The jeweler made jewelry for mothers, grieving mothers. They were the sort of bereft who sit alone in bedrooms, closets, dining rooms, who put on brave faces and stare at stationary objects. Eggshell colored walls. Abandoned winter coats. Gifted flatware. Each mother wept, sat — howled. They were wolves. The jeweler didn’t know the mothers.…

Bob and Jude sat at a booth in the back of the diner. Their seats were covered in green vinyl, torn in several places. Some of the tears had been patched with duct tape, but others, left unmanned, leaked the foam entrails. Bob was eating a grilled cheese sandwich. Jude was eating chicken strips. “I…

I wrote a story about a husband and wife who were both unfaithful to each other but in a way that didn’t hurt anyone. They had loosened the marital bonds just enough that they could each do what they wanted but still go on together. One day the husband found out that he was very…

“I’m spending New Year’s Eve with a girl from the bible school.” My buddies stared at me, shaking their heads. Behind them, here in Ray’s apartment, stood the gleaming keg, the bongs lined up on the window sills like trophies. There was a high stained-glass window. They yanked me to stand in the colored rays…

When our cousins have garage sales, it’s like Christmas, because we get huge trash bags full of shirts, overalls, shoes that didn’t sell. Sometimes, we go to their house before they pack up their driveway, barter with the people who are left, buy a game of Pictionary without dice for ten cents, a pack of…

On that Friday morning, during an April heat wave LA natives didn’t notice, I still believed that I had seen the limit of what could go wrong in my life. I found a clean pair of jeans and enough milk for cereal, folded a to-do list into my bag, and switched the extra-gel shoe inserts…

Your cat sits on the stairs behind an old baby gate. He’s very sick, though you swear he won’t bite. It’s more for the other cats. They’d get at him. “They’re not so nice,” you say, explaining to me the vampirism of felines, that infected blood is infected blood no matter how it’s drawn. Your…

When Otis died, the rain started falling. At first so lightly my windshield wipers squeaked even at low speed. But then the drops fattened and multiplied, and people took to hiding beneath umbrellas. I merged with gray, bought a thick slicker, and cursed my man for dying. I stopped going out. The night-and-day ting-ting-ting on…

I borrowed my brother’s clothes for cowboy night at the Red Willow Tavern. He had a nice red and white checkered shirt with triangle-shaped flaps and pearl clips and buttons. He gave me worn Lee jeans he claimed were purchased in 1984 in Long Mott, Texas. They were 33 by 33 and I had just…

We got our jobs by lies and defended our honor by night on the Hill in Saint Louis. Jimmy was thirty and I was forty and we’d met in the state pen. The foundry was hot and shitty but the pay was good and Annette at the corner bar cashed your paycheck no questions asked.…

Everything was normal on Monday. Same for Tuesday. Wednesday came and went. Thursday was just fine too. Friday happened, and all of the sudden it was Saturday. On Sundays, we eat a big breakfast of eggs and bacon and sausage and pancakes and oatmeal and jellies and coffee and juice and hash browns and onions…

On the way to the colonoscopy he says, “They’re not going to find anything I can’t outrun before I’m dead of old age anyway.” He has started the counting in earnest: My last car, my last driver’s license photo, my last census, the last probe up my ass. He could outlive all of it. Or…