sit by your side watching worlds slide by. They appear and vanish on your skin, invisible to the eye, but I feel their passage in my chest. In my mind. I watch your eyelashes flutter, watch the rise and fall of your breasts. I press your warm hand between my cold palms. You look so peaceful, but appearances can lie. I know because to the outward eye I’m awake and alive.
“She’s dead, Mr. Spencer.” Conrad stared at the detective’s upper lip. Adriana, dead? How could she be? He’d sat with her on her balcony this morning, drinking lapsang souchong with a splash of milk and honey. She’d made him scones. He’d kissed her twice. “Mr. Spencer. Are you listening? Do you understand the gravity of…
Maurice Bentonville the second hitched up his overalls, adjusted his milk-can crown, and peered through his toilet-paper-roll binoculars. His perch? A cottonwood stump. His kingdom? The river streaming by. His subjects? Trout, catfish, carp, sharks, beluga whales, crabs, crawdads, worms, water striders, and hippopotamuses.