It was the embrace of two women who understood. Maizie had spread the quilt across her bed and called her daughter to join her. She had been working on this quilt for almost twenty-five years but hadn’t shown it to Sunny until today.
“What’s wrong with you, Talley? You’re dead out there. On the floor? You know that? Dead.”
Talley knew. He knew it deeply, in the aching calcification of his bones and the sludge that had settled sedimentarily in his brain.
A never-ending skirmish was our version of a feuding David and Goliath, right-vs.-might, old-timer versus newcomer, downscale versus upscale conflict, guaranteed to make Dollar Island’s Gossip Hall of Fame.
Keith broke the water gasping, exhilarated. ‘A ten!’ he thought and swam toward the pool’s edge. He watched another diver enter. An eight. For a moment he bobbed at the edge.
I woke up on the “day of concern” at 6:03 a.m., as I have done since I was seven years old. I sat on the edge of my bed and counted my teeth with my tongue. I have a total of thirty teeth. When I was eight, I had thirty-two, at that time I read an article that said when aliens take humans for testing they will often remove a tooth or two.