The boy climbed the steps two at a time, emerged into the blinding sun on 59th Street, then hurried to the corner squinting at a scrap of cream colored note paper upon which his father had sketched a map with directions. Stopping in the middle of the street, sweat seeping through his jacket, he got jostled a few times from behind. No one said excuse me, or if they did he couldn’t hear them above the blare of raging car horns. He shaded his eyes, looked across to Central Park South, realized he’d walked the wrong way, then turned around and located the skyscraper with its shiny bluish mirror-like windows.

1. When lifting heavy objects such as art history anthologies or potted ferns, always hinge at your lower back and focus on your groin for energy. These are main components of your “core” and generally the strongest muscles in your body. As you lift your Norton reader it’s recommended you release deep guttural yowls—for self-motivation.

Since before we moved houses, that old Polaroid has been sitting there, beside my mother’s bed, for as long as I can remember. I try not to look at it when I walk into her room, the walls yellow with cigarette smoke. And even after she has shown it to me, I can never seem to remember his face. 

Mike’s great-grandmother and great-aunt decided to go to the cemetery on a Friday, and forced him to come along. He dawdled, playing in the sandbox with his orange plastic alien action figures, then pretended he could not hear when his great grandmother called. Finally, she came after him and asked him to go get a switch. “I’m gonna get a hold of ya. Get a big switch. You get a small one and it’ll be worse,” Milly, his great-grandmother, said, hands on her broad hips. At seventy she was plump, dark-tanned, wrinkled and strong. Mike remembered yesterday’s beating, after he had drunk her last Mellow Yellow. It had been hard, but short.