With Balance Due
Two years later. Dave and Margo were in California. I had been working in a convenience store ever since the waterbed business sprang a leak. Julia got me the job.
“Official use only,” was highlighted in red on the mail I received.
The return address: Internal Revenue Service.
I licked the paper cut I received rifling [...]

Dr. Chips
Penelope stayed at the store until the end. She wrote Dr. Chips on the invoice. Dave was excited that a doctor bought a waterbed.
“I gave him a bunch of our cards,” he said. “With a doctor out there stumping for us, we’re gonna get some business. We’ll get out of the hole [...]

“You’ll be done in a little while on this one,” Penelope said.

It must have smelled like perfume to her compared to her father’s vehicle. What must it be like to have a father like Gary Hopkins and living so close to Highway 41 in the humid, fetid, palmetto undergrowth and in the shadows of decaying gypsum stacks just off the road?

Rana and I were supposed to get married the next weekend

It was shortly after the first of the new year. Margo reminded Dave it was the start of a new tax year.

The Flannel Minotaur
It was a labyrinth of winding streets. Some abruptly ended with no warning. I backtracked to the beginning several times. I consulted the map. The roads on the map twisted and turned. The names of the streets on the map were longer than the streets – like thoughts wrapped around the words [...]

A hand was thrust at me through the threshold of the open front door.

The customer was waiting for me in a silver Corvette, shiny and sharp like a dental instrument

The downstairs bell rang. I assumed it was Mrs. Simmons warning me she was going to practice on the organ