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THE OTHERS are already on Main. I'm still here looking for my hat. I search everywhere and finally find it in your closet. I rush out and jump on Bucky, his flank rippling with anticipation. We get in formation just as the band starts booming and we strut down the street. The riders wave to the crowd, smiles all around. I see you up ahead on the platform, next to the mayor, and something starts to hurt in my chest.

THE ELEVATOR IS BROKEN. I lug a bag of groceries up the metal stairs to the eighth floor. Halfway there the soggy bottom of the bag breaks, releases a fusillade of cat food cans that go clanking and bouncing below. I sigh and sit, feel as empty as the bag. I stare at the white curdles of cottage cheese from the burst container, now on my shoes, and think this is what angel vomit must look like.

A BIRD LIVES ON MY HEAD, nests in my hair, pecks at my scalp. A finch, I believe. When I go out in public I cover it with a hat, so it's away from prying eyes and cats who would climb my body to catch it. Sometimes on the bus I notice others wearing hats, and if there are seeds or an errant feather on their shoulders, I nod and smile and preen.

Finch, Jeff Bridges (0:36)

WE WERE on a tour boat in Boston Harbor. A candy wrapper escaped from some kid's hand, scuttled our way across the deck. Russell pinned it with his boot, bent over, picked it up. A gust of wind snatched it from him, sent it out over the water. An old woman said: "Shame on you, littering." My brother's neck went red. He got that look that could clear a barroom in Quincy. He sighed, winked at me. "Yes, ma'am," he said.

HER MOUTH is a hammer. I kiss it and fall, pummeled, to the floor, crawl to my corner and rest. She summons me later to mix a drink, plait her hair, massage her feet. I am clumsy—she cuts my cheek with a toenail, presses her big toes into my eye sockets. I lie there shamed, foot-faced and humbled, her all-natural organic toy, and wait.

I SIT IN THIS ROOM in the castle's turret and fashion animals out of twigs and string. I stop and get up from my stool and look out the window. I can see the fortress wall and the farmlands and orchards and the sea beyond, and at times, a ship on the water. When it rains, I can only see as far as the farmlands, where an ox stands still in the downpour. Just as it does when the sky is clear.

I WAKE with headache. Anchored at my eyebrows, it spreads back like the tentacles of a jellyfish to sting and poison my brain. It hurts to see, everything the color of smokers' teeth. I close my eyes, full of sand. My ears enroll a hum, a steady electric signal from the past, a history lesson I can't make out. My fingers are lead soldiers, stripped of paint, heavy and dull. Hello! I must be dying. My chin is a stump.

THE FIRE AND SMOKE drive me to the window. Only a two-story drop, but I'm sure to break my leg if I hit the ground. I start my new gig at the Ice Capades next week (Snoopy) and I don't want to jeopardize it. If I can land on the awning of the grocery next door it might break my fall. I leap and hit the awning, tear through it and collapse onto a crate of tomatoes. Mrs. Liu runs out. "Hello, Tony," she says and claps her hands.

THE SKY—blue, flat, clear—sits on a hard horizon below which is green meadow puckered with yellow flowers, filling the bottom of the frame. In the smack center sits a red chair, wood unadorned, vibrating against the blue and green. A black bird lights on the seat, shits a splotch of white, departs on the diagonal. A painting.

HIS HANDS jump into the bowl, the ground meat, to join the conversation going on with the raw egg, onions, the salt and pepper. He squeezes it all through his fingers and wonders if his brain would feel like this if he grabbed it from behind. Cooking calms him, makes him introspective. This is Life, he thinks. You put a lot of stuff together, smoosh it around, and pretty soon you've got a bunch of meatballs.

HE SAID the questions were merely routine, the sort always asked during a homicide investigation. He kept looking at my shoes, then over my shoulder into the kitchen where I kept knives on a magnetic board, the points always up. The wet rags on the floor seemed to interest him. I invited him in, asked if he'd like some coffee, look at an album of photographs, some of which showed the slain neighbor wearing pajamas.

"THE NEW swim coach is really nice, Daddy. He likes to give my neck and shoulders a massage when I get out of the pool." She smiles at me, her hair still wet. "Do you know the phone number of the PE Department at school?" I say. "Oh, can we invite him over for dinner?" I put the phone down. "Do your homework. Daddy's going out for a while."

"WHAT'CHA WANNA go on a game show for?" She was disinclined to answer, thought it obvious, but said, "To win money and prizes and shit." She ran a wet finger around the rim of her glass, couldn't make it sing. He continued ironing the napkins. "You gonna wear a costume?" She turned slowly, found his eyes hovering in the iron's steam, stared until he looked away. "I do not intend to make a fool of myself."

I WENT TO HIGH SCHOOL WITH THE KING. Well, actually he was a grade ahead, but I'd see him in the halls surrounded by his bodyguards disguised as varsity football players, as if no one knew who he was, for crissakes. He always arrived late and left early, sat alone in the cafeteria. I felt sorry for him and one time approached him at lunch, offered him my sweet roll. He said something in French, then closed his eyes.

