Andrew was the worst of all of them, though they were all pretty bad. By about that point, most of them were on the dance floor, throwing themselves around with strained smiles on their faces, or else trying to grind up on girls. Andrew was propped against a pillar though, barely able to move. He was nodding his head to the beat, though even that was pretty out of time. A thin, sickly trickle of sweat ran down the middle of his forehead, seeping out from under his ball cap.

An old Motown song came on, and Andrew thought he...

We had gone to Ueno with the best of intentions, to take in some art and culture, but by 2 pm it was too hot to do anything but drink in the shade by the pond there. The lotus plants were fully grown now and spread out, standing tall, across the whole of the pond like a field of corn husks back home; in the middle you could just see the red and gold spire of the temple there, in the middle, rising above the lotus.

We sat on a rock under a weeping willow. Emi had told me once...

Kid Boxer's dad was an alcoholic and sometimes when he was liquored up enough, or liquored up in just the right way, he would bestow upon Kid Boxer his hard-won, deeply questionable wisdom. Towards the end, Kid Boxer's dad was drinking a lot, so the advice was coming fast and furious.

One thing Kid Boxer's dad liked to expound upon was the idea of going down swinging. "Fuck those pricks. No matter what, you have to go down swinging. Nobody can fault a man for trying, as long as he went down swinging." It was all pretty much like this,...

The snow had hardened overnight and was crisp now. It wasn't what you would call a cold day and Fran had left her jacket unbuttoned. She was looking at the children off in the distance.
"I'd forgotten that it was today."
Alan was looking farther away.
"I wasn't looking forward to it or anything."
He reached in his pocket and found and empty packet of cigarettes.
"Dammit."
"When did they start doing it?"
"I don't know, maybe 3 or 4 years ago."
"Do you remember the first one?"
"No. It's just a thing that happens."
She felt very bad then...

They had forgotten to close the window flap on the tent the night before. It was early morning now, and the light had started to come in; a cool, damp air had already come in and settled into the corners.

She had been awake for about 20 minutes, annoyed by the light that irritated her even through her closed eyelids. Michael was curled up in the corner, half in his sleeping bag with one leg hanging out. His shirt was undone and had spilled open, and even now he smelled like booze. His bandage had bled through the night and...