They warned me the bitch was no damn good. That she'd be my undoing.

I meandered over. I just couldn't help myself.

"How're you doing, baby love?" I asked.

She scowled at me, then turned away.

"C'mon, sweetie. Let me caress you."

Wet eyes stared back at me, eyes that were weary, wary.

I reached out a hand, but she shied away.

"I won't hurt you. I promise."

She glared at me, daring me to come closer.

I was a fool to want her, yet too reckless not to try.

I moved quickly, but her rabid bite was even faster.

"You better be goddam careful." Always the same warning about the lawnmower.

"Sure, Dad." I laced up my grass-stained high-tops and went out to the shed.

It took a lot of pulls but I finally got it running. Then I revved up the engine by unscrewing the governor.

Mom had been nagging my father to chop down the mint. I figured I could just as easily use the mower.

I pushed and pulled, back and forth, shoots and sand spraying out.

I tripped and my foot slid underneath, but only the tip of my sneaker got sliced by the blade.

"You stinkin' fuckin' bitch!" he wanted to scream at his boss. But he slunk out of her corner office and back to his cubicle.

He'd had enough. This time, he'd put his plan into action: changing the rounding rules by one-hundredth of a cent; crediting the difference to a new account set up for his boss; then using credit cards in her name for big-bucks items shipped to a warehouse. Four billion trading hands every quarter came to four hundred thousand dollars. Then blow the whistle.

When she caught on, she put out a contract - but not the legal kind.

It had been a while for me, so I asked Sandi out. She had one helluva reputation.

She flirted with me at A&W, and then at the drive-in. Halfway through the movie, I made my move, but I got nowhere.

"What gives?" I asked.

"You just want me to put out."

"Yeah ... so?"

"I'm not that kind of girl."

Yeah, right, I thought.

The next night I took her to Denny's, then to the multiplex. No dice.

The night after, it was to Red Lobster, then parking out at the lake. Still nothing.

I'll get her; I'll never give up.

The ophthalmologists had earlier declared the experimental procedure a success. It was time.

Dr. Parson's aftershave had soured; his calm voice belied his apprehension. "Nichola ... I need you to keep both eyes closed."

The bandages were removed, then the ointment was swabbed away.

"Are you ready?"

Forever, she had dreamt of this day.

"Yes."

"Okay. Now slowly open them."

The fluorescents had been dimmed. Unmoving shadow-figures stood hovering, waiting.

"What do you see?"

The obscured faces of trepidation and discontentment: those she could sense before.

Flashes of unworthiness and desperation: these she suddenly felt inside.

She yearned for the night.

Muffled by paper-thin walls, her daughter Rachel's weeping was a bitter lullaby.

Rachel had blossomed since the awkward, painful years before Benjamin until, more than a year ago, he snuck outside for a smoke. And never returned.

There were no ransom notes, no communiqués, only puzzlement from his bosses at the agency. Inaction and futility followed rote reassurances by detectives. A promised investigation at federal plaza yielded nothing.

Each month thereafter, Rachel found a padded envelope crammed with hundreds in her Volvo's glove compartment.

She told no one, not even her mother, listening to her whimpering in the next room.

I'd forgotten to buy Mother's Day cards, not to mention a gift.

"Honey, I'm taking Jimmy-doggie for a walk."

"So late?"

"We could both use the exercise."

Red neon ½ PRICE CARDS lit up the window.

Procrastinating browsers crowded the aisle. Hand-printed cardboard headers read: "Wife, Grandmother, Daughter ... Spanish, Blessed, Belated ... From Pet / Cat / Dog" Inside Jimmy's was: "Mom ... The dog-gone best."

I needed one from me. "Because I feel that in the heavens above / The angels, whispering one to another ..." Feh. It was Poe, but still ...

I decided on: "Happiness is sharing our lives together."

I'll pick up flowers tomorrow.

When I reached for the can of Chock full o'Nuts, I paused a moment to make sure I had a good grip. Yesterday, when it had slipped out of my hand, the coffee scattered all over as the can banged to the floor.

Taking that extra second isn't second nature, yet. I've dropped other things lately: a container of soy milk, a bottle of ibuprofen, a juice glass on the ceramic tile.

To gain a semblance of control, I've kept count, but the number makes me tremble.

So far, I've kept it to myself. I'm terrified what it might mean.

I was remembering something. Then I realized it matched a story I'd written. In fact, it was the story I'd written. I didn't know how much the truth had been embellished. I couldn't Google my own history.

I wonder if I write primarily to hold onto memory, a way to thwart the inevitable deterioration of my cerebral cortex storage and retrieval system.

Am I afraid? Hell, yeah. I am nothing more than the sum total of all my short- and long-term memories.

Now, though, I cannot know how accurate or distorted that memory was, and what really happened back then.

The concert association president admonished us about unwrapping our candy and exhorted us to turn off cell phones before introducing the solo pianist.

"Can't hear you!" A crude, condescending shout, from amidst the nearly obsolescent who claim the rear aisle seats closer to the toilets, who forget to stop the doors from banging when they prematurely shuffle out.

He looked embarrassed, fumbling with the microphone. Squeals of feedback, then a readjustment. "Any better?" required no answer.

"Yeah!" That same gruff voice, the self-anointed spokesman for the contumacious and unmannerly.

I wanted to have sympathy. But they'd never earn my respect.

The first night of improvisation class, he sat in our circle, but apart: white shirt, black pants, velvet kippah, tsitsit exposed, body language exposing timorousness. We said our names and then something we've never told anyone.

"Ze'ev Orenstein ... I'm an Orthodox Jewish atheist."

We laughed at the absurdity, but he didn't.

The second class, we watched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and then improvised the late night brawl.

I was George. Ze'ev donned a scarf and became Martha. We played the scene with thick Yiddish accents and fake obscenities.

Without props, Ze'ev was spiritless. But with, his interpretations were sublime.

You thought the leaden winter would bring you down forever ...

Through my MP3 player's earphones, Cream and I were back in '67, when I had little idea about poetry. It was the instrumental, man. Not the words.

Sure, I've missed a lot, growing up, growing older, no do-overs allowed. Now, I'm seeing with different eyes, hearing with different ears, though good peanut butter still tastes yummy.

Gerbil-wheel catching up breeds and feeds on desperation. If I let things unfold, I'll have all the time left in the world.

... But you rode upon a steamer to the violence of the sun.

Mike and Timmy were like brothers. They were in seventh grade science together and played on the same spring soccer team.

Summer vacation was time for experimentation. They shared Marlboros and a joint or two. They swilled six-packs of Schlitz and then threw up. And they did it with mentally-challenged, twelve-year-old Wanda.

One sweltering afternoon, they wheeled their bikes through a hole in the chain-link fence surrounding an overflowing sump. They skipped rocks for a while, then jumped in, shorts and all. They couldn't swim.

"Such good boys," sobbed one neighbor.

"The best," sniveled another.

"Darwin's laughing," snickered a third.

You're not finishing your salad?

I'm not really hungry.

You haven't even touched it.

I told you. I'm not hungry.

So why'd you order it?

Goddamn. This isn't working.

What isn't?

Us. This.

What do you mean? I thought you were into me.

I was.

So what happened?

You. This place.

This was our place.

Your place. Not our place.

I thought you liked this place.

It's a dive. Look around.

So why'd you go out with me?

I thought we'd have a future.

So now what?

I'm leaving. Take care of yourself.

Hey! What about your salad?

Toss it.

Ah-hah! I've got her pegged. The almost imperceptible half-inch knife-score on the Tupperware pitcher revealed her treachery.

It takes only 76 seconds to mix up a half-gallon of Crystal Light but I'm the one who's always got to do it.

Our unstated agreement: If less than twelve ounces remain, then a new batch has to be made. The tell-tale groove, exactly 1⅜ inches from the bottom, marks that level.

Whenever I reach for the iced tea it's always just above that mark. When I'm starving, parched or rushed the chore inevitably falls on me.

Now I finally know the score.

My mother levered the aluminum tray, clacked ice cubes into my Lone Ranger cup, poured Hires root beer halfway and then "que-essed" it from the tap. Frozen orange juice was diluted with more than three cans of water. Powdered skim milk was similarly thinned.

I eventually learned that q.s. came from my father's pharmaceutical abbreviation for "quantity sufficient," but my mother used q.s. as subtextural-laden code. "It'll taste better" and "it's best for you" actually meant "it'll go further and last longer."

Her depression mentality dampened her spirit and stole her fizz.

As for me, root beer tastes overbearingly sweet.

Sitting atop the low stone wall overlooking the falls, the lovers were folded within each other.

A flabby man in overalls waddled up the rock stairs, one at a time, and tiptoed right up behind them. They were oblivious.

"What would happen," he stammered, "if I do this?"

He reached out a blubberous hand and suddenly shoved the boy off the edge.

The girl was aghast, speechless, but screamed hysterically as her lover thudded on the boulders and splashed into the plunge pool.

The man roared, "You wanna join him?"

"No, Daddy."

"Then let's go home. It's time for dinner."

Celebrating her nineteenth birthday, Peggy Mason had a night of debauchery munching shrooms, swilling Jack, obsessing over a dancer on a PBS fund-raiser and, as she later discovered, getting pregnant.

Convinced in her gut she'd have a boy, she changed her name to Margot Pasodoble, vowing he'd one day become a ballroom toreador champion.

A scrawny baby girl, however, emerged after her day of agony. When the initial shock subsided, Margot named her Liza Minelli Pasodoble.

Worst, the accursed Liza had no sense of rhythm. No amount of pleading or beating could make the girl connect a metronome to reality.

She was perched on the boardwalk railing - near the flagpole, as usual - with the two men in wheelchairs and a third on a scooter.

Thirty-something, maybe forty - it was hard to tell with her sun-bronzed skin, wrap-around sunglasses and Yankees cap - she parried with them as they good-naturedly vied for attention.

"So who's first?" she'd ask when the time was right.

And she'd go with each to a remote bathroom, or one's tricked-out van, only rarely to their homes, to placidly pleasure them and give them joy.

Her inexplicable longing was only partially appeased by their benedictive showering of love.

One day I asked my father, "Why do you pray?"

He slapped my face, sent me to my room, and locked the door from outside.

Every night, he came for me. He made me kneel and read aloud from the bible. When my lips were dry and cracking he raised up his cane and made me continue until I shrieked from pain. Then he kicked me to the floor, calling me a blasphemer.

When I was alone, I prayed for real. I prayed for his agonizing death.

When it came, I was finally released.

I had been taught to pray.

So God said to Bobby Croft, "Didn't I fuckin' tell you? You shouldn't've tried knocking off that bodega."

"How was I supposed to know they kept a goddamn shotgun under the counter?"

"Putz. You should've listened."

Bobby lit up a Marlboro. Inhaled. "So what d'ya want from me?"

"I want you to admit - once and for all - that you are a supreme fuck-up. The most supreme fuck-up."

"Nah. Ain't gonna happen."

"You know you're not gonna be allowed into heaven."

"So what else is new?"

"Ya know, Bobby ... this shit's like talking to myself."

"Yep. That's exactly how I feel."

As I picked up his poop, Jimmy snorted and said, "Somethin's been buggin' me."

"Ticks? Fleas?"

"Funny guy."

"So what's it this time?

"All this walking. You've got your Merrells and all I've got are my poor paw-pads."

"Poor, poor doggie."

"You're pissin' me off. You know that?"

"Language ... remember?"

"And crappuddy food ... the puppy-size portions."

"C'mon. You get your two squares. And table treats."

"Chicken skin, cartilage. Lousy gizzle."

I hate when he makes up words. "You're not exactly skin and bones anymore."

"Have you looked in the mirror lately?"

"Jimmy ... this isn't about me."

"That's exactly my concluction."

I was sitting on the park bench, ear-scratching our Wheaten terrier.

"So why do you chase cats?" I asked.

"Better I should chase oxen?"

"Funny. But why cats?"

He ignored me. "Why Torah class?"

Arguing with my dog again. I should be committed. "That calico ... she didn't budge. Then you touched noses."

"Better I should've eaten her? You'd've been pissed."

"But just to touch noses?"

"Biological imperative. 'I am because I chase.'"

"Alright then."

"So ... why Torah class?" Brown eyes stared up at me.

"To find meaning ... understanding ... who knows?"

"Chasing knowledge ... right?"

"Guess so."

"Well, join the crowd."

Kalif swiped his ExperiGen badge but had only seconds to enter the stolen elevator override code before security swarmed. He didn't want to be detained like Muja, whom he never saw again.

He donned a sterile-suit and agonized until the subterranean laboratory's doors swooshed open.

Thousands of compost-filled vats, enhanced with his special admixture, teemed with genetically-engineered Oligochaeta - Kalif's beloved earthworms - altered for size, regenerative and reproductive speed, and omnivorous insatiability.

Kalif stamped his feet and shouted, "Arise!" As one, millions of worms burrowed up from their organic habitats to rush, slithering, towards their master.

Unfortunately, they never learned, "Halt!"

There was nothing to like about my dead grandmother's foul-smelling calico. Cats grooming themselves? Not this one; he slept in his litter box. Worst? His nasty, self-serving disposition.

But I got three grand every month to keep Friedrich Nietzsche alive and well. A trustee made surprise visits like a random drug tester.

Freddy-baby hated being held, hated being ignored. I got scratched. Bitten. Mauled. But three thou bought a lot of peroxide, bacitracin and filet mignon for two.

During those nine lucrative years, I was married twice, divorced twice. Freddy-baby never approved. Drove them away. Probably did me a favor.

Stuck behind a blue-hair in a green Buick Skylark belching fumes, doing 45 in the left lane. Flashed my brights. She slowed to 40. Laid on the horn. Down to 35.

Old bitch wouldn't get out of my way, so I did what I had to. I straddled the median, pulled aside her rear quarter panel, hit her just right, skidding her 180° and onto the center median. Swerved around and sped on. Police call it the P.I.T. maneuver; I'd seen it on COPS. Worked perfectly.

Got to my poetry group in time to read.

Tonight's topic: "Patience and Compassion."

Bastards waiting for the green are blasting their speakers. A three-minute red, if the traffic mechanism's working. My windows rattle; my floor vibrates. I can't get any sleep.

Got a silencer from Morty. We go way back - shop class at Eastern District.

Loaded hollow-points into my Glock. Screwed on the silencer. Wore all black. Slipped out the back door, crossed the street to the burnt-out house. Hunkered down behind the uncut hedge.

A white Civic stopped, boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom. I squeezed off four rounds into the trunk. Knew it when I hit a speaker.

I'm taking back my corner. Word'll get around.

I paid premium for two tickets to Les Misérables. Twelfth row center. A full house.

First scene musical interlude. Commotion in the aisle. Usher's flashlight guiding latecomers to seats in front of us. Damn.

The woman was normal-sized; the guy at least six-ten. They plopped down.

Directly before me, a gargantuan, hydrocephalic-shaped head. Every time he moved that monstrous noggin, I had to crane my neck. I was in misérable agony by Act II.

I considered requesting a refund. Asking him to move please!

I imagined shoving my switchblade into his ear.

Where's that guillotine when you really need it?

I brought my MP3 player, an attaché with books, magazines and writing pad, a cooler with sandwiches, soda and snacks, and my puffy pillow. I came prepared.

I was scheduled for the first appointment, at 11:00. Got there at 10:05. Three people already waiting. Bastards knew the drill.

Sure, he spends time with each patient. Damn good doctor and takes my insurance.

But I've never gotten out in less than three hours. One time, almost six. A guy could get bored. Hungry. Or downright exhausted.

Bitch and moan? What good would it do?

I'm miserable until "You're next, Mr. Abrams."

Vandals had broken a basement window of Old Man Benning's house. It took nothing for Timmy and Rachel to shimmy through it. They made sure to be quiet.

At age nine, in the musty half-darkness, they played hide-and-seek behind mildewed bedding and furniture. At ten, they began kissing, then groping when found. At eleven, they skipped hide-and-seek. At twelve, they graduated to things discovered in a raunchy magazine. At thirteen, Rachel became pregnant.

Timmy forced a wire hanger up into Rachel, but couldn't stop her bleeding on the scummy concrete. Old Man Benning, who'd watched everything through a peephole, chortled.

The 10:56 local to Lindenhurst. I'm in a three-seater next to the window. The train's accelerating into the tunnel.

"D'ya mind?"

A young woman in a plaid mini - maybe a college student - is pointing to my attaché.

I lift it onto my lap. With her ass in my face, she maneuvers a wheeled tool box in front of the aisle seat. She plops down beside me.

Our legs are touching; hers is warm. I press against it.

She gives me a look, opens the tool box and pulls out a sculpture hammer.

She caresses its handle.

I fake dozing off.

It wasn't exactly monkey sex, but we did make some noise. The kids were away at camp and Grandma was back in Myrtle Beach.

"Oh, man. That was somethin' else!" I said, panting.

What was different were a couple of things she'd never done before. Things that felt so damn good. Things I'd long begged for but got, "You can't be serious" or "You want me to what?"

We dozed off, spooning, stuck to each other.

I awoke with a start. Maybe it was her snoring, maybe noises outside.

But maybe the thought: Where had she learned to do that?

If it weren't for his breath I would have definitely gone home with him.

We were swilling frozen margaritas. He was buying. When he pulled close in to nuzzle, a cigarette stench so potent made me almost fall off my stool.

I've got nothing against smokers per se. I turned thirty-six last month and beggars can't be choosers. Tick, tock, ya know? But despite his Armani suit and rugged good looks, I just couldn't.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"I ... uh ... can't."

"Why not?"

"I don't ... even know your name."

"You can call me the Marlboro Man."

Great. Just great.

"So, General McChrystal, do you really think 40,000 additional troops will make any difference in Afghanistan?"

"I most certainly do, Mister President."

"The Russians never prevailed in Afghanistan. We're withdrawing from Iraq. Look what happened in Viet Nam."

"You've a question?"

"Yes, General. What makes Afghanistan different?"

"We're battling insurgents, terrorists - the Taliban, Al-Qaeda - who want to destroy our God-given way of life. Think 9/11! Our boys are fighting for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For the love of our magnificent country."

"Our boys, you say. Is your boy over there?"

"Oh, no sir. He's on Wall Street."

"I begged you to take it out," she moaned.

"But it was working for us. Didn't it feel right to you?"

"Damn you! You kept it in way too long."

"Look. I couldn't help it. That's all there is to it."

"Even when I lost interest?"

"Whaddya mean? I thought you were going along with it."

"I only wanted you to be happy."

"Now what? What do you want from me?"

"I want you to think about me. What my needs are."

"I'll always love ya, baby."

"So tomorrow ... are ya gonna close our accounts and get back our money?"

I woke with a start. 2:43 glowed on the clock. I turned over. Raina’s eyes were wide open. I tried to reach over, but she fended me off. I pulled my hand away.

“Can’t sleep?” I asked.

“I’ve been up. Thinking.”

“What is it? What’s the matter?”

“It’s you. It’s us. It’s the whole thing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I just can’t take it anymore.”

“What’s goin on?”

“Did you know I’ve been sleeping with Ronnie?”

“Actually, Raina, I did.”

“How could you? We’ve been so discreet.”

“Well, I’ve been doing him too. And I’d know your smell anywhere.”

I was watching Jerry Springer when the damn phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Flint? My name is Rupert Donnelly. I’m calling from Save All Our Children.”

“Yeah, and ...”

“Did you know that two hundred thousand children die every week from starvation?”

“Yes, I did.

“Oh ... and did you know that just a dollar a day could buy mosquito netting for hundreds of families?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And a hundred dollars a month could feed an entire village?”

“Yes, I did.”

“So, Mr. Flint ... how much can I put you down for?”

“Fourteen cents.”

“That’s all?”

“Did you know I was broke?”

“Murray ... I really like Kathleen. But there’s something bothering me.”

“About your shiksa?”

“C’mon Murray. Give her a break. She’s half Jewish. Well, maybe an eighth.”

“So whatsa matter?”

“The way she says things. Fr’instance ‘Did you know?’ ...”

“So?”

“She says, ‘Did JEW know?’ Like she’s an anti-semite.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Last night, she asked, ‘Could you take me to Yung Fat?’ but it sounded like ‘Could JEW take me ...’”

“You know somethin, Shelly? You’re crazy. You’re sick in the head.”

“Murray, you’re not helping me here.”

“So see her. Don’t see her. Waddya want from me?”

“Your blessing.”

“Oy, vey.”

She strode up the walk, knocked on the door.

I wished she’d turn around and leave.

Knocked again. Twice, three times. She wasn’t going nowhere.

I picked up a shotgun. Racked it. Approached real wary-like. No telling what she was packing.

I whisked open the door. Raised the shotgun. Yelled, “Drop whatever you’re carrying!”

“I can’t, Jerry. It’ll spill. I brought you some chicken soup.”

I lowered the gun.

“Here. It’s in a cardboard cup. Just like you like it.”

I took a sip. Then another. Quaffed the rest down.

“Not bad, Ma. Thanks.”

Then I started feeling real sick.

It was ’round midnight. The dogs were at the door, like every night since the summer solstice. They now number seventeen.

They started barking, then howling. A wolfhound reached the doorknocker. And knocked over and over.

I covered my ears with a pillow. Turned on the TV real loud. Nothing worked. The cacophony continued.

So I went down, handed out Waggin’ Train Jerky Tenders. The terriers were the greediest. The mixed-breeds less so.

It’s costing me too much. I’ve already called animal control. They never come out at night.

Tomorrow’s the first day of winter.