SHE WAS INDISCRIMINATE in her taste for jewelry. Paste, carats, costume, it was all glam flocking. She was like a magpie, hoarding sparkles in a box. Every day she put on earrings, necklaces, brooches, bangles, bracelets, and pins, none of which matched; an upended Christmas display held together by some hair and a dress from the bottom of a closet with a burned-out light.

THE LONG CARGO SHIP pulls itself across the ocean and comes to rest at the port. In the morning it stands upright on its hind legs and with resolve heads toward the business district and settles into the middle of the block. It removes its raincoat and folds it, puts it on the roof of the community center, then opens its doors to share the wares that braved the waves. This is Legend. This is IKEA.

IKEA, Ian McShane (0:26)

I STOLE a car once, a Buick Riviera that had a dent in the door, a puckered triangle where the paint went all funny. I used to steal a lot of things back then, magazines, school supplies, cigarettes, clothes, beer. I work downtown now, have a family, am an honest citizen. Yesterday I saw that long-ago car in a lot, touched the wounded door and felt a rush of joy, an awareness of a heavenly Fagin watching over me.

LITTLE FLUFF knocks over the dish of milk. "Naughty, naughty," says Mother Kitty. "You may not go out to play." Little Fluff begins to cry. Mother Kitty wipes her tears and says: "If you promise to be more careful in the future, you may join your friends outside." Little Fluff promises and runs outside, where Mitsy and Binks are setting fire to some trash and smoking the marijuana cigarette.

Kitty, Dave Alvin (0:24)

HER FEROCITY left him indisposed to fight back and finally to even listen. She squinted, eyed him like a pot of boiling water watches a raw egg. She filled the salt shaker. "What's the matter, Jerome?"

JESSE PAINTED a face on a rock and threw it into the pond in August, when the water was warm and buzzed over by flies and bees. It lay trapped in the silt at the bottom, stared up at the sky, waited for Jesse to appear overhead in the old skiff. A stickleback swam by, came back, puzzled by the face, then darted after a light mote, hoping for a meal. Jesse was away that summer and the face dissolved, was just a rock.

SHE SHOWED HIM THE TIES in the case, and as she bent down he studied the top of her head, wanted to sniff it. He imagined her as his lover, meeting in her cheap but cheerful apartment, far from his large home. She would cook him meals her Italian grandmother had taught her to make and he would tell her lies about his childhood. He bought three ties, paid cash, and never shopped there again.

"SHUT UP," he says. Being playful, she thinks, things being pretty steady between them lately. She holds his hand, huge, the knuckles like walnuts under the skin and smelling of machinery. He's a pressman at the
Times,
and when he comes home at night tired, she unlaces his heavy boots, pushes him back onto the couch and lays against his overalls, so that when they go to bed later they both smell of oil, and ink.

RAY WAS THIS TENOR PLAYER, good tone, good hands, never played with the big guys, but still, he was good. Between sets Ray would take out some Silly Putty, you know, that kids' stuff, and stretch it and pull it and even make little animals and things. Said it kept his fingers limber. In his pockets he'd carry three or four of those plastic eggs the stuff came in. That's how he come to have the nickname the Hen.

Hen, Jeff Bridges (0:31)

THE SKY is sullen and agnostic. The sea roams for color, any green or blue. The shore lays swollen, a drunken whore, covered with plastic bottles, the surf her snore. I walk, search for salvage, anything to sell. I spot a small coin that looks like a dime—it is a Czech koruna. I've found Prague in a dune, rush home to prepare for my journey. "Find anything?" you say. "Nope," I say and stomp the sand from my boots.

SHE WAS FROM TRINIDAD. She was beautiful. She lived upstairs from the dry cleaner on Third Avenue. I loved her. All that winter I pestered my mother did she need me to take something to the cleaners. She said we never used no dry cleaner except that one time, my sister's Communion dress. So I applied for a job at the cleaners and the lady there smiled and said: "Sugar, you are too, too young."

I OPEN THE CAN, press the oil out of the tuna with the lid. I recall sandwiches you made, just the right amount of mayo, onions, celery, sourdough with lettuce or, if you were happy, alfalfa sprouts. In my reverie I don't notice that I've sliced my thumb with the lid and blood mingles with the oil and flows down the drain and pipes to a processing plant and to sea, to finally wash up on a beach where we once fished.

"DO YOU believe in God?" The trunk lid blocks the view of his face. My hands are bound, and I am pressed against the spare tire. If there was a God, I would believe in him. The lid comes down and I am in darkness. It smells of oil and gas and rubber.

SHE SAT on the porch in the old rocker, back and forth, back and forth, tried to puzzle out her feelings. The paperboy hit her in the knee with the
Times.
She kept on rocking. Kids ran by, the UPS truck rumbled past, a dog shat on her lawn. She just kept rocking, thinking. The sun went down, cars pulled into driveways. Her husband climbed the steps. "Hi, hon." He put down his briefcase. "Fuck you, Larry!" she said.