The Dakemans were untidy degenerates, including their children and pets, according to Mom. “Some people make their pets and children as trashy as they are,” she said, her voice hushed discreetly.

“Consider, if you will, the ancient Egyptians,” Stan Duval said, just as we were sitting down to dinner. “They had the correct attitude, in my humble estimation.”

Uncle Ferris came down from Seattle to live with us in Oakland while he looked for a job. He'd been working for Boeing but had been fired for reasons he glossed over and glamorized in his favor. 

I met the Russian group again at the home no, he is already dead at Hemingway’s Museum. Always the same thing. We hadn’t been there even five minutes when a penetrating stench of life also entered and began to gesticulate: “Comrade, please. There, one minute, please, a photograph.” I looked at him, half attracted, half repelled; he was blond, with an enormous round face with his small black camera dangling over a checked shirt. 

Aunt Satchie’s house is Victorian, which means it’s like a church exploded and got put back together in a slapdash, with little domes and steeples.

He feels like he’ll never desire anything again, except sleep, and to be rid of this smell.

They’ll have to hire a girl. The father knows why. The daughter will no longer tolerate any housework that gets her hands dirty. She gives excuses the father doesn’t ­believe, but he doesn’t argue.

The first time we try to deliver the Gold Crown the lights are on in the house but no one lets us in. I bang on the front door and Wayne hits the back and I can hear our double drum shaking the windows

Pushed from its hidden end, a sofa drifted into the parking lot under my window. The pushes became feeble thrusts and then short convulsions, until, with a final spasm, the couch nudged one of the abandoned supermarket carts by the trash containers and came to a rest.

I wake all night from dreams, delighted by these reprieves against the terrible morning. The waking must be to remind me: Don’t forget the children or you shall go mad. Children simply wander through