“They’re homages.” Big Todd used the same voice he used when he was reminding Little Todd that Basic Instinct went under thrillers rather than horror, or that Die Hard went under action until October, but then got moved to the Holiday Favorites display.

Vikram knelt down and stroked the dog and it nuzzled into him weakly. He glanced again at the corpse and wondered how long the man had been dead. How long it had been since the dog had been fed.

I live in a world of stink—the stink of men, the stink of food, the stink of bug spray.  As I write this, I can see a spider walk up my wall.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “You want to go inside?”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” she said. “It’s not late at all, and you’re not staying here tonight anyway.”
He grunted as he pushed himself back in the chair.

There is something lying in the brambles and I can see now that it’s not a lion. It looks like a big lump of frozen, bloodied meat, wrapped up in a brown wool coat.

“I was in Saint Louis when the cholera come up the river, back in forty-nine. It lasted into the next year. Killed thousands of folks. A terrible thing, but mostly I remember the fear. Fear made some folks crazy. Not all of them, mind you, but enough. There were times when the Sheriff had to enforce the quarantine with a drawn revolver.”

He remembered her sweet-corn taste that he had enjoyed on the bus ride; considered briefly, again, that everyone probably had a characteristic flavor. Like the way some houses smelled like furnace oil. Or hot-dogs.

Between you and me, I hadn’t had a woman since the Obama Administration, and it was nice not being lonely for a change, and I’d worried I was going to spend the rest of my life alone, and some nights, Jamie would stay over, and she would sleep in my bed (her body so warm, a radiator), wearing nothing but her CPAP machine

Katherine takes a large sip of bourbon. The little garland of lip prints decorating the rim of the glass is almost complete.  She must be trying to make it, there’s no way it’s an accident. She fixes me with her eyes.  “R. U. N. V. S.” 

I pull my eyes away and look at Robert. He’s staring at Emily’s legs. 

Sonny placed the package on the slats between them, untied the strings and turned back the canvas. Seeing it now for the first time after many years, Sonny was struck by the bayonet’s efficiency of design. It was long, about twenty-five inches from grip to tip, to enable fighting at a distance.