What I think," Chatty says, "is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even.

The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me.

My job ... I do nothing, it pays nothing, but - you guessed it - it's better than nothing.

The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss—you have gone and lost something else. But the body moves toward health. The mind, too, in steps. One step at a time. Ask a mother who has just lost a child, How many children do you have? "Four," she will say, "—three," and years later, "Three," she will say, "—four.

Then the children went to bed, or at least went upstairs, and the men joined the women for a cigarette on the porch, absently picking ticks engorged like grapes off the sleeping dogs. And when the men kissed the women good night, and their weekend whiskers scratched the women's cheeks, the women did not think shave, they thought stay.

I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.

When the beer is gone, so are they -- flexing their cars on up the boulevard.