Brian was Catholic in the way that a lot of Catholics are. He didn’t get to mass every Sunday, he hadn’t made an act of contrition in a decade at least, and he ate meat on Fridays during Lent. But there was one thing he was certain of, and that was that he intended to [...]

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James had just moved to the suburbs from the city after living downtown for eight years. It was only then that he was mugged in front of a convenience store only a few blocks from his apartment building. The men that mugged him were black and had, James figured, come from the neighborhood across the [...]

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Nancy was stuck with the ugly guy while her friend was somewhere behind the shopping center screwing his better-looking friend, Stuart. They didn’t say much to each other while they waited for the other two; instead they smoked cigarettes and listened to the radio that the ugly guy had been carrying with him when they [...]

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Matt met Suzy at the Barnes & Noble on Union Square North. It was the first time he’d set up an Internet date. They hadn’t exchanged photos online, but they managed to find one another. Matt bought coffee for them both — these were the days before the latté — and they talked about books. [...]

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Chris and Don were sitting in Chris’s dorm room when there was a knock at the door. It was a guy named Jay. Chris had never met him before, but Don knew Jay because they had the same major. Jay was stopping by because Don, who was editor of the school’s literary magazine, had rejected [...]

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They sat at a table in a local club. She was unhappy, she told him. She was depressed, even. She was an artist, and he didn’t understand her. (She was an artist, by the way — a painter and sculptor of some renown.) She didn’t think they should see one another anymore. He wasn’t surprised: [...]

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He had wanted to break up with her for some time. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her. Rather, he was disintegrating psychologically, and he didn’t want to put her through that. He began faking a case of agoraphobia and canceling dates with her, hoping she would get tired of him and dump him. When [...]

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Mike had not spoken to most of siblings for several years when he died. When he was nearly dead, he told his sons-in-law, Nick and Eddie, to stand guard outside the funeral home where the viewing was held to keep any of his despised family from attempting to attend. And he told his one brother [...]

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Whereas Philip organized his records alphabetically, Paul organized them by the order that they were acquired. Philip wondered how Paul could remember, since the collection of records was at least twenty years old. It’s easy, Paul would explain. The first record I bought was Ziggy Stardust by Bowie. I liked it so much that I [...]

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