Six hours and counting. Six hours until she touched down in another world, another life.

Mr. Dai called to inform his wife that he would be leaving directly from work to pick their daughter up from the airport this evening, so Mrs. Dai would have to buy the fish herself.

I am chocolate man looking at blue man flashing his lights as he stops milk chocolate woman and light cafecito man.

It hadn’t occurred to Michael that his head might get stuck.

Arriving home in his private plane from an L.A. movie set, Rick can almost fool himself into thinking that he is famous.

The big clock on town hall marks the hour, the bells inside ringing and ringing.

It is the spring of 2007, and I have traded in my solitude for friendship.

It breaks like this: We hold on tightly, and literally, because we’re young and we’re stupid and because we still want to have hope.

For six days after the operation, everything was blue.

I’m sitting with Larry at a Chipotle in midtown and his thousand-yard stare tells me I might dial the nihilism down a notch.

The purple haze of Jupiter surrounds us in its cool-toned glow.

From my desk, I watch her turn the pages. She is meticulous, each touch / feather-light and exact in her dissection.

Politics is like an awful off-Broadway play that can’t decide whether it’s a tragedy or a comedy.

Floating on the bubbly foam of her extra hot latte is a wilting tulip pattern that looks like the wounded black bird she saw lying dead by the fountain yesterday.

To fight your family’s genetic tendency to become ghosts, you rub makeup on your face so people can see you.