I’m praying that it stops.

Dick Clark was counting down the seconds. We were holding plastic flutes, waiting to celebrate. Fifty-three ... fifty-two ...fifty-one ...

Pounding on the door. I went to answer it.

She was in her forties, looked vaguely familiar. Said, simply, “I’m your daughter, Marceline” in a flinty voice I’d heard long before.

I blank-stared at her.

“Remember Lynette Putnam? She was my mother.”

“Oh. Lynette. That was ...”

“Forty three years ago.”

“So you’re, uh ...”

”That’s right.”

“Come on in. You’re just in time. All my daughters are here.”

“I’m not imposing?”

“You’re right on time. We’re celebrating. Here’s some Kool-Aid. Go ahead. Cheers.”

We kept Grandma locked in the cellar. For her safety as well as ours.

Grandma caused trouble. At 77 you’d think she’d outgrown it.

She told lies. Pinched the kids. Kicked the dog. Caused electrical shorts. Loosened plumbing valves. Once yanked out our Toyota’s ignition wires.

She couldn’t be left alone. We hired a live-in care-giver, but Grandma stared at her until she ran out screaming.

So Grandma stayed downstairs with her corduroy La-Z-Boy, a flat-screen bolted to the floor joists, and a plastic cooler.

Everything was copasetic until we smelled smoke ... and heard frantic knocking on the basement door.

At seventy-eight, Walter Danzig had enough of pinochle and penny-ante poker. He had enough of television and bus trips to A-C and the noisy perfumed broads who always squandered their money on the slots.

Walter had always loved furniture-making, but what’s the use, he thought. His home was already filled with handmade tables and chairs, armoires and cabinets.

But he’d never built a casket. So he purchased cherry planks, then got to work with his planes and sanders, his dove-tail saws and dowels and glue.

Yet he put off staining it, figuring the longer it takes, the longer he’d live.

The wicked witch of the writing workshop grabbed her gavel and growled, “The next ass-wipe who abuses me with annoying alliteration will be assessed five dollars for the grovel jar.”

We quaked and quivered, then became quiet. We were horrified, humbled and humiliated by her over-the-top outburst.

“What about self-expression?” asked one, meekly.

“And stating strong opinions,” added another, weakly.

“Not now, not ever. Nevermore!” replied the raven-haired, raving-mad witch. Her shrill speech became a shriek. “We allow only purple prose and powerful poetry. Let that be a lesson!”

We stood, saluted and slinked away.

The wicked witch had won.

The stooped man with the misshapen face stood watching. Only his forlorn eyes were visible within his hood.

He waited while interminable announcements were made, while circulars were passed around, while a prompt was proffered, and while the participants hunched over their writing.

When it was time for introductions, four remained silent and refused to share what they had written.

The man gestured towards each of the reticent four and croaked, “It’s time for your final accounting. Your muse ... is yours no longer.”

“But she said it was all right,” blubbered one.

“Who? The purple lady? ... Don’t make me laugh.”

Joey Rizzo was Central’s bully. I was his bitch. I swore I’d get back at him one day.

I enlisted after graduation, my only ticket out of a sweltering, dying town. He enlisted, too. It was a choice between hard time or the army.

After my second tour, I’d had enough.

I edged into town on the Greyhound, strode over to Dewey’s itching to get even.

Joey sat crumpled on a stool, nursing a beer, a wheelchair nearby.

A spark of recognition. “Hey you,” he said, his words slurred.

“Just go fuck yourself,” I said, than spat in his face.

I met Linda at McDuffy’s. If the place was empty she’d dance alone to the jukebox. If I was playing pinball, I’d let the ball drain and watch. With those liquid hips, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her.

One night I got up the nerve to ask her out. She talked about abuse and drinking. After I met her family, I knew we’d have no future.

Fifteen years later, I was in Waldbaum’s. I spotted her in the dairy aisle, with a kid in the cart and two holding on.

I yearned to say hello, but just couldn’t.

Charlie invited me to my junior prom only the week before. Since I’d always worshiped him from afar, I swallowed my pride and accepted.

He’d been drinking before he arrived. I rushed him from my house after pinning on my corsage.

He vomited and passed out at the table. Friends drove me home on their way to the bonfire on the beach. Ever since, I’ve hated him, hated being humiliated by him.

On my fortieth birthday, I searched on Facebook. He was running a halfway house for alcoholic ex-cons. I posted a private message on his wall:

“I forgive you.”

Before and during, he moaned he loved me. I said I loved him too. After, he lit a cigarette, but I let it pass. We were going to have a future together.

Before Christmas, he groaned, “She found out.”

“What d’ya mean, she?”

“My wife. Twelve years going on a lifetime.”

“I didn’t know ...”

“I didn’t tell you ’cause I thought it was over.”

“And now?”

“I’ve gotta end it. But I’ll always love you.”

I watched him dress. When the door shut, I cried into my pillow.

I chose to have his child.

I chose to never tell him.

Jeb Brody’s twins were born bad. I knew Jesse and Wade from when they were young’uns.

Sure, a cougar could’ve come down from the hills and killed a cat here, a dog there. They stole, beat up people. Everybody was too afraid to go to the law.

I was watching from a blind when they dragged Josie-Lee by, screaming, begging them to stop. They tied her with heavy chain. Lowered her into the creek. Demanded she recite the Lord’s Prayer. Swore they were going to drown her when she said Amen.

But my 12-gauge got in the last word.

“Why don’t you ever tell me ‘I love you?’”

“But honey, you know I do.”

“But why can’t you say the words?”

“I don’t know, sweetie. It’s …”

“Well, try. Just this once. For me?”

“Okay. Here ya go: I love you.”

“You don’t sound like you mean it.”

“Sure I mean it.”

“C’mon. Say it like you do.”

“Okay. I loave you. I loove you.”

“Now you’re sounding like Woody Allen.”

“C’mon … would you give me a break?”

“I’m serious. Say it!”

“Screw this. I’ve had enough.”

“Oh, please baby. Say it.”

“Okay then. I loathe you. I’m leaving you.”

“Dearly beloved. We are gathered here together …”

I tuned out. I’d heard this too many times before.

Shady Eddie. McGee and Emma. Then Sandra. Her, I’ll miss.

And now Shorty. They had to get an extra-long coffin for him.

The priest droned on. Then, “Would anyone like to say something?”

I felt myself standing, my legs, unbidden, pulling me forward.

I cleared my throat. Looked around. Dozens of blood-shot eyes from Flannery’s stared back.

“I really loved Shorty. We all did.”

A couple of sniffles.

“But maybe he shouldn’t’ve punched that police horse. It didn’t look anything like his ex-wife.”

Culvert had told him about the place and how to find it. He pulled off a fifty and slipped it to the doorman.

A wizened woman in a blond wig and pink negligee wobbled over. “What’s your pleasure, sonny?”

“Whatcha got?”

“Choose one. Then we talk price.”

“How ’bout her?” He pointed to a busty brunette in a micro-mini.

“Esmeralda? You got good taste. She’s three hundred for a taco. Five for the whole enchilada.”

“Nobody said nuthin’ about food.”

“Oy vey, stupido. Mama’s gotta explain everything?”

“But I’m allergic to spicy Spanish cooking.”

“So who says you gotta eat?”

“Waddya mean ‘What d’ya got?’” the scar-faced clerk snapped. “Look up. See the menu. That’s what we got.”

I’ve trouble deciding when I’m hungry. A few minutes passed. Then, “Will ya step aside. There’s people waitin’.”

I cleared my throat. “Sir … I think I’ll have …”

“Wait a sec, will ya?”

He took three teenage girls’ order, then a family of five. Finally, he turned to me. “So what’s your pleasure?”

“A bacon cheeseburger rare. Fries and orange soda.”

“Sorry. All out.”

“A hot dog?”

“None left.”

“A cup o’ coffee?”

“Nope.”

“So what d’ya got?”

“Waddya mean ‘What d’ya got?’”

“Eh … what’s up Doc?”

“It’s Lieutenant Columbo to you sir, if you don’t mind.”

“So waddya want?”

“I’m investigating the death of a carrot patch. And your name naturally came up.”

“I absolutely positively got no idea whatcha talkin’ about.”

“Friday evening, Mister Porky Pig’s north patch was consumed. A witness stated that a strange-looking gray animal with immense ears was devouring his carrots.”

“Wasn’t me. Wasn’t there. I was at the Dodgers game.”

“Okay. I guess that’s about all.” Lieutenant Columbo started to leave.

But he turned back. “There’s one more thing. Weren’t the Dodgers rained out that night?”

The rotund man with a pinky ring stubbed out his cigar. “In my language a tanto’s a knife for slicing through body armor.”

“It not ‘tanto,’ Mister Soprano. It ‘Tonto.’ With two o’s.”

The Injun wore a fringed jacket and beaded headband. “It mean ‘wild one’ in Potawatomi.”

“Okay, okay. I’m just fuckin with ya.”

“Your name Soprano … sound like singing squaw.”

“Watch yourself.”

“You got horse to sell?”

“We’re in waste management, fella. We only got dead horses. From the racetracks.”

“Me need fast Pinto.”

“Got none.”

“We no do business. You no kemosabe. You only fat Italian gonef.”

It was Sylvie’s turn to patrol the perimeter. Toting an AK-47 was hardly as exhausting as twelve-hours shifts in the cannery.

She took her sweet time examining the electrified fence for breaches, especially around the orchard, silo and barn. Once, when she fired a salvo of shots over the heads of unknowns approaching the outer fence, no disciplinary warning was issued. No solitary punishments had to be endured.

She stopped atop a rise, lit a cigarette, and gazed down at the city, shrouded in smog. How could those people live like that? she wondered. Up here I can breathe.

Robie’s abusive parents were meth heads. Robie’d left Columbus two years before, eating, washing up, tweeking and hitching rides at truck stops along the interstates from Roanoke to Bakersfield.

Robie was seventeen but looked thirteen. Lonely long-haulers grasped his shoulder-length hair while impaling themselves between his welcoming lips, heightened by raspberry lipgloss boosted from Walgreens. Robie often topped a hundred bucks a night.

One driver, a preacher, almost suffocated him while praising the lord. A husband-and-wife team tied and beat him. Slipped him fifty and warned him to keep his mouth shut.

Robie wondered if he’d live to see eighteen.

Skeeter, Gonzo and Diesel were muggers and thieves but Roxy loved puttin’ on the hurt. None of them were any damn good.

The boys would drag a know-nothing to the rubble-strewn lot behind the high rise, take what they wanted and then pummel him with pipe and rebar. Roxy’d then carve designs on their bruises with the stiletto she’d boosted from EZ Pawn.

After three straight days of rain they grabbed a meth dealer and did their deeds. The ground underneath gave way and they were all swallowed into a sinkhole.

Despite their screams no one came to their rescue.

“Da-ad … there’s a guy on the phone who’s got a truckful of rubble.”

“Tell him we don’t want no trouble.”

“It’s not trouble. It’s rubble – with an ‘R’!”

“I ain’t goin’ to no rumble. It ain’t my scene no more.”

“It’s not rumble, Da-ad. It’s rubble!”

“Why’s he want to know about General Rommel?”

“This guy’s got nuthin’ to do with Rommel.”

“Tina … speak up! … and stop mumbling.”

“Da-ad … for crying out loud … did you forget your hearing aid?

“I can’t hear what you’re sayin’, Tina. You sound garbled.”

“Da-ad … I’m afraid I’m losing my marbles.”

“Oh now I got it! … rubble!”

After the wind stopped howling, after the flood receded, after the authorities allowed residents to return to their homes, Jimmy Burke sifted through the charred remains of his bungalow.

He lifted aside burnt 2x4's, pulled the now mangled triple-hungs onto a pile, carried away chunks of soggy, scorched plasterboard. He peered down into the basement, still half-filled with fetid water. There, floating in his crate, was the bloated body of his beloved boxer, Beau.

Damn her! Why couldn’t Katie’ve taken the dog with her when she evacuated?

I should’ve known to turn off the circuit breakers. I should’ve been here.

“Watch me, Grandpa!” Katie yelled from atop the slide.

I looked up, shouted, “I’m watching!”

I’d never signed on for this: Picking Katie up at noon, baby-sitting because her mother, Dina was working and Ellen’s sciatica was acting up.

Dina, my youngest, being abused. Last time, Larry had twisted her arm so bad she’d gone to the ER. When Ed and Gino arrested him, he got some extra subduing because he was belligerent.

Despite the protection order, he’ll be back. She’ll sob and bluster, “But I love him.” It makes me sick inside.

But he’ll get his. That’s a promise.

Tara and Sofia were strolling along Canal Street carrying Louis Vuitton knock-offs. Their Guccis and Chanel sunglasses were similarly counterfeit.

Tara inspected a watch-seller’s inventory. She wanted a decent Rolex for Marty’s birthday.

Most were crappy but one looked real. “Can I see that one?”

She examined it. It was genuine. She almost wet herself. “How much?”

“Nine hundred.”

“I’ll give you seven.”

“Make it eight. We have deal.”

She counted out sixteen fifties; stuck the watch in her bag.

She didn’t care it wasn’t working; she’d get it fixed.

But she didn’t know that its serial was in NCPD’s database.

Cuttin’ math class. What a waste.

Raina floated in, all preppy-like – outfit, shoes, hairdo – a choir-singin’ preacher’s daughter fo sure.

Big Annie, watching in the hall, strolled in. Said, “Ain’t nobody comin.’”

Raina pulled out a spliff. “Got it from Lucinda. She go to Purchase. Anyone gotta light?”

Wheezie lit it with a pink Bic.

We passed it around. Dragged deep. Blew smoke out the window.

We wuz gettin’ ready for Friday afternoon. Me, watchin’ my violent retard brother. Debbie, dancin’ at the titty club. Annie, being cursed out by her crackhead mother. And Raina, bein’ sexed by her daddy.

Looked out the window.

Walking so slow it’d make me hurt. Jehovah Witnesses for sure.

Inevitable bell-ring.

Years past, I’d be pissed. Tell them proselytizin’ was a sin. No better than the street preacher slash schizophrenic in the city.

Went to open the door.

“G’mornin’, sir,” said one. Always polite.

“Lemme stop ya,” I said nice-like. I pointed to the mezuzah on the door jamb. “You see this?” Puzzled looks.

“It’s a mezuzah. Announces we’re Jewish. And I’m not interested.”

One tried to hand me a pamphlet which I refused.

Heard “Have a blessed day” as I shut the door.

“Robbie, what kinda life are you living?”

My mother, nagging me. Again.

“You come home when you please. Like today. Six thirty in the morning. I heard you sneaking in.”

“I was down at the beach watching the birds. Around dawn is best.”

“I know what kinda wildlife you were watching. And it ain’t that kind.”

“C’mon, Ma. I’ll get a steady job. I’ll go back to Nassau. I promise.”

“You damn well better or you’re out on your own. See how you like it then.”

“Jesus, Ma. Gimme a break.”

“If you’re gonna be wild, live your own life.”

Before breakfast, as the Torah commanded, he filled the feeders and the suet cages. He also rinsed and refilled the birdbath.

For his blue jays, cardinals and red-headed flickers, he tossed out handfuls of unshelled peanuts. His squirrels, whom he collectively named “Bubba,” came for them too. One neighbor, who’d hated squirrels and trapped and released them miles away, was probably turning over in his grave.

He chuckled when he saw how portly his Bubbas appeared in profile. Sometimes a squirrel skittered up close. Then, he’d hand-feed them a peanut.

His wildlife made his life more tamed and less desolate.

“You’re gonna be a doctor, a lawyer, someone who’ll make a difference,” my father once said.

Got hooked on heroin. Flunked out of Columbia. Bummed around, living day-to-day with Tasha, another smack-head.

Once, when I pleaded for money, my father said, “You’re dead to me,” and walked away.

I shoulda noticed the deterioration. Shoulda done something. But, you know: drugs and alcohol plus unprotected sex plus compromised immune system equals … well, equals death.

My father came to the hospice. I didn’t expect him. He said, “Your mother couldn’t see you like this.”

He sits next to me. Together we weep.

Though multilingual, Ruth could be excused her babyisms. Into her nineties, she was well-versed in politics and economics, and read the Times cover-to-cover every day.

She re-met Hans, my wife’s now-deceased father, when she came to the states more than 70 years ago. They had two girls.

Ruth and Walter attended boarding school in Lausanne, then lost touch. Walter’s escape from Germany was grueling, and affected his future health. He was devoted to his parents and remained a bachelor.

They rekindled their relationship after Hans’s death. Soon after, they married.

Supposedly, he waited for her because he’d always loved her.

Joey Quinn had it made. A full ride next year at State. Dating the head cheerleader. Doting, generous parents.

But during the playoffs, he tore up his knee. He knocked up Tracy-Ann on her maiden voyage. And his father and mother began acrimonious divorce proceedings.

College was out. His coach got him a job with the school’s maintenance crew so he’d provide for Tracy-Ann and their future bundle of joy.

Joey played the lottery. And drank. Despite huge odds, his numbers hit two weeks in a row.

Joey Quinn had it made. Until, while mowing, he was hit by lightning.

I hated that bitch. Whenever I walked past, Miss High-and-mighty-fat-ass in her five-dollar garden chair’d spit and call me a puta, a whore. She don’t know nothin’. She don’t walk in my heels.

So what if I make somethin’ extra when Angel’s out pullin’ a job. I got more than one mouth to feed.

I stashed the benjie and just got out of the shower when Angel walked in. Phew … I don’t need no drama.

He was all hot, sweaty and throbbing … just like I like. After, he fell right asleep.

That’s when I took his 9 and went downstairs.

A full moon was rising. Romy and Davida were out on the beach, kissing. Davida pulled the blanket around them, said, “Oh, Romy … I love you so much.”

They usually just made out, maybe a bit more. This time felt different. Romy slipped his hand under her skirt. Part of her wanted to stop him, but she couldn’t. And didn’t. She wanted, needed him inside.

He lifted up, slipped off his shorts, maneuvered on top.

He was throbbing. She was so wet. She guided him inside.

“Don’t hurt me,” was all she gasped, as a rogue wave swept them away.

Names often become self-fulfilling prophecies. Call a dog Brutus, Hunter, Killer. See what happens.

Elijah, however, was the worst son-of-a-bitch in the school. He dealt drugs. Was a sexual abuser, accused of assault, arson, burglary, carrying a loaded gun. You name it.

But he was a special ed kid with an activist mama and a smooth-talking lawyer. Nobody had the stones to challenge them.

He was found face-down in a pool of blood, his teeth knocked out and black and blue all over. An autopsy determined multiple-system failure.

There were 2000 relieved suspects, but a “rigorous” investigation found nobody responsible.

Jonah lay thrashing in bed. Jesus Christ, I’m sixty-eight, he thought. Where’s the time gone? And what do I have to show for it?

His brother’s dead. His dog was dead. He’s such a prick to his wife so she’s hardly around. Calls to his kids went to voicemail.

Maybe I’ll just fuckin’ end it all. Just take out the shotgun and …

But I have my health. Many others are worse off. I’m still out riding my bike. Walking. Writing. And I’ve got a couple of long-time friends.

Maybe things aren’t so bad.

Maybe I’ll put it off.

This time.

Victor was accused of slaughtering his four-year-old twin daughters. They had DNA and a deathbed statement from his live-in girlfriend.

They wanted to fry his ass real bad. They went after his character, his friends, even his diabetic mother. His juvie record somehow got divulged. While imprisoned eight months waiting for trial, an inmate’s shank narrowly missed an artery.

Victor claimed he was innocent despite a confession he insisted was coerced.

His conviction was overturned due to gross prosecutorial misconduct.

No one knew he had a more murderous identical twin brother.

When Victor’s brother was found, both were eradicated.

Frank walked into the school. Couldn’t help noticing their stares. Wanted to scream “What the fuck y’all lookin’ at?” but didn’t want to attract more attention. He knew their trepidation.

He’d lost it during eighth period class. Cursed, ranted. Threw a chair through a window. His ninth-graders went fleeing. He was subdued and removed by EMTs, then hospitalized for thirty days, his plan’s limit.

He could taste the bile bubbling up. The chaos and clamor seemed deafening. He took several deep breaths. I can do this he thought.

“Hey, Teach.” It was Rodney, his favorite.

They fist-bumped, smiled.

Frank was back.

I’ve been always haunted by my mother’s admonition.

While my friends jumped the brook, I searched for the narrowest place. While my friends rode their bikes with abandon, I stayed to the right and always looked before I crossed. While my friends jumped off the dock in their shorts, I claimed that I didn’t know how to swim, though I did.

They called me names – 1950s equivalents of wuss or pansy or pussy.

One died driving drunk at seventeen. One waited too long to see a cardiologist. One put a shotgun in his mouth.

Who’s the pussy now, fuck heads?

Until recently, I cleaned our gutters every November. But Japanese maples now wait until New Year’s to shed their leaves.

I feared damaging the slate roof so I’d place our 36-foot extension ladder on our rear patio and pull it up with the rope pulley. I’d slide it sideways to move it, keeping clear of the windows, making sure of firm footing.

My doubled latex gloves would be shredded halfway through. I had to finish quickly before my fingers were frozen.

Once, my fingers were becoming numb. I stopped mid-job.

That one atypical day, my compulsivity did not overcome.

Joey and Marcelin were on Ocean Parkway, headed to the hospital in Bay Shore to visit Ozzie who was in intensive care.

Dense fog enclosed them but Joey kept the needle around 90.

Marcelin shouted, “Slow down, for Chrissakes. You’ll get us killed.”

