only the finest and shiniest of all bolts and metals. All of it is stainless steel, because rust on a robot of this calibre is unacceptable. Total height of The Robot

The guy at table six wiggled his fingers. “Mind if I asked a personal question?”

“Go ahead,” said Miranda, reaching for the check. He was going to anyway.

Table Six grinned. His sunburned

Andrew peeped out the window and noted that the end of the world, astoundingly, was small as a bee. 

"When's the last time you looked outside," he asked Julie, spread like Orion on the rug with

On an unusually sunny February afternoon in Pittsburgh, I had the pleasure of talking with Chuck Kinder in his sixth floor office at the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning building.

Dave wondered what had happened to the TV.
 

He had faraway memories of nature programs, black and white comedians with European accents and harshly lit news programs with stories as stark as

As I was preparing to go away on a three-week women's backpacking retreat, Teddy said he was going to grow a beard in my absence. To be funny, I told him I was going to do the same, but once I got

A note shoved under a sticky honey jar on a wooden spool table:

Maggie – 

So sorry I had to leave without saying goodbye. Boo hoo. I wish you were coming with me! Now I’ll be the only girl

We ride the hook of route 87 straight from Utica to Newark without once stopping. The two of us go like vagabonds through tunnels and viaducts, me driving; my father in the passenger seat, slowly

cheney stadium, home to the now defunct tacoma tigers and current tacoma rainiers, once held a monster used car blowout extravaganza in their parking lot. i was 17 and needed a cheap car, so i

Little Johnny Damon enjoyed working in the produce section at Whole Foods. He took pleasure in stacking the lettuce and arranging the grapefruit and sweeping the dropped green beans from the floor.

Tony Montes had always dreamt of the moment he would stand in left field at Candlestick for this, the third game of the World Series. In his dreams, however, he wasn't 48 years old, and he hadn't

It was like a chicken farm—a million bodies pressed together, and everyone was gulping at the cooler air overhead. I was still caught up in the gooiness of that last horrible image, tumbling into

There were two strikes and Tony Phillips was at the plate. The A’s were losing to the California Angels in the bottom of the 9th inning, and the Raiders were in Los Angeles. I looked over and there