The next curve is a tricky one. Too much pressure on the gas and the van could tip. Not enough, and the truck a cigarette-length from your fender will send you flying cliffside. Or worse, they’ll overtake you ‘round the blind corner. This happens, and your regulars will click their tongues and say each second …
The free health clinic had closed, and our anxieties were piling up, so Frankin and I had no choice but to try our luck near the pill mill that afternoon. The plan was to mug some unlucky individual, then sell the spoils so we could each afford a doctor’s visit. “In all probability,” Frankin had …
The Thompson kids’ dad sold the black walnut trees behind their house for timber and now clusters of big sad stumps spoiled the backyard. Tess was living with and caring for the kids—ten-year-old Miles and eight-year-old Minnie—while the Thompson mom recovered in some facility for broken-down women and the Thompson dad drove a long-haul truck …
It was a patient, Mr. Clayton, who told Nell about the Traveling Hall of Wax, while at her office to replace a cracked molar. After measuring the gap and gluing in a temporary crown, Dr. Klein left Nell to clean up. “Spit,” she said. Mr. Clayton spit. “You know Taylor Swift? I mean, I know …
Emma had never really considered her body, or rather, its temporality before. Illness was a little-thought-of inconvenience, something that came and then went, a brief interruption that required little in the way of meditation. A more formidable opponent as one grew old, perhaps, but that was a long way off. Illness had nothing to do …