He takes this new vessel to the head of the traveler, where he guides the opening to the edge of the net and begins to loosen the tape.

The first taste of warmth hits Chase’s fingers, and he angles the opening and waits for the splash. It comes in only a second.

Burt Reynolds is Blade, and Whistler, and Frost, and also Dragonetti and Quinn. Dragonetti he can empathize with; an aging man being overtaken by the younger pack. Quinn he feels would be better suited for someone like Chris Pratt.

“Jesse, you asked me if I was in the meth business or the money business. Well, I'm also in the nutritious meals and tidy house business.”

Eventually I looked away from the trees and saw Fake Freddie exiting the auditorium. He had two beautiful women on either side of him. They walked right passed us in the car.

“We’ll that ruins my entire night,” she said.

Mary had been convinced that generics were a scam, their black and white packaging meant to make us think they were worth less than the name brand. She refused to be party to that level of deception, so wouldn’t buy them, no matter how cheap or how good the sale.

Ali put her hand on my shoulder and stopped me. I turned to look at her and she put her other hand on my other shoulder.

“Congratulations, Zach,” Ali said to me. “You are officially stoned.” She didn’t say anything else for a while, she just stared at me as if looking for something.

Greg handed the envelope to Lynne. She recognized the handwriting immediately—she had done exhaustive analysis on it at the Agency. It was hers, there was no question, and though the package had been signed, Lynne did not need to see it to know she was looking at the work of Carmen Sandiego.

Steve shuts down the lights on the empty hallways and locks the main door. He re-checks it exactly seven times, as usual. He heads out to his little Nissan Sentra and takes one last look at the place. His pride stands on his immaculately ironed sleeve. His duty shines like his polished shoes.

She whipped around, her backside split against his thigh, and arched backwards like a ballerina, plunging her elbow into his throat, thinking, now there’s the lever! He fell over the side of the bridge easily, too easily. She didn’t even hear a splash. She pulled her notebook from her purse, preparing to document the experience. She paused, pen attached to paper, an inky blot expanding out from the felt tip. Then she threw that in, too.

Edith was remarkably learned and sensitive, and, like me, took a daily regimen of anti-depressants. Problems only arose when she got wound up or jealous and acted like someone stole her eggs.

We had an important proposal one morning about poultry fumes and worked separately, combining our queries into one manuscript—Edith’s—which looked as if she edited the entire proposal.

But a massacre had been done in the garden. Her blue geraniums lay mangled in wheel rut. She stooped and lifted damaged stems. A glint caught her eye. She parted a laurel’s branches and saw a foil packet in the dirt. “Silvertip Condom,” the printing said. “Sold for the prevention of disease.”

I was just about ready to do that thing where you spin around and people pin money on your skirt for a dance like some kind of crazy lunatic, after which we would eat misspelled sheet cake from FOOD 4 LESS. I was excited to be a woman at last, as it meant I could engage in all the elegant rituals of Mexican women, such as being angry on the phone, snapping gum in an irritated way, and giving white men erections out of spite. 

Winter Solstice sounds as if it’s a cold color, but it is not. It’s a medium-pale shade, grayish with tones of mauve. Elegant but with warmth. Winter Solstice feels solid, timeless.

Inside. What about the inside. Crack that safe. I know I’m in for it. The steel house may help. Herald a transformation of the neighborhood and our lives. Right? I think I hear my name again.

Albert sat with a weight on his shoulders. He was 39 years old and had so far managed to avoid most responsibilities in life. Was it a pet? He hadn’t seen one of those around the house in years, surely he would have noticed it. Was it a child? No, he certainly would have noticed that too.

The cure was in their blood, in their meat, in all the days they sniffed around the dog parks, licked the concrete, and chewed sticks from dying trees.  The dogs couldn’t be bred in factories as some in California had tried.  The miracle could only be extracted from the dogs we raised, the family pets spread across laps in the flyers wrapping the utility poles.

“This car next to me kept accelerating and then dropping back to match my speed. It was so bizarre. I was really cute back then, super skinny. You know, back when I dabbled in cocaine and anorexia.”

The Saint, as it is always referred to by us, was very much a part of me, ingrained you might say, and even after all these years . . .  But, you know, I never really thought of it like that then, it was always—well, it was always just there, like snow in the winter, the midsummer rains, time flowing like a river ever passing, never past.

She smirked and we continued building. After a few hours we stood, my arm around her, admiring the crib we had created together. She leaned her head on my shoulder and mused, “I kind of wish our ghost was here to see this.”