Joey replied, “Fuck you, man. I know what I’m doin’. I ain’t using brights. I’m trackin’ the broken line right down the hood. Just like a fuckin’ airplane.”

A patch of rough concrete. Ba-dum ba-dum ba-DUM. The Camaro started to fishtail. Joey fought for control. But he lost.

They got to visit Ozzie … on the other side.

I always held my sons’ hands when crossing. Yelled at them to be careful. Never left them alone.

Stevie, my kindergartner, was on the front porch, sipping Bosco out of a straw. His older brother asked, “You like it, squirt?” and slapped the glass upwards. The straw shot way up Stevie’s nose. Stevie started bleeding and writhing.

I remember screaming, “Call an ambulance!” Everything else was a blur.

Stevie suffered brain damage. Was never right afterwards. Walked with a shuffle. Slurred his speech. Couldn’t read. Was ridiculed. Refused to attend school.

Stevie’s forty-two now. Who’s going to keep him safe?

Jesse Pugh sat on the front porch, Remington on his lap. He wasn’t about to let any Mexicans breach his perimeter.

“It’s after two. Whyn’t’ya get inside!” Emma, so damn annoying.

“I don’t want none of them fuckin’ wetbacks …”

“Oh stop your foolishness and come to bed.”

He’s gettin’ stupider, she thought. And it ain’t safe, with Sheila sneaking out to see Alejandro.

Leaves rustling. Could be something. He raised the rifle. Scanned through the night-vision scope. Saw a figure approaching. Pulled the trigger. It didn’t fire.

“Hey Dad. What’r’ya still doing up?”

He’d forgotten to click off the safety.

Before leaving, Marcia counted her four necessities: keys, wallet, lipstick and pepper spray. When she walked, she cradled the canister in her palm. She’d be ready for any threat.

Marcia was returning home from her six-hour stint bartending at McGilligan’s, her tips wadded up in her push-up. She felt prickles on her skin; sensed she was being followed.

She crossed the street, checked her reflection in a store window and looked back. There was some guy there, but he looked harmless – no hoodie, no pants hanging low. He turned and smiled. She relaxed.

Until she saw the glint of steel.

Nadia always carried a pack of Trojans. She could never trust boys to have one. Her mantra, after her sister Helena got pregnant, was “use it or I refuse it.”

With Robbie it was a different. He was older, more experienced. She ached to feel him naked inside her. But he was always saying, “No way. I don’t want no kid tying me down.”

After finishing a joint in the back seat of his ten-year-old Escalade, they were soon heavily into it. “Please, Robbie. No rubber this time.”

“Sorry baby … as you always said, ‘use it or I refuse it’.”

Dear President Obama:

I have contacted over a dozen government agencies but none has responded. I am turning to you, sir, to correct a horrible wrong.

I am a textile chemist for the company that produces nylon webbing for most automotive and airline seat belts. We have been using a formula that saves approximately a quarter per foot. Replicatable testing has shown that over time, these savings will result in molecular breakdown and sudden catastrophic breakage.

My supervisors and company officers have ignored my warnings.

You can reach me at the email address above. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

Willie was throwing sand. Again.

“Hey! Cut the crap! You’re gonna hurt somebody!” his father yelled, then went back to chatting up Janie’s mom.

Several minutes passed. “Hey, Sy … look at your son …” she pointed, got up and ran to the sandbox. Janie, rubbing her eyes, started bawling.

“Don’t rub. Lemme take a look.”

Janie’s eyes were ugly red. She had sand particles on her face, on her lips, in her hair.

She got her cell phone. Called 9-1-1. “I need an ambulance, and the police.”

Then, to Sy: You’re an unfit father and you’re worthless. Just like your fuckin’ kid.

The path through the woods saved Cheryl-Ann ten minutes walking to school.

Danny and Bear were stubbing out stolen Marlboros when they spotted her.

“Look who’s comin’ this way,” said Danny. “I bet you wanna do ’er.”

Bear had a crush on Cheryl-Ann since forever. But he was big, dumb and gawky and he knew it. And nobody let him forget it.

They grabbed Cheryl-Ann next to the big oaks where they’d be out of sight.

But ol’ man Cushing, with his Remington, was watching the grove. He got off two quick shots as Cheryl-Ann screamed.

Damn varmints, he thought.

I wanted to avoid traffic. A few minutes made a difference.

Outside the school’s gate, a young Chasid emerged from a Mitzvah Mobile, bad-teeth smiled. “You Jewish?” – “Jewish” being one syllable.

This time I responded.

“Tefillin?” For me, his challenge. I avoided shul, even on holidays.

“I’m Menachem.” He led me into the decked-out camper.

He wrapped my arm and head with leather straps attached to black boxes; I repeated prayers he’d intoned.

We shook hands; I slipped a five into the tzedakah box.

On WCBS I heard an illegally-driven gasoline trucked exploded on the parkway. I could’ve been there.

Heading to work on my motorcycle. Bumper-to-bumper traffic. Always so freakin’ annoying.

Decided to ride between the lanes. Scanned ahead. All cars where they should be.

Accelerated. Doing twenty-five weaving through. Making good time. Ahead, a car changing lanes. Slowed down to a crawl. Let it happen. Didn’t want to antagonize drivers. Didn’t want to become their target.

Afternoons were different. Too many crazed people rushing someplace. Too many people drunk or stoned. Too much danger. Too much risk.

Sometimes the power felt like a video game – finding the best path through the scrum.

Until that Mercedes slammed into me.

Sometimes I’m so stubborn. Sometimes I’m so spiteful I cannot relent.

Like tonight. After the kids were asleep, after the late news, we’d gotten into some kind of bullshit fight. Why? Who the fuck knows.

The hurtful, cutting words kept being spat out. All the hot buttons were being pressed.

Eventually, the maelstrom burned itself out.

We lay in bed exhausted, back-to-back, never touching. Hypervigilant, I could sense her every move.

I felt her hand reach out, like a tendril. I inched further to my side.

I wanted to keep her far away.

I wanted so badly to hold her.

The first time I saw her I wanted her.

But I was married.

I wasn’t the carousing type. I believed in trust and honesty.

But the heart wants what it wants.

I loved her from afar. I looked in stealthily when I walked by her classroom.

I switched to teaching math. We were now in the same department.

I got up the nerve to talk to her. We exchanged lesson plans. We became close.

After many years, at a retirement dinner, we had both imbibed too much, and we confessed our mutual attraction.

I almost walked her to her car.

Hard-headed, foul-mouthed Billy. He was fun to be around, if you were on his good side, with his jokes, his dirty language, and his stories.

But sometimes he turned nasty. He’d punch us on our arms, sometimes elsewhere. That’s when you said your mother wanted you home. And he’d curse at you as you took off.

One day, Billy was leading us through the swamp towards the lake, our sneakers caked with mud. He shouted, “C’mon you fuckin’ slowpokes!”

And then he rushed ahead.

Stepped into a bog.

Started sinking.

“Get me out of here you bastards!”

We just watched.

It was Robby Northwell who was accused of knocking down mailboxes, egging Pastor Davis’s home, stealing stop signs up on Larkspur Pike, breaking windows at Milthrop Elementary – all the havoc perpetrated by Jimmy Clooney, Tully Maxwell and crew.

In those years before computers, web searches and shared databases, Jimmy figured he needed only a made-up name and a believable alibi if the cops came a-callin’.

As his degenerate mischief-making accelerated, Jimmy’s imaginary patsies exculpated him through college and law school – even after he bamboozled his way into a partnership at Wilder and Shepherd.

And then Jimmy ran for state assembly.

No way Artie Romano could back out of his contract to kill Wozniak. He had cased Herlihy’s, where Wozniak did his drinking. He watched guys slipping out back to smoke or take a piss. The disco’s thumping music next door would mask his pumping a couple of .32s into Wozniak’s belly, not killing him right off, but making him suffer long and hard until he died in a puddle of urine behind the dumpster.

That’s what the contract called for.

But salvation had snuck up on him through that persistent pain-in-the-ass Father Alessandro.

And this time killing didn’t seem right.

“But I want to have my baby,” Carolina insisted.

“You’re only fifteen,” Norma Watkins said. “You don’t know what you want. You’re gonna ruin your life … just like I ruined mine when you got born.”

As Carolina’s tears welled up, Norma realized what she’d said. “No baby … I didn’t mean it. You were the best thing ...” But Carolina had fled to her room. Their single-wide shook as she slammed the door.

Thirty years old and already bone-weary, Norma peered into her future and saw no relief.

Carolina cuddled the teddy that Carlos won at the fair and saw only blessings.

Mama called us her twin idiots. Doyle and I would crash our bikes on purpose. Race screaming through the woods. Chase wild animals … plus that one time with a skunk.

We were on a first-name basis at Urgent Care.

Mama’d say, “Boys’ll be boys,” with a faint hint of pride.

Then we got our licenses.

Doyle swerved into a ditch. Flipped over. Car exploded. Never had a chance.

The road’d been dry.

I should’ve been with him. Could’ve done something. But I’d’ve been dead, too.

Now I’m in rehab. They say I’m doing okay.

But part of me is gone.

In ninth grade, Bobby and I hung out together. He taught me how to steal 45s from Kresge’s. We played ping-pong but I was afraid to win. He once stuffed a cat in a bag and flung it off the dock. I watched but couldn’t say anything.

Bobby took me out on his boat. We stole a gas can off a yacht. A groundskeeper, who’d traced the registration through his employer, a federal judge, was already in my house when I got home.

Bobby must’ve ratted me out.

My parents forbade me from seeing Bobby again.

I was so relieved.

Even at six or seven Laurie knew what she was doing. Not consciously, but she knew. We’d visit, she’d cry “Uncle Frank” and jump into my arms. Wearing short dresses and short-shorts, she’d inevitably rub against my crotch.

I couldn’t help getting aroused.

I told my wife. She said it was my imagination.

I tried warning my brother, without sounding like a perv. He lambasted me.

As Laurie grew older, it got worse. I thwarted her every time.

At her wedding, she hugged me really close and whispered, “You know, Uncle Frank … I always wanted you to be my first.”

Luis was gentle and so pretty. I loved him. I don’t know why they murdered him.

Maybe to send a message: faggot Latinos deserve to die. They should’ve come after me. Luis was an innocent.

They surrounded him and taunted him and beat him to death. This I found out. I know who they were. I’m gonna find them. I’m gonna pick them off one-by-one like stinking rats with triple-aught buckshot. Agonizing yet untraceable.

Querida begged me not to. “Revenge won’t bring my baby back.”

But in Deuteronomy it says, “Vengeance is mine, and recompense.”

I’ve always been a believer.

Energized by an encounter weekend, I dragged myself to a mixer at the temple.

Karen and I hit it off, hot and heavy. That fall, she’d begin commuting to college while I was starting a new teaching job.

Eventually, our relationship fizzled.

On Christmas Eve, forty years later, she telephoned. She sounded morose and unhinged. She claimed she’d been successful professionally, but believed I’d ruined her life. She accused me of calling her a bitch when we broke up, which spiraled her into despair.

I have no memory of that ever happening.

I told her to never call me again.

Long dark hair. Exotic-looking. Drop-dead gorgeous. She was sitting alone.

Why not?

“Hi, I’m Lenny. I guess it’s hard being beautiful.”

She glanced at me. “Yeah. The guys are intimidated and the girls, resentful.”

We got to talking. I nodded, smiled, uh-huh’ed as Martiza prattled on.

We dated a few times. A movie, a pizza, a blues-rock festival in the gym.

Then: “You know, Lenny … I want something more.”

She saw no upside.

I saw nothing inside.

The next time I saw her, she was the centerfold in a porno magazine.

I hope she got what she was looking for.

Felt a weight slide into my cargo pants pocket. Looked around. Several men scurrying away.

Patted my pocket. A gun. What the fuck? Hefty – like a Glock. I’ve held some in my time.

Front of the line. Didn’t want to attract attention. Beckoned over a Port Authority sergeant. Went to shake his hand. Didn’t let go.

Held his gaze, whispered, “There’s a gun in my pocket. It’s not mine.”

He considered, then nodded.

“Could be booby-trapped. Lead me away.”

He grasped my arm, spoke “8-11G” into his walkie-talkie.

Static, then “Take him to control.”

…

I’m black.

And I’m still alive.

Joe Whelan always longed to sleep under the canopy of stars, on a clear moonless night, ever since his dad pulled the Dodge over on a rural road off I-80, told his kids to step outside, switched off the headlights, and said, “Look up.”

He lay on a bluff, for the 360° view. Near him, the cliff dropped off precipitously.

And the howls were growing louder.

He couldn’t outrun wolves. There’d be no escape.

He’d always been good at mimicking. So he started to howl back.

There was silence.

Until he heard their muted footfalls.

And his own screams.

Cecily Duran hated cats. She hated their slinky, sneaky, haughty ways. She especially hated Claudius, whom her girlfriend Emma named after the murderer in Hamlet.

“I can’t take it, Em. The hair all over the place and that damn cat’s attitude …”

“What’re you saying, Cee? You don’t want me anymore?”

“You know I love you. But look at him. He’s leering at me, mocking me.”

“It’s all in your head. Now come back to bed.”

They kissed, embraced.

As they were getting into it, Claudius pounced, embedding his nails into Cecily’s cheeks.

Then he scampered away, to lick his paws.

– Ezekiel 25:17: And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I [am] the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

For over forty years the old man had slept with his ragged Gund bear and wanted it buried with him. But orthodox practices proscribed anything but a shroud in the plain pine box.

“Who could it hurt?” he asked when he made his wife promise to slip in the bear when she “checked” his body before burial.

“What if you outlive me?”

“Then I’ll ask one of the kids. They’ll understand.”

She knew how much comfort the bear had given him. So, at the cemetery, the coffin was opened, and his wife did as he’d requested.

Even God would understand.

Whenever Mama slammed the closet door in his face, whenever the steel door slammed in juvie, whenever the bars clanged shut in the joint, Dukie Williams’d tear up. He just couldn’t help it.

But nobody in his right mind ever hassled him, not after he shivved the faggot who taunted him one time too many. Homo thug had it coming. Did everyone a favor.

Dukie’d lie on his bunk sobbing into his pillow. Every day, every night. The bulls left him alone. The shrink couldn’t do nuthin’.

Until he resolved to turn stone cold.

Then he was dangerous.

For real.

After two am.

Toohey and Salvio sittin out back suckin on a spliff.

Black Escalade squealed to a stop. Rear door flew open. Body dumped out. Car peeled away.

“Sal … let’s take a look.”

“I don’t wanna see nuthin.”

“Waddya afraid of?”

“Maybe they saw us. If they did …”

“Asshole … we wuz way back there.”

Toohey stared down at the body. All bloodied and beaten. “Holy shit. It’s ol man Marillo … the pizza guy.”

“Cmon, Toohey. Let’s get outa here.”

“Awright, awright.”

“I wonder what the fuck he did.”

“Don’t matter, Sal. Don’t care. Nobody knows nuthin.”

Nobody ever did.

Carl and his wife decided early on to spend everything they earned on their children. They both worked two low-paying jobs, never went on vacations, never squandered money on luxuries.

The parents avoided drinking and carousing, there was little drama with the children, no troublesome conflicts, no drugs, no smoking … but there was a lot of love and respect.

Their eldest is now an executive for a multinational corporation, their middle son is a sheet metal worker and a union member, and they’re getting ready to send their daughter off to college.

No dysfunction. No strife.

And that’s the story.

The operation was successful.

His kids, his wife, his parents, his in-laws, his boss, his underlings, his rabbi, his banker, his creditors, his dealer, his bookie, his loan shark, his mistress … all mercifully silenced.

But with magnificent adaptation, his mutinous body – his whole being – became attuned to the screech of the subways, the thrum of midtown traffic, the hum of his luxury sedan – even the previously indistinct whirr of air conditioning.

Nails on a chalk board. Existential torture.

Suppressing the cacophony would require experimental surgery. And no one would agree to performing that.

He’d find a way.

He had to.

The clowns are parading by.

Again.

Giants and midgets. Fat ones and bulimics.

Beckoning and hostile, overly-giddy and overwhelmingly sad.

Wearing misshapen hats atop bald shiny heads.

Rainbow wigs and wisps of raspberry frizz.

Eyes, noses, cheeks and mouths – painstakingly painted and powdered.

Some pretend to ignore me.

Others eye me surreptitiously, malevolently.

I know I’m being judged.

I know they’re waiting, waiting for me to make the first move.

I sit stock still, mocking their anticipation.

I hide my chortling by hocking up a loogie.

I hide my eyes behind tinted glasses.

I hide my uzi under my vest.

Ed Bialecki and his cronies were in their usual corner at Tommy’s, finishing their fifth pitcher, waiting for their wives to finish their Thursday afternoon bingo game at Saint Stanislaus.

“Ever wonder what your wife’d do if she hit the jackpot?” Boz, always with the questions.

“Nah,” Ed said. “What are the chances? Even if she did, Iris’d hand over the money to me.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“C’mon … it’s who we are.”

After their next pitcher, their wives showed up, all excited … all except Iris. Boz’s wife announced, “Iris won four thousand dollars!”

“And … she’s not coming home.”

Billy-boy always seemed to be off. Not in a bad way, but just a bit off.

Last week, we were in Flannery’s and he asked us to puhleeze stop calling him Billy-boy. “C’mon guys. I’ve had enough. It’s Will – or William – from now on … okay?”

We all laughed. We were all in our seventies, and we’d been calling him Billy-boy forever.

“You guys’ll be sorry. It’s a matter of respect.”

“Respect … ooooh.” Charlie, our own pot stirrer.

Today, Billy-boy walked in, shouted, “You fuckin’ guys!” and yanked a grenade out from his jacket pocket.

And then pulled out the ring.

Earl Blackwell was a retired city cop from up north. Earl and Mary embraced their country-style life in Edgewater made easier by his pension and his paycheck.

Instead of locking up gang-bangers and crack whores, he cruised around in an eight-year-old Crown Vic knocking on someone’s door if their dog was loose, stopping at Central High every afternoon to keep things calm, sitting on the juke joints each night to stop drunk driving. He’d even call a cab.

But after nine-year-old Terrence Miles darted into the street all hell broke loose.

Some swore Earl could’ve avoided it.

Some claimed otherwise.

I loved watching The Lone Ranger on Saturdays, right after The Big Top. My father even bought me a double-holster cowboy belt like his, much to my mother’s consternation.

At ComicCon, the Lone Ranger, in white hat, black mask and silver six-guns strolled alongside Tonto, with his leather boho headband and fringed deerskin jacket. They often paused to pose for photographs.

“Who are they, Grandpa?”

I explained that the Lone Ranger was my childhood idol when I was his age.

“Whyn’t’ya take a picture with them?”

“Sure … why not.”

He snapped several shots with my phone.

I couldn’t stop smiling.

Whenever shit happened in Elksville – bar fight, break-in, beat-down – Sheriff Koenig headed out to Errol Coggin’s hovel set way off route 181.

“Your sons … where wuz they last night?”

“Fuck if I know. They come ’n’ they go.”

“Why ain’t you askin why?”

“What’s that gotta do with me? With anythin?”

“Means you know somethin. You ain’t being honest.”

“I had it with dem boys. Arrest ’em. Shoot ’em. I don’t give a fuck.”

“Maybe I will. Maybe I will.”

The sheriff strode to his cruiser, opened his trunk, lifted out his Mossberg.

It was time to do some hunting.

Every morning at five, Willie dragged himself into the meat-cutting room at the wholesale butcher.

By six, he was chilled to the bone, despite longjohns and his thermal-lined hoodies, despite wool socks and his down-filled vest. Nothing could keep him warm.

Summertime, he got some respite during a smoke break. But breaking a sweat, then going back in, felt like suicide.

“C’mon Willie,” said his foreman, “either you work or you’re gone.”

“I can’t take this shit anymore, man.”

“So why doncha just fuckin’ quit?”

“I owe people money. And I’d rather risk freezing to death then getting gut shot.”

I watch my grandsons running around with their friends, shirttails hanging out, chasing, teasing, carrying on.

There’s one boy in a zipped-up parka standing near a bitter-looking woman who’s bundled in a full-length Persian lamb coat. Probably his bubbe, his grandmother.

I’ve noticed him before. He’s timid, almost anemic-looking. Once he started climbing up the slide. The woman squawked “Get off there! You’re gonna kill yourself!”

The startled boys stopped to stare, then ran off.

Perhaps his ima and abba were home engaging in sexual relations. On Shabbos afternoon it’s a mitzvah.

But this bubbe was no gift from God.

Raphael’s mother was marrying his soccer coach. Hilda and Mariana were bubbling with joy but Raphael was wary. He’d sometimes seen Enrique be joyless and cruel.

“Mami … he’s no good for you,” Raphael once tried to warn her, but she slapped his face and immediately felt sorry.

“You kids need a father and …” and Mami needed … someone.

In confessional, Father Sal told Raphael that nothing was perfect … that he’d have to man up and trust God to create a place where love could flourish.

After the first time Enrique slapped his mother, Raphael vowed to help God wreak his vengeance.

Olivia was a vivacious redhead, smart and sassy.

She was everything Joey wanted and the sex was great – she was ready and eager anywhere, anytime – even against the dumpster behind O’Flannery’s.

But when they were apart he received countless texts and voicemails: “Joey I miss you so much … I need to see you.”

After she strode into his office and waited outside his gym, he tried to break it off.

“But Joey … can’t you make a place in your life for me?”

