He watches him take a sip of his gin and tonic, and it makes him feel uneasy. Another man drinking his drink, tasting what he tastes, foreign lips touching a part where his once touched. Pine trees, incense, lips touching lips.

The second I stepped onto the porch, the Plymouth’s roar rang out, shattering the silence before Chad killed the engine and exited the car in his ripped blue jeans. With his left hand, he presented me with a water-sprinkled rose. Like a ballroom dancer, Chad took my right hand and spun me into his arms. The scene felt unlike anything I had ever read or imagined before.

“Everything makes you sad,” Rickie said.

“I don’t like when things die,” Benjie said.

“Get used to it,” Jimmie said. He looked past the backyard to the tracks. “There’s a lot of death in life.”

The six had been out together several times already, and always had a good time. Allison smiled and waved as she walked to the table. Brad hoped things would lighten up once they joined the others. Their friends seemed to be arguing about something. 

She was the last to arrive. She spread her hands wide in apology. “Nowhere to park.” The restaurant was noisy; Dave, Joey and Annette were noisy. Kathy ordered a glass of pinot grigio and drank it like water.  

He says I can soften the blow by explaining that it’s not her cooking, her sandwich construction, or any other reason associated with her own blame, but that I just don’t like beetroot, plain and simple. My friend says that it could actually paint me the hero, the gentleman, the adorable sweetheart, that for a dozen years I put up with beetroot sandwiches that I detest because my love for Margaret is greater than my hate for the devil’s vegetable. 

Spirit meets me in an ancient red Chevy pickup. She steps out and slams the door. She has to do it twice. A lovely long-haired chick in a tie-dyed T-shirt with her yellow Labrador Retriever, Buck, riding shotgun. Fine gray hair to the base of her spine. Love senior girls who resist those ear show cuts. We hug, of course. A good one, not of the vanilla variety. “Toss your shit in back, brother.” The handsome Lab, with sad eyes, hops in the truck-bed.

The current receptionist, an older woman seasoned with gossip, related this to you. She was there, yes, when her boss wore foundation and blush—one day he’d forgotten it, and she caught him with a red face smeared with tears and snot. That’s how she knows. You don’t question her; there’s more knowledge in her crow’s feet than in your whole wrinkly brain.

Jack had proudly waved his paper cut-out of a ship, painted purple and glued to a double popsicle stick, when she picked him up at 2:00 that afternoon. “It’s the Pinta!” Jack wriggled, patting Lena’s arm and gazing up at her, thrilled to display his preschool creation. 

"You should take Karate!" Julian said, kicking the air. “That's what I do. Then you can beat him up!" He went on to demonstrate a flurry of jabs and impossible blocks, battling an invisible enemy, until we got to the intersection of Highland Avenue and Spring Street, where he had to turn off to go home. 

In French, voyant means clairvoyant, a seer. It also may mean dramatic or tasteless. Both of these connotations sometimes fit me like a glove. I tend to say the wrong thing at the worst time. I can become addicted to negative feelings. It never bodes well to be seen as cranky, and as I grow older, I learn I must shift into better behavior. 

 “Well, aren’t you going to say something about the car? The transmission in this thing was like nothing I’d ever seen. Any other shop woulda told you to sell it for scrap, but not me.” He pats the hood. “Runs like a top, now.”  

Detective Murphy: I’m Detective Thomas Murphy. Do you understand why you’re here, Mr. Browne?

Jonathan Browne: I suppose.

Detective Murphy: It’s not really an “I suppose” kind of question. Do you or do you not?

Jonathan Browne: I brought myself down here, didn’t I?

During the lunch hour, we used the husk of this pen to smoke weed somebody managed to squeeze somewhere out of Missouri. Now, it holds a spitball, saturated brown with resin and dripping chew spit.

When I was a teenager, I got robbed a lot. This was the mid-1970s, and starting at age 16 I lived alone on East Second Street and Avenue A in New York City. I was short and scrawny. I wore glasses with thick frames and lenses. I bought my clothes from a man who sold rags from a pushcart. I was an easy, if not an affluent, target.

I spend my days watching the same show over and over again. The setting is the Rutherford Funeral Home and Crematorium across the street from my house, and the cast consists of characters suffering the greatest loss anyone can know. I sit behind double-paned glass and wait for a new family to ring the bell, then watch as the funeral director welcomes them in.

Adversity finally arrived and in a swarm. For hours Gemmer had hidden in the brush; his horse now dead from a single shot. Having learned over the past months to move with great stealth, he had been able to slither here and there until he came to a dense spot in the woods where he could hide for a time—perhaps deep into the night. But that was past. The enemy troops were onto him.

The day I was introduced to Miss Peggy Lee was defining. When we met, I cordially took her hand and said "hello." She responded, "thank you very much."

Halfway to the supermarket, my mother wants to know if I’m in the mood for some R&B music because I still haven’t said a word. The next thing I know, she offers me her right hand. I take it, but I’m still unsure why she did it. Maybe it’s all part of her plan to force a big smile onto my face. She takes my silence as a no. “A cigarette, then?” she asks. “Beer? How about a beer?” 

“It doesn’t look much different from the one I have. Come and look,” Brian said as he carried it to the car. He laid the dried-out jacket on the roof and found his folded up on the backseat. He laid it on the roof beside the one from the mill. “What if this was his jacket?”

“The ghost’s jacket?”

“Yeah, why not?”