Her name was Carrie. And yes, it was love at first sight. Yes, she was a client, and you were supposed to keep your hands off the clients. Everyone in real estate knew that. She came into my office and took a seat in the reception area. I had a listin

The arid paramour, your breath is hot, dry, cedar. I sweat you corpus fluids and salt and the unnamably impure.

-Someone could have boosted this easy as pie, Ben said to himself.

There’s a room Full of white And it smells Like bleach and Iron

Now the house is empty of romance except a potted flowering plant from my mother for Valentine's Day. No man has set foot in my museum since I moved here. One man has set foot. The owner's brother to see about the gasket under the toilet. The Comcast installers, twice. The…

Before Uncle Max died of a heart attack, he had some words of advice for his only nephew and godson. Upon his death, as instructed, a package in brown paper arrived at Jeffery Glimson’s house on a warm June afternoon.

There was something about the boy that made me uneasy. Maybe it was the reverse widow's peak on his forehead or the way he wiped away his snot with the back of his hand. It could have been his red flannel shirt that reminded me of the hillbillies from the mountain…

"Already he is running and flying to the center of the world" - Mircea Eliade, about what a shaman is up to, under his mask.

and springs its ready-made claws into action and takes a soppy chance that things will probably go its feline way today. But you, my friend, must you always throw the testing switch to high voltage on me? Yeah I get that the history teachers…

She arranged to have an abortion at a doctor Greene’s office, who practiced out of a converted house on Solano Avenue on the north side of Berkeley. I took her there the day of the procedure. You couldn’t go to a regular hospital to have this kind of thi

Henry recognized the shoes. “There’s a little vampire came in with those on, but I last saw her over by the juice bar.” He couldn’t be bothered with Arthur’s “sections.” The club wasn’t that big that it had to be defined by sections.

“What’s this? What’s this? What’s this?” said Pablo moving from canvas to canvas. He was stunned.

These are not the caffeinated men of barbaric lore.

The night before, his dad had stumbled in drunk and beat his mother. John had covered his ears with his pillow to block out their screams.

You welcome the new girl by putting a message on her back. I breathe harder until she pops or until you ask me what I’ve seen or until you see my hand turn into a fist.