“I’m sorry Liv … you’ve gotta stop stalking me.”

“I’m warning you, Joey … you’ll be sorry.”

“I am … already.”

“Joseph, I haven’t eaten all day. So choose one already – the cheese omelet, the cheeseburger, the salmon, the salmon burger – I don’t care which.”

“They’re so many choices.”

“It’s only a goddamn diner. It’s not like it’s your last meal.”

“But it might be.”

“For cryin’ out loud. Why are you so maudlin?”

“You married me. You know what I was like.”

“Okay … how about eeny meeny miny moe?”

“That’s so childish.”

“And you sitting here making me wait isn’t?”

“I can’t help it.”

“You want me to decide?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“So what would do you have in mind?”

My brother really knew how to play me.

I’d be talking about something important, and he’d slightly raise his fingers. Or he’d caress-tap my arm with an expectant look. I’d stop talking and he’d continue.

Evidently, my concerns weren’t subjects he’d wish to entertain –

Consequential issues, like our jobs, our parents. About their aging – and our aging. Our imperfect children. Physical and mental health problems – especially mental.

Our conversations were at his convenience, for he wouldn’t and couldn’t listen, especially when he was off his meds.

I wish he’d confided in me.

There are many things I wish I’d said.

Car-washing on a hot Sunday afternoon.

Our two grandsons, who’d slept over, were “helping.”

After rinsing off the top of the Odyssey, I “accidentally” sprayed Davie, the eleven-year-old. He stared up at me with a “so you wanna mess around?” look.

“Oh … I’m so sorry,” I said.

Jacob, the eight-year-old, had scrubbed the rims. “Hey Papa … can I rinse ’em off?”

I passed him the hose, and Jacob turned it on his older brother.

Davie rushed him and grabbed the hose. It was Jacob’s turn for a soaking … and then mine.

Worth much more than fifteen bucks at the Super-Shine.

The officer, in an unmarked Crown Vic, grill lights flashing, pulled me over.

Me? I was on my bike.

He said I made a dangerous turn.

I’d thoroughly studied Effective Cycling. I’d ridden tens of thousands of miles. I explained that I was turning left from the safest position at the T-intersection, between the right-turn lane and the left.

He said I should’ve stayed to the right.

I didn’t argue he was spouting nonsense. I just said, “Okay, officer,” then pedaled away.

I continued to make the safest turn, but now I turn right.

My route is smoother that way.

My stuffed Gund bear, Moe, was insisting that he was real, and my daughter, then five or so, wasn’t. She got so frustrated that she tried to bite off his nose.

Now, her son Eli, about the same age, on a sleep-over, doesn’t bother arguing with my long-in-the-tooth, threadbare Moe. He just punches him, grabs him, throws him on the floor, stomps on him. Perhaps he has better coping skills.

I say, “Hold it. Take it easy. You’re gonna hurt him.”

He just smiles at me, with an evil, satisfied, almost demonic look … and then laughs.

Boys will be boys.

Early in our marriage, I told my wife I thought she was manipulating me. And I didn’t like it.

She said, “Well I’m not trying to manipulate you.”

I said, “Maybe you don’t mean to, but the things you say and the way you say them … they do make me feel like I am being manipulated.”

“Well, that’s what you think …” getting louder, more intense.

“You see, that’s what I’m saying. How can I argue when you’re this way?”

“This is me. It’s the way I am.”

“Yeah, I know. But I still can’t help feeling the way I do.”

Today, sitting through a fifty-minute eulogy. Interminable and exhausting.

After I die, eulogies will be limited to 100 words. The funnier the better. The more deprecating, the more insulting, the more truth-telling, the better.

“He was beloved by all …” Bullshit! Some people must’ve hated my guts. The guy in the SUV I gave the finger to. The lady at Speedway I called a “slow sack of shit.” The obliviot father on the bike path who I rightly labeled “a negligent asshole.”

So if you’re brave enough, count your words and expect the heavenly hook at 100.

You have been warned.

Living large implies having a luxurious lifestyle.

For me, living large means being heavyset, seeing the dreaded word “obese” on my medical records.

Mom called me pleasantly plump. Dad called me tubbish, from tub of shit. In Macy’s I was husky or portly. In school I was fatso, flabby or lard-ass. In the mirror, I see a big fat fuck.

I dropped tonnage when I was running. One summer I even hit the “healthy” range on the weight chart. Now, I bicycle for miles or walk long distances.

And, I’ve maintained my weight despite the perfidiousness of our digital scale.

“You’re such a pain in the ass,” she snarled at Jebediah, squirming in his highchair, grabbing for anything in reach. This time it was the frypan, sizzling with grease.

“You want this? You fucking want this?”

She yanked Jebediah’s hand and forced it against the pan. A moment passed, the smell of burning flesh. Then the scream. The convulsing in the chair. The wailing. The sobbing. The tears.

“Now stop your sniveling,” she sneered. “And next time you be sure to sit quietly.”

Seventy years later, Jebediah’s wrinkled skin and liver spots still failed to hide the ugly, discolored scar.

After six weeks in the ICU, he was barely lucid, barely alive.

Hooked up to tubes and sensors. Necrotic lower intestine. Skin breaking down. Multiple system failure. Blood pressure crashing. MRSA on his lips. Dialysis would kill him. Not having dialysis would kill him.

He’d always said he’d never wanted it to end this way.

It was enough.

It was time.

Morphine drip started. Sedative administered. Respirator switched off.

Thought, speech and actions are the garments of the soul.

It was time for the soul to depart, leaving the body – the empty shell – behind.

And so it came to pass.

I’ve done our monthly bill-paying for almost half a century. For many years I’ve used a spreadsheet I’d constructed and refined.

But lately, I’ve made mistakes online –the wrong Chase account debited or wrong payment or transfer date – even after obsessively checking my computer entries.

I was afraid I was losing it.

But then I realized that I rarely made spreadsheet-based dollar amount errors. Rather, there was something inherently wrong with Chase’s web-page usability, especially involving bill-paying and transfers.

I tried to not sound like an old fool when I called Chase. The representative said she’d pass on my comments.

Harold could not remember the last time he felt happy. And he realized he lived in symbiosis with his wife’s emotions.

People called Muriel “the farbissiner.” She was a sullen, embittered complainer and Harold wondered what he’d ever seen in her besides the desultory blow jobs in the back seat of his second-hand Camaro.

To any of Harold’s “Why don’t you’s,” her responses were “Oh really,” or “Give me a break,” or “Not that, again.”

Only when Dana, and four years later, Eli, were born, did Harold feel a sense of elation, but it came more from relief than blessedness.

What does Harold want from me? I gave him his two children, burped them, fed them, washed their clothes, went to their concerts, to their dance recitals. I froze my ass off at Sunday afternoon soccer matches. I did what I was supposed to.

My parents were Holocaust survivors who were so gloomy and miserable I wonder how they ever woke up to work in father’s locksmith shop.

And should I mention “missing” my concerts, my graduations, even most of my wedding?

Harold wants me to be happy, so he’ll be happy. Well, fuck happy. I’m not built that way.

I told Bobby last night, “I’m sorry … I need more than this.”

Don’t get me wrong. Our sex was good, sometimes great. But Bobby’s as shallow as a mud puddle.

An ASPCA Mobil Adoption center was parked near Petco at Union Square. I needed to go in.

In a cage was a charcoal gray Cairn terrier, a two-year-old who I swore smiled at me. I coochie-cooed with him, filled out the papers, bought the leash and collar. All of a sudden, we were a family.

When Scruffy jumps on my bed to snuggle, our connection feels profound.

I feel whole.

I’ve got it made. Six-figure salary. House in Great Neck. Two point two kids if you count the Chihuahua.

My father sometimes dropped by, always without my mother. He’d have wine with dinner, then maybe some bourbon. I couldn’t let him drive home, so he’d stay over, sometimes for another night.

Dad’d complain about his clients, about politics, about the “goddamn world going to hell in a handbasket.” But never one bad word about the farbissiner.

My wife would say, “Eli … he’s got to go. He’s such a downer.”

I’m so glad I escaped from their resentments and their craziness.

My father rarely visited, and, thankfully, never with the farbissiner. Nothing satisfied her – whom I was seeing, my teaching high school English, taking pilates, tutoring kids at the JCC. But Dad accepted me, unconditionally.

I’d picked up Friday night takeout: soup, roast chicken, kugel, rugelach for dessert – foods he loved. He was so happy to be here, especially when he met Scruffy.

I caught Dad passing scraps under the table. “Da-ad,” I warned, but he chuckled, saying, “A little chicken’s not gonna hurt him.”

Later, he fell asleep on the couch, with Scruffy in his arms.

I saw his tears.

He awakens with a start. Panicked. Panting.

4:02 on the clock radio.

Who’s gonna write my story? he howls from within.

Who’s gonna write my narrative?

4:03, then 4:04.

He closes his eyes

His breathing slows. His heart is no longer racing.

He recalls the bios he’s written to accompany anthology submissions. So much like meeting someone for the first time. So chit-chatty and bright. So inane.

What does he really feel strongly about? What does he love and what does he abhor? How does his mind work?

Who is he?

He’ll try answering it … in twenty-five words or less.

You’d think that by almost age 72, I’d learn to stop sweating the small stuff.

We’re having work done on our house. At 5:12 in the morning, I woke up with a start to realize that I hadn’t noticed any “Andersen” label on our new windows, still wrapped in plastic, that I had lugged into the garage.

I lay tossing and turning, kicking off blankets, fluffing pillows, tuning my ear-plugged radio to the sports stations and WBAI. I finally roused myself and shuffled downstairs.

I was wrong. They were Andersens.

I lumbered upstairs.

But I still couldn’t fall back asleep.

Early on a wintry Thursday evening, 1974 …

I was in Manhattan, fulfilling my in-service Human Relations requirement for licensing along with several hundred equally-as-unwilling participants.

A physical education teacher who loved dance had given me two Lincoln Center ballet tickets. But I was exhausted and just wanted to subway home.

A couple, slightly more than just buddy-buddy, were sitting in front of me.

I tapped the guy on the shoulder, gave him the tickets and said, “Why’n’t you two go … and enjoy yourselves.

I’ve always wondered if the tickets were a catalyst for a loving future together.

And I smile.

“Mommy, can we please go trick-or-treating?”

I’d been promising them ever since we moved in. And I had to accompany them.

I was listening to a Ted Talk on my iPhone as we walked through a cul-de-sac several blocks away. They scampered up onto a front porch. The door opened. I was inhaling from my vape as they were ushered inside. I yelled “Hey!” as I ran up the front walk and pushed the front door open.

There was nothing behind it but wood beams holding up the facade.

And a white van was speeding away across the field behind.

— Appeared in Local Gems 13 Days of Halloween email newsletter, 2018, and in the print version published 2019

I shouldn’t have boffed Bobby. He was a bad boy, just the way I liked ’em. Well, sorta.

He sold me on banging him just like he sold salvaged cars to suckers at Judas’s Automotive.

Got me soused on day’s old wine. Claimed he loved squeezing my cellulite. But I felt assailed. Me, on the dark side of fifty and him … mmm … like a young Tom Selleck.

But he stole my widescreen, my laptop. Hid them in his cellar then tried to sell them to a fence.

He shoulda known better. Now he’s rotting in a cell.

Time to celebrate.

His pulmonologist asked, “How many years you guys’ve been married?”

“August, it’ll be our fifttieth,” she said. “But … it’s enough already.”

They’d been glued together by trust and respect, warmth and humor, and by doing routines with people. And, of course, by love.

Later, she lay on the sofa under her favorite Woolrich blanket, hazy sunlight seeping through the windows. Judge Judy was on.

She started crying.

“Whatsa matter, Ceil?”

“Eddie … I can’t believe it. I just wet myself.”

He sighed, leaned over and caressed her cheek. Then he kissed her forehead.

“It’s okay Ceil,” he said.

“It’ll be okay.”

This, I vividly remember:

One Sunday evening in 1970, we drove into Manhattan.

We walked north of Times Square with Heidi, our West Highland white terrier. Someone sitting in the lobby of the Ed Sullivan Theater offered to watch her so we could go on in. We handed over her leash, then sat in the last row and caught the rest of the show.

After, we thanked the man profusely and went home.

My wife argues we would’ve been crazy leaving Heidi with a stranger, and insists she’d never been to a television show.

I’d swear it wasn’t a dream.

My father, Phil, and Lou and Charlie owned the Rexall drugstore in Islip, where I grew up. The only other Jewish store owner was Sonny, the stationery store proprietor.

Islip had a long history of bigotry. Catholic churches were relegated to neighboring villages. On farmland in East Islip in 1923, 25,000 Ku Klux Klansmen assembled to initiate 1,400 kneeling members along with a cross-burning.

My father despised his customers saying “you people.” Then I thought it was innocuous. But now more than ever, I’ve become livid at its use.

His customers were smiling and cordial but antisemitic, impure and simple.

I’d joined a four-rider pace line at the second rest stop on the 1999 Seagull Century. I was always the caboose, because my lower-riding recumbent wasn’t tall enough to draft upright bicyclists.

The leader had bungee-corded a boombox to his rear rack. We sped by riders who beamed as Willie Nelson serenaded us with On the Road Again.

We continued eastward together and then over the Verrazano Bridge to the next rest stop on Assateague Island, where “welcome” signs warned us that native wild ponies “bite, kick and charge … keep away.”

It was the best twenty-two miles I’d ever ridden.

But not for me.

I’ve worked best being completely immersed in an activity, sometimes in four-hour chunks: programming my school; constructing math tests; painting a room; creating a new garden; mowing, raking and snow-shoveling; doing the beginning-of-each-month bill-paying; completing the weekly Times crossword; even writing.

April 2019: filing a Nassau County property tax appeal; calculating required minimum distributions, then contacting financial institutions; creating the yearly spreadsheet of deductions; using TurboTax to compute income taxes; e-filing then transferring money and transmitting electronic payments.

I’ve tried to keep my wife in the loop.

I’ve dreaded what would happen if I suddenly died.

Every time she says this place is getting her down I wanna scream.

I’m so glad everything’s separate, except two checking accounts and the house. Well screw the house. It’s her main problem.

She says she’s so anxious about all the crap we’ve accumulated she can’t sleep.

I think but don’t say not this shit again.

She asks what’ll happen when we die? It’s not fair to the kids.

I say when we’re dead we’re dead. Five hundred thou can hire a posse of estate liquidators.

She says she feels like crying.

I say let ’em burn down the joint.

We were in Fruit Tree Farm. I wandered over to the freezer aisle.

Häaagen Dazs 14-oz “pints”: $6.49 each. Edy’s 48-oz “half-gallons”: two for $6.99.

A no-brainer.

We shoe-horned two Edy’s into the freezer.

Past midnight, I awoke from the couch. I needed something … cold.

My wife’s was the mint chocolate chip. Took out my Texas Pecan Pie.

Peeled off the top. Started fork-digging around the edge. Promised myself a little’d be enough.

But I had to smooth the gouges; make it symmetrical.

Melting and softening eased the task until half was gone.

The god of gluttony reigns.

Every year, I ride my bicycle to the six-plot ABRAMS gravesite, where my parents and brother are buried. I relate some goings-on, toast them from a bottle of water and recite the Kaddish from a smartphone app.

Mt. Ararat feels too much like the gated community my mother died in, with its strict rules about the size and placement of headstones and footstones and the correct engraving font. It’s so homogeneous that it’s repulsive.

Our bodies, in plain pine boxes, are destined to spend eternity there decomposing under the sandy soil.

We deserve better.

Or maybe it just doesn’t matter

Every day, a beard-scrubbing, a bowl of yogurt and granola, then merging onto the Southern State for the usual stop-and-go to Brooklyn.

I had a CB-radio in my ’86 Camry. I joked with fellow commuters on channel 10 and got traffic updates so I could take a go-’round if necessary. Driving alone, I felt much less isolated.

Once, we road warriors had breakfast at a North Conduit Avenue diner. I felt joyous meeting them in person, chatting static-free.

Now we have cell phones and Waze, but then I enjoyed pressing Tx on my mic and talking to my world.

– “I want to transmit on channel 10” / “What’s your location?”

When Angela Scarpetti sashayed into my English composition class two weeks and ten minutes late, twenty-three heads turned, even the gay boys whispering in the back. Raven hair, scarlet lipstick, clinging white blouse, flared miniskirt. Her boots weren’t exactly shtup-mes, but they might as well have been.

I was only an adjunct, but everyone knew about the student-faculty fraternizing prohibitions.

After class ended – “Take care, Doc” … “See ya next Tuesday” – Angela stood beside me and softly said, “I’m sorry. Family emergency. Anything I need to do?”

I was so tempted.

There was only one thing.

Dominic Scarpetti, Dean of Students

My wife mock-ridicules me: “You’re an idiot. I-D-O-T.”

Her attempt at humor.

Or maybe she’s just stupid. But I keep that thought to myself.

So I play along. “Whyn’t you call me an imbecile like my mom used to? Or maybe a moron? An idiot’s the lowest functioning of the three.”

“But you are, ipso facto, an idiot.”

Latin doesn’t substantiate her logic.

Although I mournfully haha her, her bullshit is getting old.

“Whyn’t just stop being such a bitch?”

That’ll go over well, for sure.

“I’m trying to play nice, and look what happens.

“See? … You are an idiot.”

– Until the 1970s, the three terms – moron, imbecile and idiot – were used as official designations

Summers before junior high, maybe, me and my friends played throw-up-and-hit in the street, hung out on the concrete catch basin slab tossing pebbles, snatching clumps of grass, pulling out niggerheads – brown seedpods atop thin green stalks.

Back then, behind closed doors, parents called Catholics catolishe dreck; maids, shvartzes; Jews, kikes; Italians, wops. And much worse.

Because I found no “niggerhead” botanic citation in google to match our seedpods, I wonder, sixty years later, if we had made up the term and were just as oblivious as our parents.

They were niggerheads, ’cause that’s what they were.

Pure and simple.

On a Rosh Hashanah afternoon, Mom was driving my brother to his piano lesson in Oakdale in the old black Dodge. I was in the back seat.

She misjudged the curve up the railroad overpass and scraped hard against the guard rail. The right side of the car was damaged. Though no one was injured, Mom was hysterical. The police showed up, a report was written, and our calmed-down mother continued to my brother’s lesson.

From then on we were inculcated with Mom’s conviction that her mishap was God’s punishment for violating the prohibition against driving on a Jewish high-holiday.

My therapist asked why I attend the Kol Nidre service on the evening of Yom Kippur. I said, “I dunno.” But, I do.

I want to be reverent, a believer. I want to tap onto fundamental truths. I want to feel moved.

In Israel, I have the same yearning when we trod through the Jaffa Gate, then along ancient passageways, to the Western Wall. I find a spot, stretch out my arms and lean my forehead against the warm limestone. I close my eyes, say the Shema, and breathe in the holiness.

Though my heart is open, I feel unchanged.

I was ten or eleven, watching cartoons after school.

My mother walked in, clicked off the TV … (“Ma-ah!”) … and said, “Since you’re not doing anything useful, we’re going to Gimbel’s to buy a new lampshade.”

We examined a lot of lampshades on a dismal display.

It was so boring.

Finally, the choice was down to two.

“Which one do you like better?” she asked.

I pointed to the tannish one.

“How come?”

“It’s nicer, Mom. The right size, right shape, right color.”

She picked up the other one – the pinkish one. And she said, “I think we’ll take this one.”

My brother and I had three-feet tall stuffed bears with hard plastic noses. His was brown and mine was a panda.

Their bodies were softish, but their heads were filled with wood shavings. When swung or thrown their heads made ideal weapons.

We chased each other up and down the hall, around the kitchen and dining room tables, and executed coups de grâce on the living room couch.

Mom yelled at us, not because of the turmoil, but because when the bears’ heads ripped open, their shavings burst out. She hated our making another mess.

Mom did have her priorities.

Mom’s at Islip High for tenth-grade parent-teacher conferences.

I’m watching TV with Dad, who’s recuperating from a hernia operation.

BANG!

The house shakes.

Dad: “What the hell was that?”

I run to the garage. Their Oldsmobile is jammed in.

I yank the open driver’s door open, nudge over my mother, and back out. Then I carry Mom into the house.

She’d passed out, her foot on the gas. Newly-poured concrete steps had prevented her from blasting through the wall.

At Southside Hospital the next day, two-thirds of her liver was removed.

She could’ve bled out.

I felt like a hero.

A haiku:

penn station mens room

mozart at the urinal

soothing and sublime

– from The New York Times, June 5, 2016:

For eight years, puny-sounding speakers in Pennsylvania Station have played a stream of classical pieces and easy instrumentals designed to create a serene environment, to soothe the nerves of harried travelers, and to also deter crime.

The lively music creates spaciousness, so people don’t feel like they’re in a cattle call in a dark, confining basement.

I was happily surprised when I became conscious of the music, but it now feels like I’m being manipulated, which I deeply resent.

Blind and deaf from birth, some say Annie was lucky to have lived. The pharmaceutical company that provided the first-trimester tranquilizer that Annie’s mother took in a drug trial was court ordered to establish trust funds for Annie and the eighty other children who were similarly afflicted.

For five decades Annie survived and thrived using just three senses, like Helen Keller, she thought. She learned to communicate, to maneuver in an unforgiving environment, and to love.

Then Tom, her husband and dedicated caregiver, collapsed from a pulmonary embolism and never regained consciousness.

And now, Annie could feel her winter approaching.

A 72-year-old scar is on the back of my hand.

