James was running on the treadmill in time to the quick tempo music blasting in his ears. He was interrupted by an incoming text that lit up his phone sitting in the machine cradle.
Hi, I’m coming to NYC this weekend. Dinner?
Maddy.

Nitin Gharpure eases his Mercedes along the curb in the alley behind the warehouse. At the end of the alley, a semi is going beep-beep-beep, backing into a loading ramp, aligning a forty-foot container to the dock. And behind that, delicate tendrils of pink are forming over the distant Oakland hills.

It was Tuesday afternoon, on what should have been just another day of service for the Customs Patrol.
Sergeant Baxter of Southern District Airport’s Customs and Vetting Division was nearly ready to wrap up his shift. It had been quiet, this one. He’d normally hit his quota by the first few hours, after which he could busy himself with paperwork or checking out for anyone else he could justify not letting in.

My friend Alex was twelve years old when it happened. Years later, he told me it was like time had stopped the instant his father parked the car on top of the railroad tracks on Spring Street, pulled the keys from the ignition and tossed them out the window. I’ve always imagined Alex, his mother, and his younger sister looking at each other in stunned silence as the father closed his eyes and calmly surrendered to the universe, which he believed had defeated him at every turn.

The riot gate clangs behind me as I stride down the wide concrete hallway, nodding to passing officers and inmates. At a little over six feet tall and still carrying my fighting weight of 230 pounds, I know the inmates and even some of the newer officers find my size and demeanor intimidating. I try to soften my serious demeanor—bolstered by my icy-blue eyes and square jaw—by wearing my Yogi Bear tie with my usual black slacks and white dress shirt. My “uniform,” as my wife, Trula, calls it.

With every passing Christmas, my sons and their families spend less and less time in the house before hurrying back to their own homes. I will not see them again until the next Christmas, when they will reluctantly come again to honor the childhood promise that they made on their mother’s deathbed: to always keep in touch. Only then will the house see some life, this big empty house that they’ve given me so they don’t have to live with me.

The old woman, Ramona, like her umbrella, was from another time, a slower, quieter time, a time she missed. Despite a tight grip, the umbrella inflated above her hoary head, twisting in howling gusts. Cold raindrops plentiful as her days pin-pricked her eyes. Her feet shifted to avoid puddles but not fast enough, and her socks were soaked, and her feet soggy and cold.
I am only halfway to the grocery store. What a day, what clima!

I am the only passenger leaving the train at Oxford station. The platform is deserted and there’s a sharp chill in the air. The sky’s a dull white sheet. I sit on my roller bag, button up my cardigan and look around for Chrissy Sondheim. She said she’d be on the platform holding a card with my name on it. The silence is almost deafening. I think about the many times I came to Oxford when Alba was a student and how close we were. It had been the two of us against the world from the moment I gave birth to her.

It’s 7:30 A.M. Xavier walks up to his office building and stops. Later that morning he must give a sales presentation to a prospective client. As he goes through the revolving door, he tries on a wary smile. His personal black dog is back. My Black Dog. That’s what Churchill had called his depression. The truth is that Xavier’s Black Dog rarely leaves him. When his dog isn’t biting, she is sitting on his heart like a forty-pound dumbbell balanced precariously. Could a heart that weighs maybe a pound support a forty-pound dumbbell? No! Of course not! It would be crushed.

Today is not one of Harold’s better days. He’s fed up with Susan again. “You just stand there in the corner all day!” he shouts when she appears, which is pretty much a result of whatever’s going on in Harold’s mind at any given time. “Talk to me!” he commands. “Why won’t you talk to me?” It relaxes him to see her and he yearns to fall into the comfortable cadences they had for the ten years they were married before she died. When it doesn’t happen, he becomes frustrated and angry the way he is today.

Kai Lee is sixteen. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she arrives at nine o’clock for her job at the Read-On Paper Bookstore. The morning mall walkers pass her, usually on their last loop or two. Sometimes they’ve finished and are heading into the food court. Wherever they are, they say, “Good morning, Kai,” in cheerful unison.

Aug 13, Saturday, 11:05 p.m.
Edelweiss, Edelweiss… every morning you greet me…
Captain von Trapp sang the song on loop on the tavern’s stereo, and Mario, mop in hand, apron tied around his ample midriff, sang along, as was his nightly routine at Tavern Edelweiss in Calangute, Goa.

Overlooking the fields, older than the oldest residents of the town, is a juniper tree. It is too respected to be felled, standing like a lonely sentry as the fields are seeded, tended to, and emptied of their bounty. Though the peasants live on the land, they have no rights to it.

They had arrived at the airport late, which is to say, only forty minutes early — something he’d blamed Susan for, even though he was the one who’d decided to pack another suitcase in the morning — so the moment they passed the security check, they broke into a run.

As always, Monday morning hit me like a shock wave, rudely interrupting whatever dreams I was having. The dreams rarely left me with detailed memories, only a few faint glimpses of somewhere I had never been and people I hardly knew.

This year’s Welcome back meeting following the summer break was different. It included a detailed presentation on Generation A.I. Looking around the auditorium, it seemed many other teachers were anxious too. This was our first and only official orientation for this new generation of students.

I’m Theo. I’m seven.
Me, my mom, my Dad, and my sister Ava, we’re in the doctor’s office. The talk doctor.
Mom and Dad are sitting on the shiny blue couch. It made a squeaky sound when they sat down. Ava’s between them. She’s eight. She’s wearing bell-bottoms, just like Mom. She even has a mood ring, just like Mom. She thinks she’s so grown up.

My name is Henry Wadsworth. Most prisoners call me Hank. I am proud of that moniker. Rare is the prison wherein there are any guards not loathed by the inmates. To be called Hank means I am an exception, one of the good guys, known to be decent and fair. It’s because I’m a man of faith. I don’t proselytize, though. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. I don’t force my faith on others. I think that’s why the prisoners like me.

I fell in love for the first time during the summer of ‘94. It was the summer before my senior year of high school, the same summer Sammy Davis played baseball for the Vermont Expos. He wore Mickey Mantle’s old number seven and manned his old position, center field. The Mick was Dad’s favorite player. Dad grew up west of the Mississippi in the fifties, so he bled Cardinal red. Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, and Enos Slaughter were his Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

I was admitted through the ED to a step-down unit shortly before midnight on a rainy late July Thursday. My wife, Gwen, had driven me there because of increasing gut pain, but upon intake it was noted that I also had significantly low heart rate and blood pressure. Initial tests provided no immediate explanation for any of the conditions, but because the pain became sufficiently intense that they had to administer a low dose of morphine…

I was just a tiny feral kitten when I lost my mother. She went to fetch food like she did every day. My siblings and I would wait on the porch of a house whose family was always traveling. It was freezing more than usual that evening. The loud noises from the roads made us crouch in fear. Then, I heard this screeching sound followed by a door opening and slamming in the street near the house’s porch. I listened to a woman’s cry of anguish.

Exactly three weeks, six days, seven hours, and forty-two minutes before his sixth birthday, Nathan Front announced to his mother that he was going to die. They had ground to a halt on the road that overlooked the coastline.

On April 26th, 1949, Selma Stern married the wrong man, a circumstance she compulsively complained about, as though Morris Wort, an otherwise infuriately passive individual had grabbed her by the arm, dragged to City Hall, and forced a judge to unite them before her fiancé, a demigod stuck in traffic, could intervene.

Waves of people swarm the sidewalks like the waves in the nearby ocean, and it is always hot. Shoppers, families, delivery boys, phone addicts, lost souls, tourists, girls of the night clearly in their early mornings and more. They all look the same…