The elephant dragged its feet. Meanwhile a man with a mustache spun in circles. A pink tutu hung limply around his waist, and the cigar held loosely in his mouth dropped ash onto the pavement. Olivia hated art movies, but she had agreed to join Richard. It was something about him wanting to impress his artsy friends. He didn't even know what all this meant. Olivia was sure that no one in the room did.
It was a little like placing a few blocks in a room and calling it art. She had gone to a museum with Emily recently....
The coat was ragged. No, not ragged - raggedy. Tatterdemalion in some circles. Tatty, to his mother.
Love, to Matilda.
She slept in the pockets, wrapped herself in the arms and nibbled anxiously at the buttons.
Button.
He'd worn this coat for years. Navy blue pea coat from the army surplus store downtown, his first grown-up purchase. He lived alone then. He went to school, paid his book fees and came home to his one-room flat with a lukewarm kettle and a dusty sleeping bag on the floor.
He'd never had a pet. Allergies always did him in.
Then Matilda...
Gigantic.
Enormous.
Immense.
Even bigger than Daddy.
Evie looked up at the ship as they waited for the cars to start boarding.
"What happens if it sinks, Daddy?"
"It won't sink, pet."
"But what if it does?"
"It won't." Evie sighed and looked back again. There were people moving around, she could see them. Little ants pulling ropes and other official-looking things.
"Why isn't Mummy coming?"
"She can't, pet. She would if she could."
Evie held tight onto Daddy's hand when the tannoy rang out.
"Please make your way back to your cars now. Boarding will begin shortly."
They went...
I don't know if that was a good idea. Who knows what would come of it? Maybe nothing, maybe something. It wasn't like writing that note was a spur of the moment kind of decision. It was something that I'd thought about doing a million times before. Of course, I'd always thought that I would have used very different words and say something entirely different. I hope I was wise, but I can't tell. I feel like I was just a little girl using grown up words. I don't know if that was a good idea...
"And, did he ever touch you inappropriately?"
Sarah paused her story for a moment, growing red in the face. "What?"
"Did he ever touch you, it's okay, you're not alone. This office is a safe place."
"Why would you even ask?" Sarah nearly yelled in her surprise.
"Look, I get a lot of patients coming through here and I just want them to know that they can talk to me freely. It would be statistically plausible that he touched you at one point."
"It would?"
"Yes, look, I have your breast interests in mind."
"Well... maybe, I dunno."
"He probably...
My name is Sal. I work in a box factory in Manhattan. When I first got here, this city seemed sane to me. Now -- I'm not so sure.
A woman walked into my office the other day wanting records of her company's invoices. She was stunning. I offered her coffee while she waited for me to look up the records, and we really hit it off.
Her name was Darla. I asked her to dinner that night and, much to my delight, she accepted.
We met at a cozy little Italian place for wine and pasta. Things went...
Drowning in the sea. That was the trick of it. To be seen to swoon, to fall to the bottom. The pretend to expire. It was the pearls that weighed me down. They alway do. Spiros bought them for the moon. That is what he said. The moon. As if the moon had a price. All things had a price. He gave them to me in the back garden of the hotel under a moon that was more red that white. A bad luck moon. But the band played on in the gallery and couples in their best passed under...
How tiny. That was all she could think as she held it in her hand, how tiny it was, how tiny every feature of it was, the eyes, the scaly pro to-feathers, the beak, even the little talons, how exquisitely tiny to hold such intricate detail. She could feel the small heart fluttering through the fragile body into the palm of her hand. How tiny.
It moved slightly, shifting it's head slightly to cast a dark eye up at her. It wouldn't last long. They never did, when she found them like this. She'd tried to save the first couple...
Screw destiny.
I smashed the crystal ball against the sidewalk, jumping on it to make sure it really was destroyed. It couldn't tell me anything anyway.
I was abandoned on a doorstep as a baby by my mother, and I always knew I wasn't going to be like her. I wanted a big family that I could give all my love and attention to.
But I picked the ball up at a flea market, and while polishing it, saw a doctor's report. It said that I was infertile. I didn't want to believe it, but I've always been superstitious, so...
I jumped off of a building once, and landed on the next one. I had to. The building was crumbling from the foundation up because one tiny sliver found its way across the massive concrete block and decided it was hungry. So it expanded and soon enough, the building was shifting, leaning on the right and then switching, crumbling more and leaning on the left.
It was a leaning tower and I had to jump from the sinking building if I wanted to live peacefully. Not all of jumped, though. Some wanted to stay, saying it was their home because...