I came out of the bar and checked the message board. The plane was on time. Katherine was in the air and moving towards me. I sat down and waited. Across from me was a well-groomed woma...

“I’ve made it,” she said, “I’ve c… through.” she had on new boots, pa… and a white sweater. “I know what… want now.” she was from Chicago an… had settled in L.A.’s Fairfax dis…

That summer, July 1934, they gunned down John Dillinger outside the movie house in Chicago. He never had a chance. The Lady in Red had fingered him. More than a year earlier the banks h...

another bed another woman more curtains another bathroom another kitchen

the pleasures of the damned are limited to brief moments of happiness: like the eyes in the look of a dog… like a square of wax,

this guy he’s got a crazy eye and he’s brown a dark brown from the sun the Hollywood and Western sun

in junior high school Big Max was a problem. we’d be sitting during lunch hour eating our peanut butter sandwiche… and potato chips.

this man sometimes forgets who he is. sometimes he thinks he’s the Pope. other times he thinks he’s a

I don’t know how it happens to people. I had child support, need for something to drink, rent, shoes, shirts, socks, all that stuff. Like everyone else I needed an old car, something to...

I took the envelope home to my mother and handed it to her and walked into the bedroom. My bedroom. The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even ...

I finally, got a day off, and you know what I did? I got up early before Joyce got back in and I went down to the market to do a little shopping, and maybe I was crazy. I walked through...

I got lucky the next day. They called my name. It was a different doctor. I stripped down. He turned a hot white light on me and looked me over. I was sitting on the edge of the examina...

I used to take the back off the telephone and stuff it with ra… and when somebody knocked I wouldn’t answer and if they pers… I’d tell them in terms vulgar

I went up to Tammie’s place with my cardboard cartons. First I got the items she mentioned. Then I found other things—other dresses and blouses, shoes, an iron, a hair dryer, Dancy’s cl...