The man who drives the gas truck is built like a fireplug. He’s got a shaved head and goatee. He paces in front of his rig while it idles. I’m in his way.

I couldn’t go to a movie with a friend because I had to go to my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s daughter’s wedding. The movie was about a serial killer but it was French so I knew it would be okay …

We didn’t know what was wrong with the neighbors. Whenever we passed them in the halls they made a strange sound, like a hiss. They never looked us in the eye, either.

By the time Dalton D’Amico arrived, Miss Nugent already had the other children at their little tables coloring pictures of Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount. She tried to keep their hands busy; you know what they said about idle hands.

My mind was far away, thinking about how my big brothers were taking me out to Santa Monica for the Bowie show that night, when I heard it.

For two years Eileen lived in Queen’s Crescent, on the southern edge of Hampstead Heath, in the ground floor flat of a Victorian semi-detached building, with her landlord living above her.

My father killed Albert Miller on Saturday, June 4th, 1851, an afternoon of high sky and unforgiving sun.

Though he didn’t usually keep count, over the past couple years, Blake was sure he had been mistaken for someone else at least six times.

Sylvia never missed a chance to hear Ella Fitzgerald. That night’s appearance at the Apollo Theater was no exception.

In a town of drunks, his mother was the town drunk. As the old joke goes, what’s the difference between a drunk and an alcoholic? About fifty thousand dollars a year.