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now officially "too hot," pulled off his

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and in her panic to hold it together she leaped from the edge into soundlessness

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"Mmm. Timid people can surprise you."

"Well she did."

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were actually put to thee then by the

As I sat here typing my password into my computer to begin the day I wondered, Did I have a dream about typing my password into my computer to begin the day?

Stung

Suddenly the bee was there, on my ring finger. It wouldn’t go away, which was strange; it just sat there, brushing my skin with its wings and hair. It’s just a poor bee, I thought—I shouldn’t kill it. Should I? I tried to shake it off and sure enough the sting came, hot and angry. Red wine spilled out of my plastic cup in big drops but still the bee kept stinging. It felt like a reproach. Like I deserved it.

We moved our picnic things away from the nest and I imagined them watching approvingly. Don’t worry, bees. We won’t bother you no more. But soon after I poured another cup of wine one landed on my hand, my other hand—again, the hand that held the wine. I was resigned this time. I just have to let it do this, I thought. And it did. My fingers swelled; my hands felt poisoned, heavy. But no bees bothered us again.

At the party in New Hyde Park, out on Long Island, I was hoping the flight path of the planes taking off from JFK—or landing, who can ever really tell?—would be right above the house, as it was last year, but it wasn’t; the planes were off to the side a ways, disappearing behind the giant gray water tower and reappearing after a strangely long time for something so big that’s moving through the sky.

Jackie played on the well-tended lawn, sometimes by herself, sometimes trying to keep up with big kids. It was cloudy but it never did seem like it was going to rain. The sun came out later, blinding us on our ride home. On the Kosciuszko Bridge you could barely stand to see the Skyline.

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of God, our own highest voice, becomes crowded out in the process

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She looked back at me and the fear was naked in her face.

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a sickly, frail fellow, who despite his fundamental defect,

As I wandered from the kitchen back to my cubicle with my coffee I overheard someone telling someone this: “I don’t like the way he seems to coast through life. I find that… problematic.”

The Dictionary Defines Hundred as Ten Times Ten

There’s an old dictionary propped on a stand on a table near my desk, opened to H—humblebee to Hunnish. I glanced at a random definition on the page: hundred. It is defined as a cardinal number, ten times ten.

4th Avenue Scene

A few years ago I was gassing up the car on 4th Avenue in Brooklyn, soon after we moved to Park Slope. A car was pulling up to the intersection in an ordinary, leisurely way when another came up fast behind it, pulled around and stopped just in front with a screech. Immediately its driver began a furious harangue:

“You fucking cocksucker! You motherfucker! You fuck with me? You fuck with me? I’m about to fuck with you, motherfucker!” he shouted, his head and torso straining out the window. “I’m going to fuck you up you little fucking pussy, you fucking maricón!”

He punctuated his insults by spasmodically slapping the outside of his door and banging on the horn.

“I fucking kill you! Fucking little bitch! Look at you now bitch! Look at you now!” Honk! Honk! “I should climb out of my fucking car and kill you, cocksucker!” Slap! “Bitch!” Honk! Slap! “You cut me off?! You cut me off?! I cut you off, bitch, how you like that?! How you like that?!” He indicated the front of his car with a jab of his outstretched hand, like: Look. I cut you off. “You don’t fucking cut me off, bitch! I fucking cut you off! Faggot!”

Through it all the driver of the other car, a meek young man in glasses, sat impassively, staring at his abuser.

“You wanna fuck with me, you little piece of shit?! You wanna fuck with me? I fuck with you!” Honk! Honk! “Little fucking bitch. You happy now? Bitch.” Honk! Slap! “You fucking happy now?”

Here there was the briefest pause.

“You fuck with me again I kill you.”

And then the angry driver took off in a U-turn, tires squealing, and drove back up the avenue. The light had turned green and red and green and red again by now, so the other driver had to wait. And wait. Alone.

Something fell from the windowsill into the tub, one of Jackie’s toys or something. Probably the wind picked up.

A minute later there was an awful crack outside the living room. I went to the window. It looked like a normal summer evening—pedestrians, joggers and cyclists, all oblivious, lost in thought. Yet the wind was moving strangely, in little eddies. You could see it in the way the leaves rustled and the trash blew. I looked to my left and found that a tree had split about halfway up and fallen over parked cars and into the avenue. Passersby turned to calmly photograph the scene. Cars honked as they navigated around the branches. Finally the police arrived, then some kind of city truck. We settled back onto the couch as the chainsaws started up.

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Or what I imagined someone might wear to a party.

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"If Kenten is involved in something that sleazy and high-risk, why would he initiate a meeting and attract attention?"

Robert Moses Beach

We set up on a little patch above the surf, in front of a young, attractive family, a couple and their little girl. They looked European, Italian maybe. They spoke English to each other but you could swear you heard an accent. Tedious dance music played from their little black-and-red boom box. Several times, the man lifted it, shook it, blew on it. She sunbathed. Sometimes she’d lift her head to watch her daughter with a frown. Sometimes he’d rush up and scold the girl for not playing nice with Jackie, though Jackie didn’t care. The woman sat up to eat potato chips, deliberately placing one at a time on her tongue. She had eyebrows like Kate Winslet. Her husband picked up the boom box and blew.

A gust tore their parasol from its base and rammed it into an elderly couple in beach chairs behind them. Profuse apologies, expressions of concern. The man retrieved it, tried to reinstall it in the wind, thought better of it and folded it up.

When it was time to leave he took the little girl into the water and submerged her, holding her by the waist. She wailed as he carried her back up the beach. They shrouded her in towels and set her down. Before long she was quiet, relaxed, possibly asleep. The man picked up the boom box and shook, and blew. Finally they gathered up their things, the woman took the wrapped-up girl into her arms, and they walked off to the parking lot.

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They were all hooked into dispatch

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on the front step as we pulled into the driveway.

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"I'm sorry," he said again