The ants always burned too quickly for their adolescent pleasure. The three of them would spend weeks building the miniature metropolis in Sam’s back yard, and it was all over in a matter of minutes. It wasn’t fair. Or fulfilling. It would have to change.

“Milagros, la verdad ó te atreves?”

“Truth”

“Did you make-out with the panadero on Monday?”

We all giggle. Rumor has it that half of the seventh grade has been fingered by the baker during
recess behind the basketball court. Rumor also has it that Milagros was seen running out of the
bakery, fixing her skirt after the bell rang on Monday.

You’ve been one-legged since the lasso trap.  Your personal ad says “Kids: undecided” even though you desperately want two.

When the maître d’ shows you to your blind date’s table, you are pleased with her prominent forehead and symmetric face.   She has potential.

Before you can sit, her eyes drift to where your missing leg would be and snap back to your face.  She forces a smile.

You talk menu.

She likes the braised shank.

You are relieved they have salads.   “I ate barbecue last weekend,” you lie.  “I’m in a tuna salad mood.”

That I was six years old and in the company of my father, whose inapproachability was increased by certain spatial proximities such as that which our weekly drive to the old-age home involved, with me seated next to him, silently counting the telephone poles flitting by my hand-cranked window, from whose glass I was all crew cut, forehead, and conveyant eyes which, due to a congenital neuromuscular defect, bulged unnaturally, making me appear as if I were in a continuous state of shock about what- or whomever I was looking at, which expression my father described as endemic to a category of

I can picture the faces of the executives as the film begins.  It’s the first time they’ve seen it, the first time the director’s let anyone with money, or marketing savvy, or a neck-tie enter the screening room.  The director’s taken precious care with this cut, with this sound mix.  He personally supervised yesterday’s dry run to make sure every seat in the house is comfortable and free of squeaks, that every line of dialog is audible and every low tone rumbles the house (but doesn’t blow the speakers.)  The projector has been calibrated, the lens cleaned, the bulb (or Blu-Ray laser) tune

The phone will ring, a knock will come at the door “tattarattat,” a voice on the other end of the line will mention murder, and Sorenson’s partner, a detective he has been working with for the past fifteen years, will ask him to come down where the squad car will be waiting.  This is routine, an almost nightly event—ten years.

Crime of passion.

Stabbing.

Triple homicide.

Denise kicked me out of our apartment two weeks before my 30th birthday, and Roy said I’d always have a place to crash with him, no problem.  But my habit of working late into the night, of getting phone calls when he was trying to soak his feet, and the fact that I’m a terrible wing-man all added up fast.  A week later I was going to a conference, and he offered to drive me to the airport, and Roy told me, on the way, that he’d be changing the locks while I was gone and giving my stuff to Shane to hold on to.  I was leaving Chicago a homeless man.

A solo sailor is one thing. A solo flyer is one thing. People get used to the idea that a girl in her mid-teens can face air or water or wind on her own. They don’t trust her to face people. Not without being overborne in some way or other. A girl needs a protector on land. That’s what they tell her, sometimes they’re right.

Correction, March 17:    A March 15 article on immigrants affiliated with the Russian Mafia purchasing real estate in New York City erroneously stated that Pavel Dostoyevsky is not related to the great Russian novelist.  In fact, Mr. Dostoyevsky is the great, great grandson of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, author of such books as Crime and Punishment.

The long stretch of beach toward the tip South Padre Island was known for its shimmering white sands.  My sister and I would play in the sand dunes and slide down as if it were fresh-fallen snow. Then, most days, we would run along the beach and bob in the water’s soft, translucent, green waves. Under our toes we would feel the hardness of sea shells and reach down to pull them up. Some would have turquoise and pink stripes, red sunbursts, blue spirals, yellow and chartreuse edges—all specimen to behold in our tiny hands and carry back to the pile on the beach’s edge.