I stop at a 7-Eleven for a pack of gum. I give the cashier a twenty.

"You don't have any ones?" the cashier asks.

I don't, but I say I do anyway.

The cashier just stares at me.

"Um,

On the way home, Jill pulls through Dairy Queen and orders a burger and a butterscotch sundae. Her boyfriend orders the same thing, three large fries and a dilly bar. They eat while Jill drives,

Shopping

I was sitting at the kitchen table, it was morning, the light was pale and fine, he was messing about, making something nice for me to eat. 'I want you to come with me to buy a

In God's Country

Camping in the northern part of the state, two guys and a girl woke to the sound of what they thought was a nearby bear. The sound did come from a bear, but the bear wasn't

It's Christmas Eve, our birthday's less than an hour away, and, per Tannen family tradition, it's Davie's and my first night home for the holidays. Unlike me, Davie's not much of a drinker—not

He could not look at the dog's eyes, light brown, like the sky before it started to rain. "Come on," Vassil said. The dog slowly followed him and climbed up on the backseat of the bone-shaker.

My boyfriend and I have sex and when we're finished he holds me close and whispers into my ear, I just date-raped you. What do you do now?

In the grocery store he throws an avocado at my head

In a walk-in closet, my father's ties were exactly six centimeters apart on wooden dowels. I gently touched the gaps between his ties and ran my fingers through the ties. Before anyone else, he

Sumatra, Indonesia, 1963

The hibiscus hedge is the boundary line the girl is not supposed to cross. Sometimes, for something to do, she walks to the end of the sidewalk and listens through the

Those days I believed in Body over Mind. I believed Mind followed Body because I knew matter could think. I was a cook in this little hotel/restaurant in Missoula, Montana. The manager put me up in

They think I don't hear their whispers, but I do. Even with a bathroom between our bedrooms, all I have to do is put my ear to the wall and I can pick up every word.

At twelve, I know a lot. I

I met her on the corner of a street and an avenue. "We didn't fix anything," she told me. She was no-nonsense, a fast-walker, a liberal. She agreed to show me around.

I tried to ask what it was

"I don't really know how to put it across," said the private detective.

Birds of spring flew across the bright sky behind the window of a dark office. The 50-years old woman sat down and looked

ADLERIAN THEORY

A little girl in a red princess-style coat with a checkered lining, aged three. She's on tiptoe on the back seat of the Chevy, a red and white finned '57. That's what I remember

"Sometimes things aren't supposed to change," Billy would say, lying in bed while rubbing my back, when we got to talking about the town, about how unfortunate it all was, how opportunity had gone

The Living Room

This is where we watch TV, where we entertain guests and let them add to the walls. You can see some of the words from the last dinner party on the ceiling if you look

If the game of baseball is a narrative in numbers, try this one on for size: on Saturday March 30, 2008, 115,300 people showed up at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for an exhibition game between the

I Telltale
My dad still has the lanky, deceptively thin frame typical of most pitchers, with long, gibbon-like arms – he is 6'2' but wears 37' shirt sleeves, giving him the reach of a man four

When I was a kid, my dad took me to a Mets game at Shea on my birthday. I remember walking up the ramps and looking outside the stadium, past the corrugated blue and orange panels that hung

To the editor: 

I enjoyed your baseball preview issue but wholeheartedly disagree with your predictions for the National League East. If you look at the schedules for both the Mets and the