“I’m just not fancy like that. Do you wish I was fancy like that?” “Like what?” I ask. “Like those women,” Sadie says, nodding toward the bank of televisions on the opposite wall, “with their Derby hats, and party dresses, all frilly and foo-foo, high heels. I’m a jeans and…

“Do you ever wonder how you’re gonna live?” Sadie asks me, apropos of nothing, at least nothing as far as I can tell though Sadie’s mind works differently from mine, as we sit out back on the patio after dinner, the pork roast Sadie cooks in the crock pot every…

I had to have been the only person to actually get slower at the Speed Clinic — a six-week training program sponsored by the local running shop for runners who wanted to increase their speed. But it wasn’t entirely my fault, or maybe it was. Within the first fifteen minutes…

It’s happened, at long last. You’re out, for once, not because you really want to, or need to, but because you feel you have to, that it’s time. Because no man is an island, something your father used to say, when you were young, twelve or so, when you wouldn’t…

Sadie says we’re roommates. She says she loves me, and it’s fine otherwise, but that we’re just two people living together — we share a house and we share a bed but we come and go like roommates. “There’s no passion anymore,” Sadie says, the way she gets when she’s…

The call came early in the morning, impossibly, ungodly, early, with the sudden shrill ringing of the phone first echoing in my dream, whatever I was dreaming about, and then piercing the stillness of the bedroom. I opened my eyes, blinked to focus, to see Ashley sound asleep next to…

Sadie keeps a postcard of Key West on her desk, propped against her computer, among her Post-it Note reminders, and a dog-eared copy of the company directory, IT’s extension highlighted and underlined and starred, and the green rubber stress ball with the crooked smiley face she got at that trade…

It’s that standing appointment you have, when you find yourself sitting across from your therapist, those doe eyes, pursed lips, expressionless, with her flowery cardigan and placid disposition, in her suburban office in a converted townhouse in the East End that reeks of potpourri and scented candles, littered with overstuffed…

It’s Christmas Eve, and you’re high on oxy, lying flattened on the floor in the middle of the living room, legs straight, arms stretched, staring up at nothing, frozen in this moment, lights out, shades pulled, in the dark and quiet, only the listless flicker from the last glowing embers…