Barely conscious, Ryan Lang left his apartment each morning at 6:00 am with a Mel's plastic bag in hand, glanced at Katrina De Luca's door on his way to take Max for a walk around the block and past Bob's Exotic Flowers where the dog routinely had a bowel movement.  

 

Ryan knew Katrina only from chance encounters at the mail boxes in their building, Mel's sandwich shop where they self-consciously waved, and from watching when she was unaware; he watched her water and sing…

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In a smoke-filled room of empty chairs and tables he sang My Funny Valentine only for her.  The ghost of Rico's voice still lingered like expensive perfume, clung to the mirrors, ceiling and stained red sofas along the back wall of the club.  Ernie swept the floor while Linda hummed to herself, took his time so she could perform her ritual.  She played back the tape as she had for years, handsome Rico on stage ten million lifetimes ago, her rejection of an offer she thought bogus, his…

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It was still dark when Leslie hit the alarm snooze and pulled the wrinkled top sheet to her nose; she made slow circles on her belly with an index finger and rehearsed telling Tom about the baby again, though she knew it wouldn't bring him home.  

 

His side of the bed was still smooth, cool and untouched for two months now, and this empty space prompted the same mental scene every morning which made her instantly sick,  that of him lying beside the young woman he insisted did…

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The room of faded and peeling wallpaper smells like old sex. The scratchy bedsheets are stained. A million years of dust clings to the ancient ceiling fan which turns as an old watch who can't remember time. A caramel-colored woman is sprawled across tangled sheets beside a sleeping Harry Spinks, and as she stares at the slow rise and fall of his hairy belly, she decides she'll tell him her real name when he wakes up. She fondly remembers the way he whispered, "Artemis, Artemis" in the heat of… Continue

"How can I respect you when you complain all the time?" Blake asked.

"I just need some support -- you're never here, you don't help, and these kids were your dream." Doris said.

"I don't whine about my job -- you have a perception problem."

"No, my perception is dead-on: You're an equal-opportunity asshole, a love extortionate. You threatened to annul our marriage if I wasn't able to get pregnant and I should never have…

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"I love you," Doris said as she kissed Blake goodnight, tasting the faint sweetness of his babysoft lips, moist and plush. She left him there on the bed with his civil war novel and padded to the den to read alone, a quiet room with high ceilings -- a waste of potential, she'd always believed. She rearranged pillows and throws on the sofa, made a nest among them with an abridged copy War and Peace, then stared blankly for several moments at nothing. She let her mind drift in the… Continue