Of course I know Beau Brummell is a brand of ties. The box gave it away as soon as Michael handed it over. That made it all the worse. Not the tie, exactly. Just the fact that they somehow thought this tie was the winner. Like some fancy label would do the trick. Don’t they know me better than that? I can’t blame the children. But Carol? Why did she have to bring the children into all of this?

Icebergs fascinated me. The shimmering green stripes magically appearing in the deep blue. I always wanted eyes that colour. I was stuck with sullen gray eyes. Lester and Minnie went to Hawaii to see the volcano. Minnie couldn’t stop talking about them. She even had one as her screen saver. Volcanoes didn’t interest me.

I sat in my deluxe room on the cruise ship untwisting the towel shaped swans that appeared every single damn day on the king-sized bed. I couldn’t get the maids to stop leaving them.

As usual, opposites had attracted, and a sweet gesture of kindness, “I’ll bring you a chair,” opened a doorway that couldn’t shut. A solid hour of close talking, an intimate interchange at a dreary dinner party. Swayed by olive eyes, you couldn’t resist honing in, playing along, quick quips, clever swipes. You set the stage, you wrote the rising action, and there was no real way to decelerate.

You must know the nurses stole the masks, such selfish heathens, and that’s why there aren’t enough. But you shouldn’t wear one anyways—aren’t you an American? Fight for your rights, your freedom to spread contagion.

The second wave of the virus came and went. Ben caught it again and died before signing the divorce papers or changing his will. He’d refused to sign. He’d called her at least once a week the first month, begging her to give him another chance. “I’ll change,” he said. “Just tell me how you want me to change. I don’t understand what you want.”

Later, Lola doesn't mind when the Dog Warden moves the scanner slowly from side to side across her back to her tail, down the sides of her legs and under her neck, where it finds the chip. He calls the listed telephone number, but there's no reply.

But as we grow closer (and I grow more reliant on our relationship), her solutions—if they can still be called that—turn increasingly… unconventional. There’s the anewifier session, then the silence pills. This weekend, it’s the screaming retreat.

Gordo passes me the dart. I take a few long drags. My heart never twinges for the Wolfes, but it sure stings on account of people who do me wrong. Like Ma and Sheila and more men than I care to count. Seems I reckon I don’t deserve to be loved.

He put the sunglasses on so they were propped over his forehead, just a few inches from her own. Only her purse separated them. His eyes were a sort of olive green; they seemed to her kind, thoughtful, beautiful. She fought herself blinking; the tingling at the bottoms of her feet had intensified, and she felt color rising into her cheeks.

I taught high school and was off for Patriots Day, a Massachusetts state holiday which commemorated the battles of Lexington and Concord and the birth of the nation. Most Bostonians thought the day off was to observe the running of the Boston Marathon and to attend an 11 am Red Sox home game. Which, I suppose it had become. But this, this changed everything.

There was laughter in her left ear, and she turned out of curiosity, out of the deep need that draws human beings to want to join into laughter. A vibrant yellow car drove by, a car Jennifer recognized as a “Woody”. It wasn’t one, but it looked like one, she had thought years later.

He was right about the summer being a scorcher, though. I hung out near the fan in the living room most of the time, ooohing and aaaahing to hear my voice vibrate off its spinning blades. Whenever the fan stopped suddenly, I knew Bobby had pulled the plug again and was about to list chores I suddenly needed to do.

The tattoo artist’s frown turned into a smile, “Oh, Azucena, she’s in the back. Just between you and I, she’s had some anxiety,” the tattoo artist said.

Dolores ran to the back of the shop. Azucena sat alone, surrounded by three walls filled with tattoo designs. Her bouffant grey hair, large glasses, and conservative dress, resembled more of a church lady than tattooed punker. Dolores smiled nervously.

Yanking on the fleshy membrane again, Madeline watches it tear further. She feels it pulling back, trying to close itself up, and grunts with effort as she forces her arm through, all the way the shoulder. Prying with the other hand, she manages to squeeze both arms into the hole. Next comes her head.

The blood releases easily from the grooves of the seventy-year-old maple floors. Polly pauses at the memory of her grandmother, scouring those same floors in a lace bonnet that kept her blue foam rollers in position.

I went to the funeral home for the service the following week. They cremated Larry Gagliardi. From the paraphernalia that was around, it looked like the family was Roman Catholic. He had a large family, many family members who shared the heavy-browed, almost Cro-Magnon facial features of the man I’d seen in the photograph online, and a woman who stood out, who didn’t look like the rest. I assumed she was his wife.

Nobody comes down this road anymore. We hardly sell any gas. There are Twinkies on the rack older than me, and the Coca Colas are so old I think they probably have actual coca in them. The zoo is the only thing that ever brings anybody in.

He looked at me thoughtfully, drumming his long, slender fingers on the counter. The sound was hypnotic, calming, and I began to feel drowsy. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered what had happened to the other customers. But the faint tapping continued, and suddenly, I was back in my grandfather’s hundred-year-old farm house, hearing the click of heels on an oak floor.

Yes, Szabina thought, biting her lip and smiling. He was becoming one of her favorites. Perhaps she would sleep with him after all. Closing her eyes, she began to conjugate Italian verbs aloud, preparing for their meeting in an hour with the informant they had come all this way to meet. To challenge herself, she added in the same verbs in English, the grab-bag language always giving her trouble.

“Um, I insist,” Maggie said. Now she was really confused. The girl let her pay the six dollars and she grabbed her breakfast and sat down. She noticed the other customers looking at her and whispering. She pulled up her phone and looked in the camera.