My mother’s often-repeated narrative was that I was so impatient sitting in my highchair that I’d reached for a sizzling frying pan.

Twenty-five years later, we were visiting my parents with our one-year-old. They suggested we go out for a while and they’d take care of Jonathan.

When we returned, Jonathan was inconsolable. My mother said he’d been fussing while she bathed him in the bathroom sink and he accidently burnt the inside of his thigh on the hot faucet.

I’ll never know if either account was the truth.

A 72-year-old scar is on the back of my hand.

My mother’s often-repeated narrative was that I was so impatient sitting in my highchair that I’d reached for a sizzling frying pan.

Twenty-five years later, we were visiting my parents with our one-year-old. They suggested we go out for a while and they’d take care of Jonathan.

When we returned, everything seemed serene. My mother said she’d bathed Jonathan in the bathroom sink. Then we noticed a burn mark inside his thigh. She had no idea where it came from.

I’ll never know if either account was the truth.

A four-year-old lay across her lap, taking up two seats.

“C’mon yo,” she kneed his belly, spouting. “Get yo lazy ass up!”

“Mama … I’m tired.”

“You wanna see tired? I’ll give you tired.”

She slapped his face. The smack resounded in the hushed car.

She glared around with bloodshot eyes.

“What the fuck y’all lookin’ at?”

A social worker-type eased through the crowd, quietly said, “Ma’am … is there anything I can …?”

“Mind ya fuckin’ business. All y’all.” Getting more agitated. “You ain’t know nuthin ’bout me.”

“Some of us care,” she said. “Let me help.”

“Ain’t nuthin nobody can do.”

We were brown-bagging it on the 6:21 to Penn Station. Twenty or so college-aged kids were getting happy on the way into the city.

Usually boisterousness gets me angry, but the kids’ exuberance was infectious.

After Woodside, I stood up, raised my hands, and said, “Excuse me … excuse me please!”

They quieted down and turned towards me.

“Today is my wife’s birthday, and I’d love it if you’d sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her.” And I mock-led them, with wide smiles, in a glorious rendition.

When I sat back down, my red-faced wife said, “Payback’s a bitch.”

Her birthday’s in January.

I liked warm hard-boiled eggs when I was little, especially if they were slightly gooey inside. Instead, Mom sometimes failed to remove shards of shell from runny, yecchy soft-boiled eggs. If I complained, she’d say, “Well, Clarabell eats the shell.”

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for me? Nope. Mom twist-key-opened a sardine tin for me to consume its noxious oily morsels.

Mom broiled chuck steak with gristle down the center and fat around its edges. It was almost always burnt and mostly inedible.

My favorite beverage, Hires root beer, was diluted with water.

A masterful French chef, she certainly wasn’t.

– Clarabell was the clown on The Howdy Doody Show.

Around the high holidays, my mother dragged me out to the Long Island cemetery where my father is buried. She made us walk from the Pinelawn station, insisting, “It’s penance.”

She began sobbing way before we got to his grave. No prayers, though … no kaddish. Instead, she kept cursing under her breath, sometimes aloud.

Suddenly, she grabbed my arms and snarled at me. “I know who you are, what you do, how you think. You’re just as bad as your miserable good-for-nothing father.”

Then, she spat on his grave and wiped her eyes.

And said, “May he rest in peace.”

My buddies be out fishin, shootin, havin a good ol time but Mama drags me to church up route 238. It’s hot, musty, stinkin, and shakes when them loggin trucks pass on through.

Pastor Shlecht, finally finishin: “… I’m gonna die. Yuz alll gonna die. Nowww’s the time to repent.”

Them mamas and grandmas and aunties break out singin, swayin, hallelujahin – even Patsy, the pastor’s daughter, ’bout my age.

Mama, watchin me eyein her: “Doncha get no ideas, boy. You just as bad as yo daddy … you know where he’s at.

“Yes, Mama,” I say.

Daddy ain’t up in no heaven.

Clemson was playing Ohio State in a football semi-final. I turned the game on at halftime.

Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit talked non-stop, jabbering like hyperactive chihuahuas paid by the word. I could stand only seven minutes before changing channels.

Around 1960, New York Yankee announcers were on strike. A game was televised with only background noise. It was a pleasure to watch.

I so enjoy watching Latino teams playing serious fast-pitch softball in Randall Park or adult-league and high school teams playing baseball in Eisenhower Park. No announcers are needed.

Fowler and Herbstreit … whyn’t’ya just shut the fuck up!

“You know, Frannie, I never feel even halfway good until I shower, take a Tylenol and sit down for high coffee.”

“But Sam, you said you had a decent walk.”

“It was strenuous. But these winter days get so dark and dreary.”

“Oh, puhleeze. You’re driving me crazy with your depressing shit.”

“Yeah, I know. But it’s like I’m just treading water. Marking time until …”

“Oh, you and your pathetic attitude. Don’t you remember what the rabbi said? That you do have a choice. You can be happy or miserable.”

“It’s not that easy, Frannie. It’s the way I am.”

– Adam Carolla: “No one is depressed when they're being chased by a bear.”

(continues)

Shonda Shnorr is suing Costco for the cost of an empty packet of Splenda and pain and suffering.

Office Byrd:

Order …

All rise …

You may be seated.

Judy:

Miss Schnorr … a receipt for the Splenda, please.

Shonda:

A box of 1200 with a coupon. $20.63 including tax.

Judy:

Shhh. I can read …

You’re suing for two cents?

Shonda:

Plus pain and suffering.

Judy:

Whose suffering? Mine?

Shonda:

I got so stressed drinking unsweetened coffee … (sobs) … that I kicked my therapy dachshund … and she gouged me.

Judy:

Right now, I want to gouge you.

… Case dismissed!

Shonda:

But Judge Judy …

It’s hard to picture my father.

A formal wedding picture from 1935: He’s wearing a tuxedo with tails, standing slightly behind my Frida Kahloesque mother, Sylvia, in a flowing white gown and train.

In a blue shirt-jacket embroidered “Philip,” counting out pills behind the counter of his pharmacy.

On the sofa in our Brooklyn living room with his first grandchild, one-year-old Jonathan, on his lap, with our Westie, Heidi, ever-vigilant to his left.

In boxer shorts and a wife-beater, on the oaken floor of their bedroom in Islip, lying inert in a pool of vomit … the night of his death.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

Bobby rushed into our bedroom crying, panting, howling “It was him!”

“Who was it, honey?”

“The man … the man with the black hoodie!”

I hugged him, noticed that he’d wet himself … again. And also me.

“Shh. Let Daddy sleep. He’s gotta get up early.”

I led him into the bathroom, wiped him down, helped him into dry pajamas.

“C’mon. Let’s make your bed.”

I tucked him in. “Be right back, sweetie.”

I changed into sweats.

“Mommy … I’m afraid.” Still sniveling.

“Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you.”

Finally, he fell asleep. But I couldn’t.

My husband’s a Raiders fan.

I’ve been inculcated with the highly-covetous image of sitting in a leather armchair in an oak-paneled library puffing on an E.P. Carrillo cigar and sipping from a crystal goblet filled with Knob Creek Bourbon – expensive brands I found searching online.

In actuality, I can’t stand smoke, nor the taste of alcohol. I’ve no idea how words like elegant and mellow and refined relate to stogies and booze.

What I really desire is lounging on my zero-gravity recliner, out on the patio, slurping from a large mug of Elite instant coffee with 2% Lactaid and a splash of Fairlife chocolate milk.

In one of the video montage clips between commercials and the continuation of the Judge Judy show, a young guy jumps up to catch a softball even though he really doesn’t have to.

One of the rare times when I was playing catch with my dad in the backyard, he threw me a ball, about head-high. I leaped as high as a pudgy kid with pretensions could. And easily caught it in my glove.

He said, “What’d you do that for?”

I was showing off. I wanted to impress him. But he knew.

Sixty years later, I still feel ashamed.

– February 12, 2020 is my father’s Yahrzeit, the Gregorian date of his death. He would have been 108, but he died the day after his 65th birthday. Rest in peace, Philip Abrams.

I knew Marty from amateur theater and improv. He was good.

I’d retired from Evander Childs but Marty kept teaching history at Bronx Science, where he’d walk into class wearing wartime uniforms or 1800s costumes. “My students love me,” he’d beam, and boasted that several Nobelists still kept in touch.

I resented his self-absorption: “Hey Lenny, I just got a poem published …” or “Eddie, my son, became first vice-president!” without uttering a simple, “So how’re you doing?”

Worst, he bragged relentlessly about his “genius” four-year-old granddaughter, who was already “reading” Shakespeare.

… until I’d had enough. “Marty … you’re so fucking egotistical.”

Asher could never sit still after finishing his work. He brought it to Morah Hannah, who whispered, “I want to show you something.”

She spread open an oversized book. There were designs of Hebrew letters embellished with swirls and curlicues.

“And this is a calligraphy pen. See … you can write thick or thin.” She slid the blue-lined pad with smooth white paper in front of him. “Now you try.”

He copied several letters, then sketched the overall design. He was so busy he almost missed lunch.

Morah Hannah had been watching. “Asher … your work’s beautiful. I’m so proud of you.”

I’m at the counter with the bacon and sunny-side eggs special and coffee black.

“So, uh, how was she? Didja get anything?” Joey, badgerin me though I never say nuthin.

“Karen ain’t like that.” My voice low. “She’s for real.”

“Hey, man. I’m only askin, ya know, ’cause she’s so smokin hot.”

“Whyn’t you just shut up and eat your fries.”

“Whatsa matter, Vinnie? You stuck up or somethin?”

I took my plate and coffee and slid two stools away. He started to follow. I said, “Stay where you are or I’ll kick your ass.”

Fuckin Joey.

My fuckin brother.

“Miz Bronstein … I can’t come to class today.”

“How come, Tito?”

“It’s my Moms. She’s in the hospital. I gotta help out.”

“I hope she gets well. But make sure you get the homework.”

As if. Why do I gotta learn this x’s and y’s stuff? When am I ever gonna use it?

I ducked out and met Rosalita in the park. We sat in the dugout, hugging, puffing on a spliff.

“Tito, my brothers know everything … and you gotta step up.”

“I love you Rosie. And I’ll do anything for you.”

“So whatchu gonna do after the baby comes?”

After brown-bagging it into the city, it’s either the bathroom in the swaying LIRR railcar or waiting until Penn Station.

I was in front of the line heading into the still-to-be-renovated Amtrak-level men’s room. There was a commotion ahead.

A disheveled street urchin in obvious distress was pounding on the door of the handicapped stall, gravelly-drunken-voiced shouting, “Hey man … what the fuck’r’ya doin in there … movin in?”

More banging and cursing ensued, until the door finally opened. Out stepped another man of the streets, mumbling, “A guy can’t take a fuckin shit in peace.”

I couldn’t stop laughing.

I ♥ NY.

My fellow septuagenarian friend and I are charter members of the Freeport chapter of Idiots of America.

He suffers from atrial fibrillation and other medical problems and I have my own challenges. We’re both high risk during the current coronavirus pandemic.

He’d been going to the Recreation Center daily for exercise and socializing. Out of an abundance of caution, he asked his cardiologist if he should continue going and was told to stop.

That afternoon, I notified him he won the Idiot of the Year award, explaining that if he hadn’t consulted his cardiologist, then it still would’ve been alright.

Every summer Monday evening, I brought Jimmy, our hulking, lovable Wheaten terrier, to readings at the Oceanside Gazebo. He undoubtedly enjoyed the crumb cake and the attention much more than the poetry.

I was known as “Jimmy’s dad.” I joked that people liked him more than me … probably for good reason.

While walking this past week, one woman called out, “Hey, you’re Jimmy’s dad,” and a man with a Doberman pulled out his AirPod and said, “Aren’t you Jimmy’s dad?”

I replied that Jimmy had died over six years ago. Then Vivien and I sighed. He’d made such an impression.

Two eighteen a.m. My cell chimed. Dammit … I was finally falling asleep. It’s Kim, my baby sister.

“Hey, Lena … I hope I didn’t wake you or anything.”

“I’m so exhausted. Why’re you calling so late?”

“I’ve gotta get outta here. This quarantine-in-place shit is driving me crazy.”

“Not possible. I’ve got another twelve-hour in the ICU.”

“C’mon, Lena. You’re my sister. I’m begging you.”

“Got any symptoms? … You been tested?”

“Well, uh …”

“Just what I thought. I’m not taking any chances.”

“But Lena …”

“Nope, Kim. Not this time.”

“But family looks out for each other.”

“Yes, they do.”

Call ended.

“I didn’t marry no seventy-year-old.”

“I didn’t marry no old fart neither.”

We’re bantering again, mostly lighthearted.

I sometimes want to take flight. Get a new credit card. Withdraw cash. Pack my computer and clothes and belongings in my Odyssey and disappear with my recumbent bicycle and all. And with no recriminations.

And I know she has a similar fantasy.

But our lives are so entwined. We are each other’s beshert, or soul mate, lovingly challenging and confronting each other. We need each other, spiritually and physically, to make us higher and better, while bearing witness to each other’s existence.

– from Sefaria: a Living Library of Jewish Texts Online

Helen was a high school senior when she met Barry, who was six years older.

Their age difference made no difference to them, but it did matter to her parents, who tried to keep them apart.

Throughout the spring they texted, made furtive phone calls and met on the sly.

“Where’re you going” her parents always asked. “To the library, Mom,” or “Over to Rachel’s,” or “I’ve got a sleep-over at Naomi’s.” Naturally, her friends would always vouch for her.

Her parents could only hope that college would end their relationship.

Until Barry was found beheaded, and Helen had disappeared.

I’d resurrected a nine-year-old story from my computer folder euphemistically-labeled Works in Progress. It needed editing and an ending.

A winter nor’easter kept Jennifer and her three children housebound over the weekend. Late on MLK Day, she drove to the beach. Just after her children ran off over the dunes, her lover was impaling her on her Volvo’s front seat. And about that time, her son ran into the ocean and disappeared.

Eighteen edits later, I’d had enough of the beach and the cold and the tension, and my compulsion to get the story right.

SAVE … PRINT … PUBLISH to website

“… Last time we spoke about intimacy,” Dr. Deppert continued, “and honesty.”

“Yes,” said the wife. “And there’s something I’ve gotta tell you.”

The husband turned towards her.

“You always treated the dog with such love. Even these days, when you’re reminiscing.”

“And?”

“You loved him more than me.”

“C’mon, hon … that’s not true.”

“Remember he got sick? And he was puking all over?”

“Yeah …”

“Well, I’d mixed rat poison into his food.”

“What? … You killed him?”

“So I could have you all for myself.”

“I can’t fuckin believe this shit!”

Deppert cleared his throat. “Sorry, our time is about up …”

It’s after ten. Judge Judy repeats are on.

Stupid, selfish liars getting pregnant, getting arrested, needing bail. Making unrepaid loans, stealing from family. Dog bites, car accidents, no insurance.

“Wanna take the dog for a walk?” I ask.

“At this hour?”

“Sure. We’ll get some fresh air.”

We go upstairs to change.

“Hey, Sid, whatcha wearing?”

“Shorts and a t-shirt.”

She’s in jeans, and a wool overshirt.

“Uh, it’s kinda warm for that.”

Meanwhile, Paulie’s tail-twitching, super-excited.

I attach his leash, lead him outside.

“You have plastic bags?” she asks.

“C’mon, Gayle,” I sigh, my voice dropping.

“Gimme some credit.”

“You’re not an elephant,” she said.

My wife’s joking, though I sometimes feel fat and sluggish. Getting up from the couch is a challenge and my knees are wonky.

“I said ‘irrelevant.’ I hate being treated like an old man …”

“But you are …”

“C’mon! You push ahead of me like what you’re doing is more important. Sure, I’m lazy, but I resent it when you insist on doing everything. Aren’t we a team?”

“I’m sorry. I’ve never meant to …”

“You know … being respected and having self-esteem are high up in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs …

“… and feeling irrelevant? It’s a killer.”

Bernie Mars lived in the special-deluxe, owned a red Caddy convertible and, according to mahjong group scuttlebutt, had a shlong the size of a Winnebago. And Bernie claimed he had pick of the litter.

During all-night poker sessions, Bernie would chew on an unlit Corona Gorda, and boast about his conquests and his deal on Viagra from a Canadian pharmacy.

“Baby, when you got it, flaunt it,” he’d joyfully channel Zero Mostel.

“But if they ever wanna drag me upstairs, fuckin shoot me. Please!”

Upstairs was skilled nursing, the dementia care unit, the hospice wing.

There, la commedia è finita.

– – The last line in Pagliacci, by Ruggero Leoncavallo

Abby loved the way her yoga pants hugged her cheeks, how the inseam rubbed her just right. And she felt a rush when men – and women – checked her out as she sauntered by.

Sure, she could be more modest. But she chose not to.

And on the packed downtown express, on her way to NYU, when that burly guy in tight jeans had her pinned against the rear door and was rubbing against her from behind, they orgasmed together.

Her sociology class topic that morning was sexual assault.

She couldn’t stop smiling.

Remembering that train ride still makes her wet.

Eleanora Whitley searched again for the Timex watch she got from the meat-packing plant. And this bad arthritis, she thought.

Then she realized …

She banged on her grandson’s door, then barged in.

“Time to get up, Jesse,” she growled.

Whatsa matter, Grandma? Why’re you so …?

“I want you outa here.”

“But why?”

“’Cause I’m done with you. You stole my watch. And probably sold it for drugs.”

“You know I’d never …”

“What about the clock radio? And my wedding ring? You promised me ‘no more’ … so now, get out and never come back …

or else I’m calling your parole officer.”

– Numbers 33:55 – But if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of the land, those whom you allow to remain shall be stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land in which you live

“You watchin cartoons, Harlan? Doncha have school?”

“It’s Saturday, Ma … geez.”

“Well then I need ya to drive me to the Walmart.”

“We were just there Tuesday. Waddya want that’s so important?”

“I’m out of uh … you know.”

“I don’t know … what?”

“Mama needs her medicine.” He caught her licking her lips.

“Oh, right. Jim Beam this time, or the Gordon’s?”

“You’re so smart. You know your mama good.”

“And I s’pose you’d be drinkin on the way back, and that’s why you need me?”

“Right again, Harlan. I love you so much …. what would I ever do without you?”

With a nebulous and frightening future, caused by the pandemic, political depravity, climate change, and his golden age, visiting the past was decidedly more pleasurable, dependent solely on memories.

He and his wife drove to the village where he grew up. They walked the streets he’d bicycled on, interspersed with “This was where I …” and “Boy, this place has really changed.”

On another Saturday, they trekked through an upscale village where, in a drunken haze in a 1963 Falcon, he lost his virginity. This reminiscence he didn’t share.

Afterwards, he felt agitated.

Memory lanes have their own pitfalls and potholes.

– The Twilight Zone, Season 1, Episode 30 … An advertising executive falls asleep and wakes up in 1888 in a strange but peaceful community called Willoughby.

On her twenty-fifth birthday, when Doreen Lonergan’s entire trust fund was turned over to her, she celebrated with her posse of hangers-on. Later, driving black-out drunk, she crashed head-on into the Weelands. Only eight-year-old Tommy survived … barely.

After six-months in jail and years of litigation, the lawyers and Tommy and his guardian were awarded all of her millions, leaving her with only disability and a minuscule stipend.

In her wheelchair outside the single-wide, Doreen sipped from a Schlitz, tossed the can, then pulled herself into her fuck-buddy’s ancient Camry.

It was time for another run to the Beer Barn Drive-Thru.

Nobody could tell Johnny Gilmore nuthin no more. Not the priest, not his mama’s boyfriend with his studded leather belt, not even his mama.

Johnny robbed child-porn from the basement of Rangel’s on tenth. Stuck them in the rectory, after the priest stuck him in his rectum. Emailed the bishop.

Johnny snuck up on a meth dealer with the boyfriend’s gun. Stole his stash. Planted both in the boyfriend’s Audi. Called the cops on the two-time loser.

Johnny showed his mama the super’s pigeons up on the roof. She slipped, went over.

Superman could fly. And since Johnny was Superman …

“Mannfred Schuldiger, you’ve plead guilty to second-degree murder, recklessly causing the death of your wife, Irma Schuldiger. I’ll now hear your allocution statement.”

“Your honor, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I climbed on her while she was snoring, covered her face with a pillow and smothered her until she stopped breathing.

“For forty-two years, she never let up. She badgered me with unanswerable questions, unfounded accusations and unbearable criticism. Just that evening, she called me a fat fuckin’ pig for finishing two pints of Häagen-Dazs.”

…

“Mr. Schuldiger, you’ve suffered enough. I sentence you to time served.

“You’re free to go.”

Last time, Artie and Twig played 2-on-2 against the Wilson twins, Robbie and Lee, but lost 21-18. On the final play, Robbie elbowed Twig so hard he fractured his orbital socket. Many thought it was no accident.

Friday evening a month later in Washington Street park. They have two hundred riding on the game.

The Wilsons are up 19-18.

Artie makes a lay-up, but gets hammered by Robbie. Score tied, 19-19.

Artie limps to the arc.

Twig gets hip-checked by Robbie but hits a jumper. 20-19.

Artie fakes right, pivots, finger-rolls a left-handed floater

… 21-19 for the win.

Grandma Bea had their three boys for the weekend while Frank and her only child, Lydia, were in Denver for a wedding.

Returning to Boise, they were run off the road by a drunk driver and died in the crash.

Besides grieving, Bea wasn’t ready to be a mother again. She loved them, but boys’ll be boys.

