Mary the virgin sets the tables I was a waitress in a little café in a small town in California. I’d always wanted someone to come into town and take me away on the back of his big black motorcycle. Some wild man, some lawless man. I wouldn’t ask where he was going — he…

The night that cats were wished away was a hard one full of wine, tears, and spectacle. Even those of us who were indifferent to feline companionship felt heart broken for those who weren’t, and together our humid, grieving silence was more tangible than the awe-filled silence that followed the disappearance of cancer. We were…

Forty-five seconds is all I have, maybe sixty if I stretch. I pace the green room beforehand, get my heart rate as high as it will go without running. If you run backstage, the audience can hear your footfalls. I start my entrance as far out as I can. There’s a window onstage, and I…

I don’t like it when Luke wins at things because he makes bombs. I know this is absurd, but people who make bombs shouldn’t win things. The ability to blow someone off the planet ought to be enough. Tonight he beat me at Scrabble. It was a bogus win — he really has no vocabulary…

Dean and the fat kid were coming. Brian looked at the door to the house, then back at Dean, then back at the house. Too far. He would make it, but they would see him and Dean would make things worse for him next time. They knew Brian’s mother wouldn’t get home for another hour.…

1. A man and a duck walk into a bar. The bartender says, “I’m sorry. We don’t serve gorillas.” “This isn’t a gorilla, he’s a duck,” says the man. The bartender replies, “I was talking to the duck.” The man and duck sit quietly for a moment. Somewhere in the distance pool balls collide. Finally,…

“It wasn’t the mall,” I hear Jessica say. “He left her at a Safeway. Tied up in the trunk of her car.” I hear this from a distance, just as I hear the drone of the boat’s engine and the echoing sound of a soda can being opened by one of the men on the…

Le Pue sat on the patio of a café, drinking lemonade through a striped straw. Le Pue’s legs were crossed, one knee over the other. Le Pue wore leather loafers and tailored white pants. Le Pue, of course, could not be seen. Le Pue could not be seen, and so Le Pue could not order…

When I saw the hand amid the Johnny Jump-ups, I assumed it was another weird lawn ornament like the angel babies the new super installed — until the thing began patting the ground as if searching for lost keys. Then a second hand popped up and the two of them scraped the earth, upturning clods…

When Kehoe, the landlord, comes looking for payment he drags in clay from his fields, all over the kitchen floor, and if I did that Ma would go apeshit but she says nothing to him and makes me sweep it up. He’s a tall, lean man with dangly arms and hands twice as big as…

Your husband walks into the kitchen carrying two knives, the kind with long blades that can slash through raw meat and thick vegetables as if they were Jello. You have no idea what he’s up to. And you don’t ask. He is tall and muscular, a man who chews his food deliberately and swallows decisively.…

Frozen birds fell hard and bounced in our yards, brittle feathers frosted to sparkling. We came out bundled in the cold, gathered the birds in barrels to keep them through the winter. The children, never so gentle, bent over and cupped the birds in their palms. The elders laid the birds on the barrel floors…