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.

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

I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.

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

Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We've read our Shakespeare.

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

Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.