Fourteen-year-old Robbie drove her crazy. He was a good kid, but had no grit. If he couldn’t get something right, he was always quick to give in.

But after Bea faked her heart attack, Robbie stepped up and became their benevolent leader.

“Kyleen, I don’t wantya goin down by the creek.”

“But why, Grandpa? All my friends be there …”

“You know how that creek always be runnin high?”

“Yeah …”

“Well them water’s deep and they got them catfish hunderd pounds or so. They can sting ya if they get stepped on.”

“Why’re you so worried?”

“Around you, I’m as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockin chairs.”

“C’mon, Grandpa …”

“Your mama ain’t gonna be happy. She was once stung real bad.”

“I’ll be careful … promise.”

“Kyleen … I know ya. Y’all need to act like you got good sense.”

Lloyd was a prolific writer of over eleven-hundred poems, short stories, and 100-word drabbles. Although his work appeared in over three dozen anthologies, he chose to never publish his own book.

When he got an idea, he handwrote a note or memoed it into his phone so it wouldn’t evanesce. But at his computer, Alice’s white rabbit came a-callin’ to drag him down the internet rabbit hole of exploration, dictionaries and thesauruses; of reading emails, browsing related sites and watching videos; of curiosity, idiocy and procrastination.

His process became more than just writing.

It’s amazing he got anything accomplished.

Summer 1965. I was a counselor for Islip Township’s summer recreation program.

Our activity one Friday afternoon was “go fly a kite.”

We assembled kites with our youngsters, then used rolls of string. The wind was perfect. All the kids’ kites flew.

To one, we tied a 600-yard spool of embroidery thread. It began rapidly rising.

We attached another spool, then a third. There was so much lift, our kids, taking turns, couldn’t hold on.

It became a speck in the clouds.

Alas, we had to set it free.

Our kite rose over 1800 yards … further than a mile.

On the first play from scrimmage, Jake Epstein dropped back to pass, but was flattened by a linebacker, who grabbed the fumbled ball and sprinted towards the goal line.

The crowd fell silent. Even Huntersville players knelt in prayer.

After many minutes, Jake was ambulanced away.

Parsonsburg’s highly-practiced play was designed to score a quick touchdown and demoralize an opponent. But videos revealed that the center inexplicably shifted left and the right guard pivoted, creating the gap for the linebacker.

Jake knew the two linesmen hated his being Jewish. But getting him injured and losing the game was almost unthinkable.

The playground was off-limits. Mom’s always yelling,“Get offa there, Georgie. You’re gonna kill yourself!”

And the kids wouldn’t play with me anyway.

Dad, on Saturday afternoon: “Whyn’t’ya go on outside.” Georgie knew it was their “alone time.”

Georgie climbed to the roof. Miguel, the pigeon-keeper: “You can’t hang around … they’re all sleeping.

The domino players on the sidewalk. Alejandro, shielding his tiles: “Be quiet, Jorge. ¡Tranquilo!”

In Eastside Hardware, Larry, the counterman: “Too busy today. No time for questions.”

On East 103rd, a speeding cab sent Georgie flying.

Witnesses said the kid stopped, looked both ways …

… then crossed anyway.

Because Joey McKenna’s mom took her Ambien after finishing the bottle, he could sneak out and steal signs. He hid them inside the abandoned Sinclair station.

He unbolted STOPs and YIELDs but he left RAIL ROAD CROSSINGs alone. He believed in his code.

But switching signs was his favorite pastime …

WRONG WAY switched to NO TURNS ALLOWED.

DO NOT ENTER to NO STOPPING.

LOW CLEARANCE to MAINTAIN TOP SAFE SPEED.

When SCHOOL ZONE became SPEED LIMIT 55 caused a kindergartner’s death, the investigation became a red-ball.

Now Joey hungers for the sign outside his new domicile:

PRISON PROPERTY / NO TRESPASSING.

Mid-semester, a new student entered my first period class.

“Hi. What’s your name?”

“Hanh Stremple. H-A-N-H. But everyone calls me Panda.”

I did the math. Probably mixed Vietnamese. Panda? Made sense. Jet black hair, milky white skin, Asian eyes set in dark makeup. Black velvet choker. White Madonna T-shirt tied at the waist. Short black skirt. A pervert’s wet dream.

Boys would swarm her, like bees to honey. But she was only 12.

I decided to look out for her until one morning …

“Mr. Daniker, you don’t have to worry. The guys all know my dad was in special ops.”

Marty slipped out of bed to take a piss.

He glanced at Flo, at her chest gently rising.

He ordinarily enjoyed their daily walk, then eating out. Today’s early bird was the Chinese buffet. Tomorrow, Mexican.

They were a community fixture. “How’s it hangin’ Marty?” “You’re looking healthy, Flo.” Their neighbors, sipping late-afternoon cocktails.

But Marty seethed while Flo prattled on. “Marty … the Epstein’s kids are visiting.” “The Barrs are installing new carpeting …” She commented about everything.

Marty walked ahead mumbling to himself. “Shut up. Shut up. Please make it stop.”

Then he heard her body splat onto the sidewalk.

In juvie, I was in for auto theft and joy-riding. They called me Rabbi, but after several Krav Maga beat-downs no one gave me any shit.

I got in with Famous Amos and Chickie Colleti, his prison bitch. A few months after I “graduated,” they also aged out.

Before my religious father emigrated to Israel because I “dishonored” him, he was constantly drumming entrepreneurial savvy into me.

I became the finance guy. We dutifully obeyed our commandments: Market drugs only. Refrain from avariciousness. Avoid nettling the citizens. Operate surreptitiously. Particularly eschew violence.

Until I had to re-educate that asshole interloper.

Whenever Arnold bicycled by, the kids cursed and threw rocks at him.

This time they chased him and knocked him down.

Even the girls stood over him, laughing and popping their gum, as he lay crying on the scorching pavement, his knees and elbow bleeding.

This time, Arnold couldn’t turn the other cheek.

He got his dad’s handheld pressure sprayer from the barn, filled it with gasoline, and hung it from his handlebar. When the kids got close, he got off his bike and started spraying them.

Then he took his dad’s Zippo, flicked it, lit it, and flung it.

They called Joey Gales “Swamp Boy.” He didn’t mind one bit.

For his thirteenth birthday, he wanted nothing except hip-high waders.

The potholed road ended at Arthur’s Beach. He hated seaweed and the obnoxious kids. But between the tree line and the bay, there thrived a vibrant, glorious marsh.

He chained his bike well off the single-track, went exploring, taking photos on his iPhone. He loved “shooting” egrets and osprey, foxes and muskrats.

But after accidently slipping into a patch of quicksand – and struggling to extricate himself – he became morbidly fascinated with death.

And the bog became his secret laboratory.

Irwin and Alma sat in their pew at Calvary Episcopal, Alma on the aisle, just in case.

After, they stopped at Panera. Irwin remained in the car while Alma chose a pecan braid for herself and a croissant for Irwin, its filling her surprise.

They listened to NPR during brunch, a shared western omelet and sizzling bacon.

Irwin watched the late Steelers game, while sipping bourbon and nodding off. Alma sat telephoning her daughers-in-law.

Monday, Irwin’d be back managing First National Bank. Alma’d be busy reorganizing and polishing the breakfront.

She was afraid of becoming destitute, he of dying alone.

Barney Pulner, eighteen years retired, had workout days and writing days. But his inexact schedule did not prevent him from clicking off the TV and trudging upstairs way past midnight, then plopping onto his desk chair to do some writing.

He’d awaken, panting and imbalanced, staring at a screenful of d’s from pressing down with his middle finger, while fighting off amorphous images of dread that had been flooding his between-sleep-and-awakening semi-consciousness.

He’d shake his head like an after-bath dog to regain a sense of equilibrium, then attempt to squelch the unrelenting terror of death that fueled his dark visions.

I’ve been binge-watching Dexter, the Showtime drama about a serial killer … for the second time.

Dexter Morgan, a blood-spatter analyst for “Miami-Metro” PD’s homicide division, solves cases but also ritually murders killers who’ve fallen through systemic cracks and “don’t deserve to live.” After, he “dumps the trash” from his boat, “The Slice of Life.”

That I am irresistibly drawn to its riveting storyline, with its somber genesis and its compelling characters – manipulative, foul-mouthed, salacious, psychopathic; but also charismatic, proficient, honorable, principled – reveals much about my own desire for justice, fictionally executed by Dexter, an almost invincible but incurably damaged antihero.

Joey Fagler knew the jig was up when his landline rang. Nobody had his number.

GPS and “find-my-phone” apps could trace his mobile. He could’ve removed the sim card or bought a burner. But it was too much trouble.

While Evgeny was inside, Joey had been shtupping Evgeny’s second wife. He’d convinced himself she was asking for it. Just before Evgeny got out, he fenced some of Irina’s diamonds to repay gambling debts.

Word had gotten out.

Joey pressed TALK. When he recognized the voice that said only “I know,” he shuddered.

Now he was in some really deep shit.

Aunt Sarah lived in 4C. She watched me after school.

She helped with my homework, sitting close, sometimes cuddling me. After dinner, she taught me how to play Monopoly and Scrabble. She even let me use a dictionary to find words.

When my parents came for me, I never wanted to leave. I was afraid of their drinking and yelling and fighting.

When I once insisted, crying, “I wanna stay with Aunt Sarah!” my mother slapped my face, snarling, “She ain’t your mother … I am.”

I screamed, “I hate you. I wish you were dead.”

And I still mean it.

Sheila knew she was pregnant the minute Robbie slid out of her. She didn’t need to see no + on a pregnancy test.

Later, “I love you so much, Robbie. I want us to be together. I wanna keep it.”

But Robbie had plans. GED, the army, maybe college. Anything to get outa this dead-end trailer trash town.

When Sheila’s daddy realized, he went nuts. Only thing stopping him from tanning her hide was mama’s double-shot, locked-n-loaded.

“You ain’t gonna beat no daughter of mine. Not when no grandbaby’s on the way.”

“Don’t matter. Sheriff’s gonna statutory rape his sorry ass.”

I’m watching tennis when Rachel walks in.

“Hi, Dad. Everyone’s outside. Uh … why the long face?”

“Everything’s going downhill.”

“Well, today is your eightieth birthday.”

“No, it’s not only that. It’s like I’m losing my autonomy, my self-esteem.”

“How, Dad?”

“It’s mom. She’s doing everything for me. Bringing my meds when I forget, instead of just reminding me. Handing me a comb … for what’s left of it. Handling the mail … it’s always been my job.”

“It’s love. She cares about you.”

“But I resent it. If I say anything, she cries, then I feel like shit.

“I just can’t win.”

Around sixth-seventh grade I hung around with Artie, from across the street.

Artie loved rocks. Not examining minerals glued into that box on his dresser, but throwing them.

Sometimes, we’d throw rocks at targets in the woods.

Sometimes, we’d bike over to the dock and skip stones he’d collected in an A&P bag.

Sometimes, he’d stand behind his house and threw rocks over the roof at cars passing by. When someone would come looking, we’d run into his house and hide.

Sometimes, he’d chuck rocks at B&O locomotives speeding by.

That was until the bulls came looking.

And found him.

On our first evening in Paris in 2009, we’re strolling along the Champs Elysées.

We often separate, using our cellphones to stay in touch. At Costco it’d be, “Hey, Viv … how many peanut butters should I get?”

But for our four-day mini-vacation, we hadn’t bothered renting phones or sim cards. Jet-lagged and off our game, we started meandering without setting a meeting point.

I soon realized that I’d lost Vivien in a sea of black overcoats.

For forty years we’d danced to the beat of the same drum, and soon found each other in some over-priced boutique.

Serendipity.

And luck.

Mr. Herrmann Schiessemacher:

Consolidated Removal Applications is terminating its contract with you at the end of this month. Your single-wide trailer sewer outflow will be disconnected from our network thirty (30) days henceforth.

Numerous samples were tested. All showed greater than 95% excrement. The volume released by you and Mrs. Shiessemacher was equivalent to a fifteen-unit apartment building.

During the past nine months, we’ve been forced to pump and clear our lines on seventy-one occasions. Our equipment simply cannot sustain your remarkably high output.

At the advice of counsel, this is your final notice.

Good luck, and go with peace.

Dear Shitheads:

When the sewer outflow from my tiny home was connected to your network, nothing in our contract restricted outflow volume.

So, I’ve had enough of your intimidation and condescension.

I’ve had enough of your threatening Ilse and me with termination.

And regarding your supposed need for repeated pumping: Do not blame us for your pitiful infrastructure. Our outflow is your problem. Your cash flow is not our problem.

Your real problem is adhering to our valid contract. Otherwise, a shit-storm of litigation will rain upon you.

Finally, I am sick of your shit-shaming!

Call it what it is.

Felipe and Silvio were twins, but different as dia y noche.

Their mother made the rough-and-tumble Felipe swear to always protect his timid and foolish-acting brother.

In the cafeteria, Silvio sometimes clowned around with a straw up his nose, or sticking in his ear. Kids laughed, of course, but Felipe was embarrassed … and angry.

Felipe cornered him. “Whyn’t ya stop it? You’re so estúpido!

Silvio pushed him away. Felipe grabbed him but accidentally smashed the straw up his nose.

Silvio’s eyes went big and he slumped to the floor. He was never right afterwards.

And Felipe became his guardian … forever.

On our way to kindergarten, Abigael watched a linesmen climb a telephone pole. She was fascinated.

“Unsafe” equipment had been replaced in the schoolyard. I couldn’t spot her; my heart skipped a beat. Abigael, giggling, had shinnied up a tree.

I never screamed, “You’re gonna kill yourself!” I calmly said, “Just be careful.” The other mothers gave me incredulous looks.

Some girls craved iPhones. Abby watched YouTube utility-pole-climbing tutorials.

Some girls wanted distressed jeans. Abby coveted spikes and a climbing belt. We bought her a set for her bat-mitzvah.

Abby’s now doing ornithological research for her post-doc in Alaskan rainforests.

– Buddha

Meyer Levin hated Jonah – his brother and business partner – for embezzlement and fraud, for being a disloyal bastard, but mostly for shtupping Iris, Meyer’s second wife, during extended lunches. Meyer could always smell Iris on him.

By using security allocations to investigate Jonah, Meyer immensely savored Jonah’s paying half of his own investigation.

Their company also continued subsidizing their mutually-owned double-indemnity life insurance policies.

Meyer knew Jonah’s jogging route intimately. When Meyer had enough, he rented an Elantra, followed Jonah up Topanga Canyon, and nudged him off the shoulder.

But investigators were also shadowing Meyer.

And reporting back to Iris.

Everyone in the neighborhood believed that Bobby Diggs’s mom’d killed somebody.

Maybe Inez knifed some junkie, or shot some player who’d done her wrong, or tased and bludgeoned some asshole who b&e’d their place. Bobby’d never say. One thing’s for sure, however – nobody ever fucked with Bobby.

Bobby’s middle school grades were high enough to ensure his getting into a specialized high school. Elmore Dansforth, a new teacher, was also tutoring him.

But Elmore disappeared soon after Inez learned he’d been molesting her son.

Eventually, his bruised and broken body was discovered, rotting under a mattress in a boarded-up brownstone.

Behind her back, we called Allison Morrisey “Chips,” because of her gambling binges, her non-stop munching on Famous Amos cookies, but mostly because of her contentious attitude – the hunchback-sized “chip” on her shoulder.

As production began to wane, lunch breaks became longer, workers slipped out earlier on Fridays, then everyday, Chips became infuriated.

Several of us in management met with her but were ignored. Despite sharing our decades of wisdom, it was her way or the highway.

Then, an industrial accident … her fault, for flouting OSHA regulations.

An elaborate funeral … sparsely attended.

A mass exodus of employees … free at last.

Paul Neustadt, clean-cut and mild-mannered, sat opposite me.

“So, what brings you here today?”

“I … just want some peace.”

“Tell me more, Paul.”

“I’ve been on Jdate and Tinder, Ashley Madison and Grindr. I’ve speed-dated and cruised the bars. I’m bi, yes. But after ten years, still no love-filled committed relationship.”

“This city can be tough …”

“Yeah, it sucks. And Roosevelt High’s girls’ pheromones exuding and twinks cavorting outside at dismissal make it even harder. So I spend every weekend grading English assignments and masturbating.”

“Mm-hmm …”

“So … I’m considering celibacy …

“… ’cause then life would be much less exhausting and disappointing.”

Sammy Gowl, from O’Flannery’s, and I worked out a plan to subdivide my mother’s basement into eight cubicles. Illegals needed someplace to live. Who’d complain, anyway?

We used 2x3's, ¼-inch plywood, indoor-outdoor carpeting, and $40 slab doors. We installed light bulbs and outlets. A mother-daughter apartment’d been there, so they had a communal bathroom and a working kitchen. The uninsulated oil furnace threw off plenty of heat. They’d have it damn good.

Until the fuckers started using hotplates.

And setting the place on fire.

And dying from carbon monoxide poisoning and smoke-inhalation.

And getting us arrested and convicted.

… Even Mama.

Up in half-room 318B, there was non-stop bitching about students, parents, administration. It was soul-draining.

Once I asked, “What’re you guys into … outside of here?”

Eric rode the casino bus to Atlantic City. Harris played the horses. Rich bet on sports. They claimed long-term, they were ahead.

Probability-wise, bullshit.

Yarmulke-wearing David spoke up. “My father was always behind. I had to answer the door for the collector – on Shabbos, yet – and say, ‘Papa’s at the collel, learning’ or ‘Papa’s in shul.’

“‘Tell your fuckin father we’s already there. And he better pay up … or else.’”

“His gambling destroyed our family.”

Sylvia and her siblings lived in Brooklyn with their Yiddish-speaking mama and papa, who’d emigrated to Die Goldene Medina in the early 1900s.

Sylvia sang all the time – whenever, wherever. When she misbehaved, her teachers threatened to prohibit her from attending choir practice.

She landed a sought-after solo in a high school concert. Her father couldn’t miss work and her mother was suffering through yet another depressive episode.

§ Sobbing, Sylvia skipped the concert.

§ Sylvia sobbed through her performance.

In the ensuing years, whenever she’d break out singing, she was shushed by her embarrassed, dismissive family.

I’ll never forget the dejected look on my mother’s face.

– Rest in peace, Sylvia, my beloved Mom … 7/7/1914 - 3/19/2000

In 1957, our sixth-grade class won the lunchtime softball series at Winganhauppauge Elementary in Islip. Mr. Blieberg, our teacher, presented us with wooden baseball figurines with our names and “CHAMPION” Scotch-taped on the base.

The figurine’s wooden parts were connected by thin elastic bands so it could be posed. On the way home, mine fell apart. I was broken-hearted.

Mom tried unsuccessfully to fix it. Later, she drove us to a sporting-goods store in Babylon and bought a replacement. I felt whole again.

Mom said, “You’d better be careful with it this time.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Abstract

This study has identified the origin of zombie babies.

Statistical significance > 99.95%

Eight hypotheses:

1.    “Normal” babies transmogrified by a zombie’s bite.

2.    A zombie mother’s evil spawn.

3.    Consequence of contagions or genetic mutations.

4.    Arisen from primordial ooze through natural occurrences: earthquakes, sinkholes, melting glaciers.

5.    Created during man-made catastrophes: nuclear explosions, mining accidents, pathogens released accidentally.

6.    Fueled by revenge, dolls tortured by malevolent children became sentient.

7.    Storks brought normal babies. Vultures brought zombie babies.

8.    Appeared spontaneously.

Editor’s note: This study’s abstract is all that remains. All documentation, conclusions, and supporting data have mysteriously disappeared.

I’m the manager of the so-far-unbeaten Lonsdale Cardinals. My teenage son is my strategist.

Artie analyzes all of our Connie Mack League games, focusing on sabermetrics which I barely understand, like on-base-plus-slugging percentages, batting-average-on-balls-in-play, fielding-independent-pitching, wins-above-replacement, and so on.

Artie decides batting orders, fielders’ placements, when to change pitchers, when to take, when to swing. I trust his objectivity because he’s unswayed by empathetic contact with our players, for Artie is on the autism spectrum and struggles with social skills.

But lately I’ve noticed Artie has subtly altered his tactics to benefit certain weaker players.

And I’m suffused with joy.

– Tom Tatum: “Baseball isn't just a game. It's life being played out on a field—a field of dreams—on diamonds of green, where players pursuing their dreams try to be the best they can be on the grandest stage of all—where men become boys and boys become men, all speaking one universal language without uttering a single word.”

After Terri McGrath’s college graduation, she shared an upscale two-bedroom with a woman who was equally as fastidious. Terri’s slovenliness abated years earlier when her fed-up father threw her strewn-everywhere clothes out her bedroom window.

Terri met Crane at a jazz club. She loved his sense of humor, his upbeat spirit, his rugby friends. They became inseparable.

Then he brought her to his dilapidated bungalow. Her mouth dropped as he ushered her in. Dirty clothes, fast-food wrappers, beer cans everywhere.

“Oh my God … what’s that smell?”

He shrugged, embarrassed.

This is so awful, she thought. I’ve gotta get outta here.

I was in a sophomore slump until I met Catherine.

So what if she called me “Daddy” … and babbled babyishly? She gave mind-blowing blowjobs, especially while snaking a finger into me.

She wore diapers and pink plastic panties under her miniskirt. She said the crinkliness made her wet.

Soon Catherine had me wearing them by sliding them up my legs while fellating me.

