“I guess I'm enchanted,” I'd written on another occasion. “Then why don't you ride out here and save me? Is your horse lame or something? Maybe you could just kill me and make us both happy.”

Lindsey and I are both talking loudly about things we would never talk about in real life, under the impression that this is all somehow instructional for Di. But I think it's really more about us. Di gives us an excuse to talk like two people unjustifiab

But I think what I remember most was Lynda really letting me have it. “Right now I’m seeing this married farmer out in Western Illinois. I met him at this bar out there called the Peppermint Lounge. Boy, they sure know me out there! Funny how every town

They watched the seven o'clock news.

It was the coward's way out, to commit suicide. And yet, one had to be brave to attempt it.

Mice dreams are a reality ...

Flish flash, flish flash, flicker of triangle lights. As he deparks, I say, “See that girl?” She crosses at the stop sign with blond hair flip, flash of white teeth: rips cookie from wrapper, drops wrapper on ground. “I bought her a…

The alphabets will disappear.

The steady sound of shoveling for the past three hours would have woken her, should have made her come to the window...

Kids said the boiler room was haunted. I don’t know if it was true then but it sure is now.

He sits, a large man with a walrus mustache, pondering a gold telegraph key.

The white space beckons-/ a blank wall in a decrepit neighborhood-/ wishing to be decorated or defiled

He boasts of administering regular beatings to his wife and claims that she enjoyed it.

It's cheap beer, but cold you welcome that rushing hiss and the following long drink of chilly wetness washing away the parched, dust dry, cotton mouth of grave-digging in the desert sun

“Has a letter arrived for me?” Billy sat on the third stair from the bottom, drumming his little hands on his Spider-Man pyjama bottoms. “Dad!”