Jim opened and close his mouth several times in quick succession. “I'm sorry. Did you just say you peak in peoples houses?”

Tawny nodded. “Yeah, it's not like I can just pop into the library or something.”

The whiskey section is in the back. Everything is priced much higher here. Five-to-ten-dollar markups on any bottle I recognize and know the usual price. I tend to shop at the Big Store by the highway. My gut stirs as my attention returns to the curious taste that stains my tongue.

Three centuries later, or so it seemed, I jump back three centuries into the next gallery. I look at samurai facial armor, demonesque guises snarling and staring back at me with hollow eyes somehow less dead than my own.

My essay wasn’t about the glories of colonizing planets or how we will conquer the universe. It was quite the opposite. I talked about how colonizing every known planet would still leave us in an unspeakably small part of the universe, that if we paid attention, we would be humbled. That the smallest things can take us down.

Nolan shook the box of kitchen matches in the dark until Johnny found it. He pulled one out and struck it. Nolan liked the way a single match lit up the closet more than a whole handful. The one match was just spooky enough. It was perfect.

As she waited sixty seconds for the microwave to reheat her coffee, she heard the low din of the TV coming from their bedroom. It was nearing noon and she did not see any progress on the outside projects.

“I never wanted that to be the first thing people thought of, when they thought of me,” says Peter. “But I came to realize that pretending that part of me didn’t exist was hurting me, creatively. And fans – they know when you’re not being truthful with them and they like when you are. So, I think in the end, we did the right thing.”

I can’t get to the second freezer. I can’t get to the clothes washer. I can’t get to my bicycle, so I bus it to Suds Your Duds. “PRUNE PILFERER” notices have been taped to the lamp posts and stapled to the telephone poles. I peer at the grainy image of the pajama-clad woman. This is Dubuque and Raj’s handiwork. Yesterday Sonny told me that Raj and Dubuque are circulating a petition to ban me from the neighborhood.

Albert took a deep breath and swiped his forehead. "Yes, you're right, my ass is fat. I feel bad about that, but hey, I'm well past 50 now, so what do you do?" He held up one hand gesturing a complete surrender to aging. "Kids? I wish. Doris and I tried for 10 years. Just didn't happen. Then she left. Didn't say why. I still got the auto repair shop though."

His were not like the hands of the boy who came around to distract Luba from her daily routine, a makeshift mechanic who spent his days frisking about in a body shop, his Civil Engineering degree from the University of Moscow hidden away in a suitcase, waiting for better days. He had the hands of someone who made an honest living, pipes and bolts, and those pungent fumes that permeated his hair...they made him all the more endearing.

The ticket machine near the entrance spews small white rectangles imprinted with red numbers. Behind the counter, the five women weave around one another in a silent ballet that belies the frenzy. No one, especially not the customers, is to see just how frenetic the pace is. Boxes are pulled from the stack, folded without even looking, lined with a sheet of waxed paper, and filled with eclairs, Napoleons, streusels, prune danishes, raisin buns with swirls of sugar icing, crumb buns. The variety seems endless.

The main restroom door suctions open. Lucy finishes up and flushes, standing as close to the stall door as possible. A flushed toilet, she has read, can spray a cloud of aerosol droplets three feet in the air. She waits for the woman to slip inside the other stall, but instead hears water running, paper towels yanked out of the dispenser. The woman, she realizes, is crying. Christ, Lucy thinks, how can she get out of here?

I remember the night Stan died because it happened while me and Gert was playing bingo. I picked Gert up at her house like I always do, and after bingo she asked me to come inside, said she wanted to show me the pink toilet paper cover she crocheted for her bathroom. As soon as we walked in the front door, we saw Stan slumped at the dining room table, his bald head face-down in a bowl of chili.

I looked at my buddy, her husband, who sat beside his wife listening as she said “my husband” over and over again, each time not referring to him. He didn’t look angry or hurt, he just sat there, pushing the last vestiges of his meal around his plate, enduring it. I wondered if it was the first time he’d ever heard that story.

Al stared at him. Ray tried to ignore him, but Al didn't look away. Eventually, Ray sighed in defeat and turned to face him. Webs of deep wrinkles framed the sun-baked skin around Al's grey eyes, and a deep frown formed under his unruly beard.

"You didn't come here to sightsee, did you, son?"

Cajun Spice came to a dead stop, which, he kinda sorta had to, if we are being totally honest, what with the road coming to that Dead End like it did, which also, though, surprised him because he’d missed the yellow, diamond, Dead End sign, but also because of the Panther just there, stalking back and forth, in front of the fall-down tree which once probably stood proud in front of Mac-O-Lac’s house there, at the end of the Dead End, which Cajun Spice had had no intention on visiting, but he’d gotten lost, and then there was the panther, so here we are.

I can resist him no longer, so I unlock the attic chamber with a key on a loophole. It dangles like a bell. He neither jumps or starts at my grinning face. He stands chained to the four poster bed, lost and cavernous as a beached ship on unknown shores. This is exactly how I like him.

I missed school for a couple days. It got to the point where I could no longer ignore the vine’s presence. It swirled around my vase of flowers. It coiled around the chair legs, coated my room in blanket of green, and swallowed my walls in its shadows. It even made its way to the ceiling. it covered my collection of books, CDs, and movies, posters, and photos. Almost all my belongings were obstructed from my view, hidden layers beneath these vines.

The red dirt is the worst. It tastes just like you would think, bitter and salty. The golden dirt just tastes like dust. You know what I mean. The sandy dirt crunches between my teeth, tasting of salt and minerals. Brown dirt is overly metallic. It reminds me of biting into aluminum. Oh, but the black soil. The black soil is the very best.

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?