Desperate for a sign, I close my eyes and listen to the lowered pulse of heaven. Childhood begins in a frantic magic, death ends in a painful, crawling calculus.  The lamp dims.  I’m disconnecting the dots.  If only this tale would end differently.  Why, I wonder, does the Genie never offer a 4th wish?

“Some people say a face cannot be amputated quite like a hand,” the police lieutenant threatened, “but we are making progress in our methods.”  

Roberto tried to concentrate his frantic thoughts on the remembered beauty of the stolen stones--Black Opal, Red Spinel, Citrine, Emerald--but discovered this was impossible in the presence of his inquisitor.…

Jackie dare not reveal to her client that she’d seen the bizarre scene that had unfolded in her front yard: a client beating up a therapist’s boyfriend. Tempted as she was, Jackie knew she couldn’t directly ask Lola why she had assaulted Buck on her front lawn. She couldn’t even ask Lola how she knew Buck. Jackie was bound by a professional oath of confidentiality, an oath that imposed a kind of “straightjacket” on Jackie’s curiosity.   

As Lola entered Jackie’s…

She thought of herself as an interior designer.  She thought of her good looking, but not very bright husband, as furniture.  She wasn’t quite sure whether John belonged in the living room, or the bedroom.  What the hell, she thought, he’s the kind of man that’s so fungible, I’ll just move him from room to room, as needed.  

 …

“I’m writing a cookbook for children,” the young author proudly declared.

Jim silently wondered if these New York cocktail parties which his boss required him to attend, could exist anywhere else on planet earth?  Nonetheless, he smiled, as if to signal pleasant approval of the young author’s ‘path breaking innovation’ in Children’s literature.  As he did, he wondered if everyone—the entire population of New York---wasn’t writing a goddamn book of one kind or…

Richard drove Lola home in silence.  He knew something was wrong.  She sat in the back seat of his limousine, fondling her purse like it was a rosary.  As she distractedly looked out the limo’s window, her delicate fingers worried her handbag’s little leather straps into a knot.  Richard thought it best that he not ask her any more questions.

As he pulled the lumbering black car up to the front of Lola’s apartment building,  Richard  silently wondered about why Lola hadn’t…

Bathtub-naked, a pink flesh buoy floating face-up toward heaven, after a long soak, I realize I don’t like world travel.  If I could have my way, I would be a man of Paris, but alas, I live in the wrong Detroit.   My mind, a busy window, buzzing arithmetic bees, I have a theory of everything:  The Inuit do not have 50 words for “desert,” the really bad guys don’t think of themselves as “bad,” a train seldom lays its own…