This evening she insisted, “Lie on your stomach!” then began tightening a leather belt around my neck.

Unexpectedly, two officers burst in.

One said, “You’re lucky, son. Three others were asphyxiated.”

Then they dragged my Catherine away.

Once a sought-after trial attorney, Alfred Terman burned out from the drama and moral corruption of the trial system. However, as an arbitrator/mediator in Washington County, he provided fair and equitable justice for disputing individuals.

But Alfred despised stupidity. While mental incompetence is a mitigating factor in criminal sentencing and civil decisions, Alfred believed that mindlessness, ignorance, obliviousness and indifference should be considered aggravating factors.

So Alfred began approaching his colleagues, writing op-ed pieces and addressing law-and-order groups. He lobbied state senators and legislators, the attorney general and the governor, to amend sentencing and settlement guidelines.

But dumbfuckery inevitably prevailed.

Richie and I go way back – to pre-law – and we meet for brunch every month.

“Whatcha havin boys?”

“Doris, he’ll have a a T-bone steak, par-boiled eggs, a cup o’ joe, and some chips … ”

Richie ahem’d. “We’ll just have the regular.

“So, Steve … you planned that all weekend?”

“Got me. You’re infatuated with golf. It’s all you talk about.”

“But I’m on automatic with the legal shit, and with Olive and the boys it’s …” and Richie shrugged.

“But, Richie, I’m also jealous. I wish I had something to obsess about. I’m just going through the motions.

“And I’m dying inside.”

♂    I don’t know why I bother talking to you anymore.

♀    Me neither, not that I ever listen.

♂    Well, I’ve had it. It’s enough already.

♀    You can say that again. But don’t bother.

♂    Anyway … what’s for dinner?

♀    Leftovers.

♂    Leftovers … again?

♀    You wanna cook for a change?

♂    That’s okay. I love your cooking.

♀    You’re getting better at lying.

♂    But I’d like something without freezer burn.

♀    Then call Wing Wan.

♂    Okay, I will. Waddya want?

♀    I’ve gotta see the menu.

♂    But you always order moo shu chicken.

♀    That’s what I like.

♂    I don’t know why I bother talking to you anymore.

♀    Me neither.

♂    I’ve had it with you.

♀    What is it this time?

♂    Whenever I say something, you interrupt me.

♀    So say something interesting for a change.

♂    That’s cold.

♀    You know what’s cold?

♂    Geez … what?

♀    Your hands … in bed. It’s like sleeping with a cadaver.

♂    Well, if you actually moved …

♀    Then what? … things’d be any different?

♂    I wouldn’t check to see if you were breathing.

♀    What’re you talking about?

♂    When you’re not snoring, I look over …

♀    To see if I’m alive?

♂    Well, yeah. I’m afraid of losing …

♀    Me? … what a crock …

♂    Maybe I shouldn’t bother.

♀    [sigh] Sometimes I love you. But not so often.

Morty and Alice paused beside the empty umbrella stroller parked alongside the lake.

Its tires looked worn. A pacifier, attached to a tether. A pink Jet Blue tag hanging from the handle: Flight 393. Morty googled it: Boston nonstop to Denver.

“Waddya doing, Morty?”

“Somethin ain’t right … I’m callin NYPD.”

“What’re they gonna do?”

“… yeah, right off Park Drive …

“Waddya think?”

“… sure I’ll wait.”

“I’m not stayin around.”

“So go … whatever.”

Morty scanned the lakeshore. Fifty yards away, a doll, floating.

Holy shit! That ain’t no doll!

He rushed over, dragged it out.

It still felt warm.

Then Morty collapsed.

“I’ve had it with your women’s groups and your zoom meetings and listening to audiobooks all the time …”

“Well if you had any interests, instead of sitting on your fat ass …”

“My fat ass? You ever look in the mirror?”

“You don’t wanna go there.”

“For chrissakes … it’s like I gotta make an appointment just to talk to you.”

“What’s so important, it can’t wait?”

“You know … things like ‘What’re we doing today?’ or ‘We having coffee?’ or ‘When’s dinner?’”

“You just proved my point.”

“Fuck! I’ve had it with you.”

“Shit … it’s almost six. I’m gonna miss my class.”

In my teens, I enjoyed examining the several hundred silver dollars we stored in an old lunchbox.

One afternoon, I appraised them using a library book for numismatists. The higher-quality coins with rarer mintmarks – “O” for New Orleans and “CC” for Carson City – were worth significantly more.

Then one day, they were gone.

I believed that my brother, who was in college and living at home, had taken them. He could’ve been going through a rough patch.

But I never confronted him, and my parents brushed aside my proofless accusation.

I hope he got a lot more than face value.

(Thanks, Jerry, for releasing this as requested.)

If you’re reading this, then I, Harry Kirschner, am dead.

My much-younger second wife is a forensic pathologist. Sally and I’ve often discussed the “perfect murder.” She’s proposed using two prescription drugs concurrently.

Too much digitalis or potassium chloride can be fatal. If there were a postmortem and a less-than-toxic amount of each were found, then a death would be labeled “natural causes.”

I run and play tennis. My heart condition has been well controlled.

Lately, though, I’ve had chest pains and shortness of breath.

If I should die before I wake …

Sally

The doorbell chimed. Someone wearing a non-descript suit. Probably a Jehovah’s Witness.

“See this?” I pointed at the mezuzah. “It means I’m Jewish.”

“Yes, I realize. I’ve come for you.”

“Waddya mean? I’m busy reading about the Baal Shem Tov. Why you bothering me?”

“Because your time is up.”

“Hold on! You’re … the Angel of Death?”

“My name is Azrael.”

“No sale, man. I made a deal with God. As long as I keep reading, I get to stay.”

“That’s pure baloney. God’d never …”

“Right now, I’m buying Nikhil Parekh’s Collected Poetry … 5388 pages of intensive reading. Watch me press ... ”

Every morning, I fill the bird feeder and the mealworm and suet cages. Then I toss out handfuls of unshelled peanuts. Between the cardinals, flickers, grackles and blue jays, but especially the squirrels, the peanuts disappear instantaneously.

Only after our Wheaten terrier died did two of these suet-stealing gangsters approach us, all friendly-like. But all they wanted was peanuts.

We named each one Bubba. They’ve waited for us expectantly, dawdled under the table, meandered around the storage chest. I hand-fed Bubba-uno until he got too assertive.

Our endearing bubbas have been almost like pets.

But actual replacements, they are not.

Marty Schuman yearned to be an astronaut. He attended Air Force Academy, became a fighter pilot, then excelled at Johnson Space Center.

In 2009, he earned an eight-month rotation at the International Space Station.

He kissed Sarah, whispering, “I’ll love you always,” bear-hugged Annie and Jacob, then climbed aboard space shuttle Endeavor.

Despite Marty’s training, he felt isolated and claustrophobic. Only space-walking to perform maintenance on the solar array or robotic arm lifted his spirits.

Then came the lawyer’s letter, uplinked by Sarah.

The next time outside, Marty untethered, silenced audio input, and drifted away.

Finally, he felt at peace.

Many mornings around two, three, Joey Merganser wakes up, panting, sweating

… the same goddamn dream

I just stabbed / gouged / eviscerated someone

… an effeminate man lying on his stomach / a bum sleeping on a bench / a woman without a face wearing a black wig

… in a rat-infested cellar / in a deserted subway station / in a no-star hotel room

After, Joey can never fall back to sleep

… dread / fury / self-loathing

Ambien, Benadryl, melatonin, vodka straight … nothing helps

Holy fuck … this time I really must’ve killed someone

Joey launches himself out of bed / unsheathes his tactical knife

… watches droplets spatter onto the floor

Johnny Tarbull loved his black Audi RS3 and Gloria Falzone.

Johnny worked at Bavarian Auto. Evenings, he modified his Audi using specialized equipment and spec’d-out componentry.

Saturday nights, he cruised the Topeka street-racing scene like royalty in his glistening Audi with Gloria riding shotgun.

Johnny became a legend. With the speed-limiter overridden, he often topped 175 on a stretch of I335.

Then came their breakup, and soon after, the snow squall whiteout. His impossible-to-control Audi catapulted off a Jersey barrier and smashed into an abutment.

Some say he was racing the storm.

Others say he had nothing left to lose.

No matter what Phil did, Sylvia Matheson forgave him. She never criticized her man’s faults and indiscretions, just like her mother and grandmother before her.

But she often went sobbing to Edie – “Philly didn’t mean it” … “he’s such a good father” … “ it wasn’t really a punch, just a slap.”

Edie handed her another Pabst and they clinked bottles.

“But Syl, you know it’s not right.”

“Mama always said ‘forgive and forget,’ then ‘peace at any price.’”

“What about Helen and Marian … you want them to suffer too?”

“I don’t know any different, Edie …

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Nancy, you won’t believe what this guy said today.”

“Yeah?”

“Three little girls were chasing Canada Geese at the duckpond. When I got closer, I said, ‘It isn’t nice to chase the birds. You’ve got to be kind to them.’

“A guy shouted, ‘Hey you old windbag. Why you bothering my kids?’

“I said, ‘They shouldn’t be chasing the birds. You know better, and they should know better.’

“The kids ran to him. ‘That fuckin’ woman should mind her own goddamn business.’

“Then, louder, ‘See what you did? You made me curse!’

“I pressed in my AirPods and kept walking.”

There exist evil children who’ve abused and terrified their siblings; children who’ve seduced and mutilated; seemingly normal children who’ve committed loathsome, abhorrent acts.

The most acute cases are rare and confounding. Our ethos of compassion demands that we never give up on them. They’re diagnosed and labeled, then subjected to therapies, pharmaceuticals, hospitalizations and incarcerations.

Later, our clandestine organization evaluates these children and supports them if they’re amenable. But I, alone, determine their fate.

If I adjudge them unredeemable and unsalvageable, then they’re removed from society.

No one mourns their loss.

Except me.

For I, too, was one of them.

My wife, the Chief of Police. I was so proud. From overnight patrol, Audrey rose all the way up to chief. She earned her promotions on merit and grit.

An athlete, she ran marathons. She never smoked though everyone else did.

Fucking cancer.

With one lung removed and the other failing, Audrey can barely breathe. It’s horrible seeing her so fragile and helpless, in agonizing pain or comatose from the meds. Even my soft caress is excruciating.

When she’s been lucid, she discussed ending it.

Just now she wheezed the two words she most yearned for but dreaded …

“It’s time.”

Moshe, our eleven-year-old grandson, often telephones. But when I’m home or out walking, extended WhatsApp video-calls become tedious.

So Moe initiates Zoom video meetings. Besides talking about stuff, telling stories and teasing each other, he’s taught me how to use the whiteboard, to appear alien-like, to create cool screen illusions, to expertly “share screen,” and to tweak Zoom’s options. His seemingly innate skills are mind-blowing.

I feel such naches – warmth and pleasure – when Moe, on his own volition, gets all four grandparents together on Zoom. In his tender, loving way, he’s keeping all of us connected during these uncertain times.

Most kids liked playing hockey and riding bikes. Mayer, too. But Mayer loved the Thanksgiving Day parade – especially the floats – when they visited Grandma Elaine and watched from her third-floor balcony.

Mayer decided to become a float.

He stretched and ate taffy. He swallowed raw dough, knowing it would rise.

When they got to Grandma’s he body-painted himself like Superman.

She asked, “What’s with all this mishegas?”

“Just watch!”

Mayer took his dad’s bicycle pump, put the nozzle into his mouth, and started pumping.

Nothing happened … at first.

Then out came the longest and loudest belch anyone had ever heard.

The summer after high school, Carol and Herb were inseparable, fogging up the windows in his father’s Oldsmobile at the drive-in or anywhere secluded.

Then came college. Buffalo was a gazillion miles from Boston.

Herb drifted west, became a Paramount Pictures executive; Carol, a school superintendent in Chicago.

Each had children and grandchildren, and each buried a spouse after a debilitating illness.

Then came their 50th reunion and the West Side Story moment.

At the Allegria they drank and cried and what-if’d together, and swore to never again be apart.

But Covid and quarantining struck.

Maybe they’ll still have time.

Castillo is thumbing through slick playbills and mimeographed booklets, tastefully organized on Ikea bookshelves, of the 307 plays they’d performed in – from The Fantastics to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – in summer stock and community theaters.

ADRIANA (entering)

Want me to put on the kettle?

CASTILLO

I shouldn’t have any more tea before bedtime.

ADRIANA

But dear … chamomile helps you sleep.

CASTILLO

Still, love, I’d rather not.

Castillo sinks into his lounger, drags on a Parliament and eases out the smoke.

CASTILLO (turning to the audience)

I’m always feeling so empty … like I’m just reciting lines from a third-rate play.

Bobby, Eddie and I walked over to the McKissicks on Saturday night because Georgina – a niece or something – was visiting from down south. Eddie carried a six-pack of Rheingold he got his brother to buy.

No one’s there except Georgina. Strange, but okay. We sat sweating in the den, lights low. She turned on Cousin Brucie on 77WABC, and started dancing – all … by … herself.

She was strutting and swaying, sliding her hands sensuously over her body. I was awestruck and mesmerized.

When I biked over on Monday, Mrs. McKissick sneered, said she’d gone back home.

That night, I’ll always remember.

I live in a glass-walled high-rise facing its duplicate across the plaza.

Scanning through my high-powered telescope, camera attached, and then zooming in, turns me on. And I’ve seen plenty.

A nanny drinking Absolut, watching TV all afternoon, a screaming toddler strapped in a stroller, in 18H.

A sobbing anorexic slashing her wrists the right way, 13B.

A tattooed man pounding on an incapacitated woman, 17G.

A semiconscious school girl being gang-raped, 14C.

Maybe I should’ve called 911.

I was a witness. I have the evidence.

But I cannot be exposed. I’d lose everything.

The moral dilemma is killing me.

I’d been going to Tony’s Barbershop for years, as an every-two-and-a-half-months-or-so regular.

He snarled, “Get out!” when I walked in.

“Why? … what’s going on?”

“You stole a Time magazine.”

“No way.”

“You did. I saw you.”

“Tony, that never happened. We have our own subscription.”

He closed daily for lunch. Whenever I came in the afternoon, his body oozed an astringent-boozy smell.

Even if true, why would a businessman throw out a regular customer over a $1.50 “theft”?

It was probably the alcohol talking.

I found a barbershop in the Five Towns, where they really knew how to trim beards.

I practice my maneuvers – usually when my wife isn’t around – to respond to armed or unarmed intruders forcing their way into our home.

Every night, after singing Adon Olam and slipping under the covers, I visualize the steps:

Procure and unlock the pistol-grip Mossberg.

Rack it quietly.

Stop and listen.

Take several deep breaths.

Belly crawl forward down the carpeted stairs.

Slide the safety to red.

Scan around the walls – front and back.

Determine the degree of threat.

Aim below the crotch to strike the femoral arteries or sciatica nerves. A direct hit would incapacitate an aggressor.

Ask questions later.

Benny knew the more joyful he felt, the gloomier he’d eventually be.

And after his aunt’s death, forty-five years before, Benny realized he’d been manic.

Sure, he was euphoric during his kids’ natural childbirths, after his first marathon, while bicycling 100 miles in Maryland.

When he felt happy for an entire day, he recognized how talkative and energetic he was, though he doubted he was diagnosable.

So Benny’d learned to attenuate his rare states of happiness because the goddamn low would inevitably follow, when he’d revert to the everyday Benny – judgmental, angry, dissatisfied … the abject dreader of death.

Outside Starbucks, Jennifer and Michelle were sipping Frappacinos.

“Michelle, I was thinking … Ashley drives me nuts, and you’re always complaining about Robin. Ashley’s bitchy and infuriating and demeaning. And her grades stink.”

“You’re so right, Jen. They’re like defiant twins.”

“But I like Robin and you like Ashley. So … suppose we trade?”

“That sounds crazy.”

“No, listen. If we removed their targets of animosity – namely, us – then maybe they’ll calm down and become civilized.

“We file for temporary, renewable guardianship, and switch them before tenth grade begins. And since they’re the same size …”

“You know, Jen … it just might work.”

Jason and I were inseparable in high school. We bicycled everywhere and played ping pong in my basement. But when I started dating Maryanne in twelfth grade, he became aloof and morose.

One day, he looked at me weirdly, then ditched school.

In a clearing in the woods, where we often hung out, I found my best friend hanging.

I ran to the nearest house, banged on the door. Avondale police and an ambulance came, but it was too late.

Years later, after two failed marriages and much angst, I finally uncovered the real me.

Jason probably knew all along.

He heard everything, saw everything. His senses were extraordinarily keen.

He knew his parents’ secrets, fears, hopes and disappointments – especially involving him.

He knew how he and his siblings were unfairly judged, despite the “We love you all the same” – a reassurance that couldn’t possibly be true.

And he had hyper-perceptive insights about his grandparents, aunts and uncles, his many cousins, his teachers and hockey coach, his rabbi and his learning partner.

At 14 going on 15, knowing everything was a gift but also a liability, an enormous burden so hard to bear.

Often, he cried himself to sleep.

Sunday mornings, Jacob visited Grandma Annie. He brought hot bagels and two large coffees. Annie supplied the lox and whipped cream cheese.

When he handed her a bouquet of flowers, she said, “They’re beautiful, Jakie. But what’s the occasion?”

“Well, you always ask if I found someone … and yes, I have.”

“Oh, I’m so happy for you.”

[They hug.]

“So tell me all about her …”

“Well, that’s the thing, Grandma. His name is Santos.”

[Pause]

“Hmm … I kinda thought … but you love him, right?”

“So much, Grandma. Wanna meet him? He’s right downstairs.”

“By all means! Go buzz him up.”

Whenever he could, Kevin Deniker passed through Murdo to visit his ageing mother and Gretchen, his twin sister.

While his mother puttered around the dilapidated wood frame, Gretchen sat immobile, expressionless, staring out the window.

“Gretch, it’s me, Kevin. How’re’ya doing?”

No response.

He shook his head, sighed. Hadn’t meant to.

He offered a stuffed bear he picked up at the Flying J, then sat it on her lap.

He watched her eyes, then smiled.

“I know you’re in there, Sis. You ain’t foolin no one.”

He barely noticed the twitch of her lip.

And the tear on her cheek.

Whenever I hear the truck horn, I know it’s Kevin, my twin brother, detoured off of I-90.

I sit stock-still in Dad’s reeking recliner, staring out the window. To me, Kevin’s invisible.

Today, he says some shit after dropping a cheap stuffed bear in my lap, like I’m still twelve.

That’s when he started getting into my bed, tugging down my pajamas, his hand smothering me. Forcing himself into me. Hurting me so bad I wanted to scream.

He snarled he’d kill me if I told anyone.

Then he laughed.

…

I wish he’d die.

And this rathole gets incinerated.

For years he practiced five sets of tai chi, five times a week. Today, during his fifth set, his body forgot an essential move that’d been challenging to perfect until the sifu patiently guided him.

At 74, he sometimes lost what he was about to say, then jokingly waved goodby to the thought. While writing, the online thesaurus occupied a separate onscreen window. Age-appropriate behavior was still disquieting.

But muscle memory forgetfulness was ominous. Stopping his recumbent bicycle simultaneously involved road-awareness, braking, downshifting, clipping-out, and balancing.

He’ll try again tomorrow.

Maybe it’ll come back.

Then there’s always the class video.

“Peter … come here.”

Ms. McColgan was holding my latest poem. “Tell me about this.”

She pointed to

fuck you mom // wish you were dead // sliding door slams // shattering glass

“I get the anger, but why the slashes?”

“Something from the Times. I’ll show you the article. It’s How Poets Use Punctuation as a Superpower and a Secret Weapon.”

“Okay, so … ?”

“Those slashes both highlight and unite each phrase, smoother than separate lines. And slashes suggest knife wounds.”

“And here … about these daggers …”

rocks thudding †† storming sand and pebbles †† she’s no more †† it’s over

“They’re self-explanatory, Ms. McColgan. Don’t you think so?”

Ever since kindergarten, everyone knew that Jimmy and Lucille were meant for each other.

Folks smiled when they held hands on the school bus, shared lunches on the playground, sang together in choir.

They also shared a secret language.

Una Ward heard them, before she tumbled down her basement stairs. Pastor Robinson’s father, too, while fly fishing, before he went head-first into the river. As did Matilda Sherwood, who impaled herself on her Fiskars garden shears.

State investigators ruled these and subsequent deaths as accidental.

Together, Jimmy and Lucille comforted mourners at the Riverview Funeral Home, owned by their fathers.

“Priscilla … it’s homework time.”

“Not now, Mommy. I’m busy.”

“What’s so important?”

“I’ve got to nurse Julie.”

Donna Maloney was distraught. Three older daughters had their dolls and imaginary friends, but Priscilla’s devotion to her American Girl doll was downright bizarre.

But when Priscilla blamed Julie for gouging a paring knife through the turtle’s shell, and Hammy’s tail sticking out of the garbage disposal, and then watched Priscilla screaming gibberish at Julie while chasing their Pomeranian around the pool with a six-inch cleaver, a push came to a shove.

And Priscilla and Julie were launched right off the deep end.

Our last Zoom class on the Chasidic Masters. Many of the 317 participants were senior citizens.

While I listened, I clicked gallery view and started paging through. Perhaps I’m a voyeur, but when else can you surreptitiously peer into peoples’ homes?

And then I spotted M Feingold, sprawled out and writhing. I watched in horror as she knocked over an IV stand, yanked off her oxygen cannula, then fell off the couch.

I could chat only the host. In CAPS, I screamed that someone was dying on screen nine.

She typed back “No lists. Nothing I can do.”

CALL SOMEONE

Since the pandemic, Harold March ventured outside only to run their ’99 Camry, go to doctor’s appointments, and take long walks.

He usually crossed Merrick Road at Silver Lake Park. He had a sightline of oncoming traffic, where he’d crossed hundreds of times before.

He got to the median, noticed two cars approaching far off, and as he continued, he realized they were racing towards him. Fuckin shit! I’m gonna be hit! He froze, the cars swerved, crashed into each other and smashed into Arnold, launching him into a chain link fence.

Harold didn’t die instantly.

He wished he had.

Danny sat atop the catch basin slab. His asthma prevented him from playing Little League baseball with his friends.

A scraggily-bearded man in a ragged suit, using a cane, stopped, then said, “C’mon son … walk with me.”

Danny’d been taught all about strangers. But he knew he was safe.

At the dead end, they followed a path Danny’d never noticed, though all the kids played in the woods.

They reached a clearing. An Airedale terrier stood, shook out, and padded over. Danny started sobbing and hugging the dog.

It was Toby, who’d died in April.

And the man slipped away.

Sammy Golson had always been fascinated by the mysteries of Stonehenge, where multi-ton neolithic monoliths were somehow transported many miles and theoretically aligned on solstice and equinox points.

This morning, a brightness lit his face, awakening him. Twice each year, the winter sun shines through a narrow alley due east between dismal brick buildings. The phenomenon has been nicknamed “reverse Manhattanhenge.”

He stared into the sun but was so unnerved that he arose and swallowed 33 hydrocodone pills he’d accumulated, then washed them down with a tall glass of ice-cold Absolut.

Finally, Sammy Golson was at peace with the universe.

In my later teens, I dropped by my father’s and his partners’ drugstore on many December 24ths, their year’s busiest day.

While Annie gift-wrapped perfume and watches, I chowed down her real Manhattan clam chowder, so different from Campbell’s. I worked the cash register and also more than sampled the spiritous punch.

I left early for dinner, but Dad arrived after closing, around ten. I never saw him drink, but on Christmas Eve, he was often shikured. He was funny … gleeful even. His joviality was so unlike his usual guarded demeanor.

I miss those days.

I really miss my dad.

All summer, Briggs, Fleck and I rode our bikes and played baseball.

Briggs called us the F-boys, because we were fat and made believe we were Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, the actual M-boys – me, by flexing my knuckles and swinging like the Mick, and Flick, by batting left-handed, which he sucked at.

One night, we decided to start a fire. On the baseball diamond. Where we always played.

My bike’s rear-mounted baskets carried the gasoline cans.

We poured gas over the dirt infield, lit a match, sat in a dugout, and watched the blaze, transfixed.

After, we pedaled home.

In the 148th Seinfeld episode, after Kramer’s sold his life’s stories to Peterman, Elaine’s boss, he couldn’t tell them anymore.

For decades, I’ve mined and scraped my memory for themes and scenarios. As per my prerogative, I’ve surely repurposed some.

If I text-searched my oeuvre for specific memories, I wonder if their emotional associations and context have been consistent. But that’s a rabbit hole time-suck for another time.

Unlike a videotape, our brains recall and assemble memories from fragments. Once I’ve written about something I remember, however, then that account becomes the memory.

My past has been typeset on paper.

In college I was so excited by Walden Two, The Harrad Experiment and the Israeli kibbutz concept – to thrive and find love and reach self-actualization in an egalitarian, utopian setting. But our high school teacher taught us that communal societies usually collapse due to financial failure.

Oh well.

Now we’re murdering our Earth, ourselves, with global warming, pollution, species extinction, disease, inequality, iniquity, corruption, greed, hatred, tyranny; lack of honor, lack of respect, lack of conscience.

Three-quarters of my century’s gone and I’ve no hope we can ever pull back from the abyss.

I no longer dream of paradise.

Nobody could accuse Donny of altruism. He had no qualms about using people, especially Marcella, for gratification.

Donny could smell the snowstorm approaching. Although whiteout conditions would endanger her, he was addicted to Marcella’s scent, her taste, her moistness, her pliant body.

His phone chirped. “Sorry, Hon. Can’t make it tonight.”

“Whatsa matter?”

“My car’s slip-slidin all over.”

“Didn’t you put chains on, for chrissakes?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Where you at?”

“The 208 junction.”

“Damn it! Wait there … I’ll come get you.”

On a horseshoe curve, Donny’s old Jeep skidded into a canyon.

Worn Bridgestones are no match for black ice.

The eldest of eight, Lani Schaeffer been holdin babies long as forever.

While Mama be out workin or carousin and makin babies, Lani be home with em’all.

Schoolin? Nobody cared about a backwoods girl who never showed up.

Until Wyatt started comin round.

Lani couldn’t get enough of his sweet talk, his soft lips, his quiet lovin.

When Lani started showin, Mama snarled, “You a whore. You know, right?”

“Mama, please.”

“You were sposed to be a role model …”

“Me, Mama? No … you were.”

“Don’t sass me, girl.”

“Whatever …”

Round midnight, Lani and Wyatt took off.

Ain’t never comin back.

She hated his sneering eyes over the operating table.

She loved his apologetic puppy dog look.

She hated him studiously ignoring her.

She loved his bringing her to the conference.

She hated his boisterous colleagues at the hotel bar.

She loved him eying her then glancing at the elevator.

She hated his pressing her against the shower’s cold tile.

She loved him entering her from behind.

She hated his sobbing we can’t go on like this.

She loved her nail file spearing his femoral artery.

She hated his blood spurting all over.

She loved his body crumpling in the stall.

Still wearing his Burberry, he pours himself a double, then sinks into the sofa.

He sips, sighs deeply, then downs the glass.

“Something wrong, Gerry?”

“Yeah, Vera … I’m suffocating. I feel like I’m drowning”

“Honey, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Nothing … everything. It’s all … just bullshit.”

“Anything I can do? I can drop the kids at my mother’s and …”

“That’s not gonna help. I gotta get outa here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m gonna load up the van with some clothes, laptop and my bike and drive until …”

“Until what, Ger?”

“Until I can breathe again.”

Always the same thing: ”Raymond! Go find your brother. It’s dinnertime.”

I knew Sonny’d be in the pasture, watching hawks and harriers hunting. After Mom fell asleep, we sometimes snuck out and he’d call to the owls, who always answered him back.

In April, Sonny found a great horned owl with an injured wing. He calmed the bird and carried it home, hoping to heal it, but Mom insisted on calling wildlife rescue.

Last Thursday, while riding his bike, Sonny was hit by a drunk driver.

Today, we scattered his ashes into the wind while a lone kestrel circled overhead.

After months of job-searching, despite his economics degree, Barry could find only a personal assistant position at Segal Fashions.

Where interviewers observed spectrumy behavior, Susan Segal saw potential. Barry was soon handling her correspondence and day-to-day administrative decisions.

She particularly appreciated Barry’s acquiescence. Though sometimes disparaged as a cougar, she loved exciting him with her caresses or fondling away his agitation.

Raised by a mother and grandmother with few boundaries, Barry had been conditioned to crave their physical attention. Susan began tapping onto his hunger and lust in a newly-converted storeroom.

Few entry-level jobs came with such generous employee benefits.

David Altman draped on his tallis, then sat down in the last pew, beside the radiator.

He felt at home in the sparsely-filled sanctuary. He loved closing his eyes and swaying to the cantor’s voice, the ancient melodies washing over him like a gentle breeze.

Then, Covid-19.

Virtual services. Zoom. No need for a suit. A mug of hot tea.

Rabbi Singer welcomed everyone, than chanted Modeh Ani. She urged everyone to keep their cameras on, each soul in a window.

Before opening the ark, breakout rooms.

Meeting. Talking. Laughing, even.

Greta Shapiro’s smile

… and it was very good.

Beating the lunchtime rush, Melvin Boggs plodded into Red’s and squeezed into the corner six-seater.

Doris seethed. Her best table. The fat slob lawyer unhurriedly inhaling the blue plate special. Tipping her just twelve percent. And groping her as she balanced a full tray.

Complain to Red? “Can’t do nuthin. The bastard’ll sue.”

Confront Boggs? “Just pour the goddamn coffee.”

Doris mixed pure caffeine powder from Amazon into a carafe and kept topping off his cup. During dessert, he grabbed his chest and keeled over.

The coroner, who despised Boggs’s courtroom insinuations, performed a perfunctory autopsy.

His determination: natural causes.

Five weeks before, when he accessed the Westchester County Center site, available time-slots kept disappearing. He hurriedly scheduled 11:45 appointments for this past Thursday.

Because a major snowstorm was approaching, he repeatedly refreshed the National Weather Service’s website.

A state hotline representative had no information about closure, but if he cancelled, the next availability was in two months.

Although he’d had experience, driving in snow could be treacherous.

To sleep, he swallowed half a Xanax.

They left at 7:00 and received their vaccinations soon after they arrived.

The snowstorm kept intensifying as they white-knuckled it home.

A shower.

Breakfast.

Relief.

James prides himself in solving word ladders. After supper, he mulls over them in his study while smoking a cigar and enjoying a glass of brandy.

“Come here, Leslie. Watch how I change HUG to DIE in only three steps: DUG, DIG, DIE. Four steps for LOVE to HATE; eleven for DESIRE to DETEST.”

He explains about variations – adding or removing letters using Scrabble points. I feign understanding.

I suggest, “How about INSEPARABLE to INSUFFERABLE?”

“Hmm. Most letters are the same. So … EPA to ERA to ERE to EKE to UKE to UFFE. There you go!”

And there I went.

— Lewis Carroll invented “Word Links,” later renamed “Doublets,” in 1877

Two unremarkable places in Jerusalem filled me with ineffable joy. One was cofizz on Jaffa Street, where frappuccinos cost five shekels and two got me well-caffeinated for only three bucks. I sat outside – with brain freeze – while strollers and the Jerusalem Light Rail streamed by.

But Katsefet, in the heart of the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, was my absolute favorite. A three-scoop cup filled with gelato – espresso and dark chocolate and salted caramel – topped by a sugar cone – transported me to ice cream paradise.

My mouth is watering.

I’m grinning.

Maybe next year in Jerusalem, for our grandson’s Bar Mitzvah.

Though Heidi, our West Highland white terrier, would eat anything, she nosed my mother’s meatloaf around like a willful anorectic. We had trouble stifling our laughter.

I once searched for a five-pound bag of high-protein dog food in the garage. I found a deflated, hole-in-the-bottom bag, plus an empty 100-bag Tetley tea box. We envisioned well-nourished, highly-caffeinated rats scurrying through the neighborhood.

Early pandemic, we bought two Costco-sized boxes of Nature’s Bakery fig bars. They’re not exactly Samoas-like bingeable. One individual pack’s foil had been mouse-chewed, but the prize inside remained untouched.

Apparently, some animals did have their standards.

My wife spatulas out my favorite one-pan meal – sliced onions, mushrooms, coupla eggs, shredded cheese. She’s having broccoli and melted mozzarella.

Lately, I get heartburn. Pepto-Bismol, Pepcid help. Yeah, indigestion could mean a heart attack. Already got the stents.

I bite into something tiny, hard. “What the … ?”

“Probably a bit of shell. Sorry, hon.”

“You ain’t doin a Schibetta on me, are ya?” On Oz, Adebisi and O’Reilly offed the Mafioso prison Don with broken glass in his food.

“Waddya talkin’ about? Whyn’t’ya finish your food before it gets cold.”

There’s something weird about her look.

“I ain’t hungry no more.”

From the moment Liam entered ninth grade, Charlotte, the Bitch Queen, and her royal entourage made his life miserable.

Charlotte bumped into him and reprimanded him for being in their way. She repeatedly tore open his book bag. His bicycle tires were frequently flattened.

Every evening, Liam bulked up using his brother’s weights.

One morning, a garbage truck rammed into Charlotte’s tiny Mazda. She was trapped inside, bleeding. Liam sprinted over, yanked open the stuck door, eased Charlotte out, and carried her away from danger.

Seconds later, the car burst into flames.

Liam was appreciatively crowned their new Bitch King.

After her husband’s death and with their kids scattered, Patricia Arnett had moved back into her family home to stretch her meager pension and care for her chronically-ill father and dementia-addled mother until their deaths. Her sisters were useless.

Mice annoyed Patricia, but she didn’t mind the barn owls and bats who moved into the one-room add-on, nor the varmints who purloined bird seed and peanuts.

But when the skittering in the ceiling turned into thumping and banging, something had to give. Patricia’s scant savings could never bring her ramshackle house back to code.

Thus, the fire.

Thus, the body.

Counting down to twenty-five-and-out, Bailey Howell worked midnights in western Atlanta, answering domestics, arresting drunk drivers, being hassled by gang-bangers, but worst, getting fucked-over by the bosses. With the booze and a cheating wife and only Ha-yoon’s massages to soothe his ego, he’d had it.

Finally, it was time.

Bailey got a small-town deputy’s position near Savannah. Midnights again, but it was tranquil. Barking dogs, ticketing speeders, dopey kids partying.

And Roscoe, the drifter. Bailey let him warm up in his cruiser, took him to Waffle House, to Dunkin for coffee.

Humanistic policing and being human.

Bailey could breathe again.

Friday night, muggy ’n buggy, Mama always says.

Vito, Laila and me’re just hangin out on Koosman’s dock, sippin Genesees Vito’s big brother bought for us.

We’re celebratin cause we’re all startin Brunswick High on Monday.

Vito gets up to take a piss in the reeds.

I move in close. “I gotta tell you somethin.”

She glances over. “Laila … I love you. I always have.”

“I know, Jamal. And I love you too. But … it can’t go nowhere.”

“’Spose we try …”

“There’s no tryin, Jamal. You know how my daddy and my brothers are.

“They’d rather kill us both instead.”

Two weeks ago, post vaccination, for the first time in 14 dismal pandemic months, we hugged Miriam, Jeff and our four grandsons.

They’d visited in mid-December on a mild-but-still-chilly Sunday afternoon, and we devoured the lunch they’d brought from the B&H Diary restaurant (my favorite!). But we remained masked and social distanced outside.

It was excruciating to love them from afar, to avoid embracing them with hugs and kisses.

Today we can barely wait for Jeff to arrive on his bike, and for Miriam bringing Yitz, Moshe, Eli and Avi in their van.

As Eli said, “It’s like the past.”

— Yitzchak, 14; Moshe, 12; Eliyahu, 9; Avraham, almost 6

“Hey, Hon … you know what I hate?”

“What is it this time, Marvin?”

“You know when you’re sitting on the toilet, working on a hard Sudoku, and you’re almost finished, and your fingers start cramping up?”

“Uh, yeah …”

“And then you’ve finally finished it, and you pull down some toilet paper, and you fold it just so, and you start to wipe, and you realize that the paper’d slipped out of your hand?”

“For shit’s sake, Marvin.”

“That’s right … all over my fingers.”

“Wouldya give me a break?”

“Yeah, but did that ever happen to you?”

“I married an idiot.”

Sunset Village scuttlebutt had it that “Bernie the Shlong” had once been a porno star. With his mail-order Viagra, he took on all comers.

But it leaked out that Bernie had prostate cancer. Treating it’d mean incontinence, bowel problems, and worst, ejaculatory failure.

Until then, grannies lined up with K-Y and Astroglide, like free coffee day at Dunkin. Some arthritic honeys swallowed Naproxen and yoga-stretched their thigh muscles. Others gleefully removed their dentures. The more agile bent over like Rottweilers in heat.

And then the surgery.

And the aftermath.

Bernie the Shlong did not go gentle into that good night.

Another July 4th barbecue at Max and Shelley’s, with Danny and Linda, the recently- widowed Marianne, and Sharon without her putzy husband. I couldn’t persuade Helen to back out.

For uncountable years, we’d been getting together for Labor Day, New Year’s, the occasional birthday. We used to talk about our jobs, our children … our retirements, then their children. Now the main topic is our cancers, bowel problems, arthritis … our biopsies, colonoscopies, bone density tests.

So fucking tedious. I had to get outa there.

“You can’t Barry,” Helen whispered. “It wouldn’t be right.”

Then Max said, “At least we’re still alive.”

Sid and I share a California suite on the Godzilla wing. We’re recuperating from radiation therapy for prostate cancer.

We’re hanging out with Charlie and Dave from the Nurse Jackie wing. Both had laparoscopic surgery.

Our wives and girlfriends couldn’t handle our catheters, our pads, our diarrhea, our bleeding. “In sickness and in health … till death do us part.” Yeah. Sure.

In the Healing room, we’re pampered by consolatory nurses who cajole and reassure us, while providing soothing massages and loving caresses. Irina has been especially accommodating.

Although today there will be no happy endings, we will have a tomorrow.

Sidney Blaustein couldn’t stop farting. She’d been tested and probed by experts. Special diets, special medications, special exercises … nothing helped.

Teachers made Sidney sit in the back corner, next to an open window. Or else, she’d clear the classroom. Even then, students occasionally passed out at their desks. Others stampeded down the hall. Once, when Sidney set off a smoke alarm, the fire department responded, lights and sirens.

All Sidney could say was, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

But if you watched her closely, you’d notice how she was always struggling to stifle a laugh.

— In honor of our grandson, Moshe, who bought me the Fun Fact Book, 99 Facts About Farts

“Mommy … I hate my name.”

“But Archibald means courageous. Your father, grandfather, great-grandfather … they’re all named Archibald.”

“But the kids laugh at me. Archi-balled. Why couldn’t you’ve named me … anything else?”

“C’mon sweetie …”

“The next time they call me names, I’m gonna … you’ll see. You’ll be sorry.”

Just after eleven, Adele Raymond’s phone buzzed.

“Mrs. Raymond … something terrible’s happened. Please come to Archibald’s school immediately.”

Minutes later, Adele arrived at Jackson Elementary and saw

… a gurney being lifted into an ambulance.

… another gurney being rolled out.

She ran over and saw

… Archibald covered in blood.

“Are you sorry now, Mommy?”

… Daddy locked up the refrigerator, the pantry …. even the TV.

He made us beg him for food. Ol’ Bo ate better’n us.

Then he ripped out the lock on our bedroom door and started comin for us at night.

First, Lori, then me. Said he would kill us if we told anybody.

And Mama? She just kept smokin ’n drinkin … and blamin us.

But when he started on little Katie, Lori and I got kitchen knives and stabbed that stinkin bastard till all that was left was a bloody mess.

No closed doors for us?

No open casket for him.

— based on the prompt open door

We thrive on the caress, the hug, and sometimes a mocking “good job.”

Vivien thanks me for my driving home from Jersey, for doing the paperwork, for feeding the birds. I, for her cooking my favorite one-pan meals, for hocking me about my health, for not butchering my haircut.

Many expressions of thanks devolve into punchlines and foolishness. Gratitude – and lampooning gratitude – keeps us relatively sane.

We never – but we always – take each other – and ourselves – seriously.

Quite the conundrum.

We’ve been together over fifty years, and we haven’t offed each other … yet.

Apparently, we’ve gotta be doing something right.

My father, Grace Life Church’s minister, wrote his eulogies in longhand at our kitchen table, and proof-read them to me.

Ward Beacham, who died in a one-car crash, was unscrupulous, chased after women, and was abusive when he drank excessively.

Dad wrote, “Ward was the consummate businessman. He spread his abounding love throughout our community. He had an abundant taste for the grape [pause] and perhaps loved his dearest wife, June, and their exceptional sons, Wallace and Theodore, too much.”

When I laughed, Dad said, “Words can be simultaneously true and false.”

I am now a speechwriter.

Ignorance is strength.

– “War is Peace / Freedom is Slavery / Ignorance is Strength” – George Orwell, 1984

Everyone loves my mother: her teachers and students, the ladies’ hospital auxiliary, her garden club, the church choir. To them, she’s warm, ingratiating and all-accepting.

But she hates me, her only child.

To her, I am a complete fuck up. She’s told me so … many times.

The counselor at Sanders Elementary wouldn’t believe me, nor would the psychologist at Berner High.

My excellent grades come easy. I also run cross-country and play first table on the chess team.

Still, I am a fuck up.

Recently, I found her will.

I’m her sole beneficiary.

Accidents do happen.

Her time will come.

Doc’s, on East 8th, was hemorrhaging money, but Doc Silver still loved opening around noon and closing whenever.

Cassettes, VHSs, and records had been superceded by CDs and DVDs, but streaming was annihilating him. Even the adults only backroom wasn’t breaking even.

With the pandemic shutdown, Doc longed to lock up and just walk away.

Then Joey Fatone came around. Made Doc an offer – “We’ll pay you to stay open … gotta keep a presence on the street” – he couldn’t refuse.

“No disrespect, Joey, but with you guys, there’s always a catch.”

“Not to worry, Doc.

“It’ll be … business as usual.”

“Roxanne, you’re gonna stagnate if you keep patrolling the same sector.” … Sergeant Kilgore, bugging me again.

“Thanks, Sarge, but I love Coachella Valley. Plus, I love the smell of date palms in the mornin’.”

“You’re always joking around, Roxi.”

Sure, a promotion and a pay bump would be nice. But after Reagen moved out, I needed to be with my boys during the day.

“But I like what I’m doing. Ticketing speeders. Locking up drunk drivers. Pacifying domestics. Commiserating with teenagers. Helping people.”

Not to mention the serenity, being able to breathe.

And stopping at Castañeda's to chit-chat with Angel.