Buses drove through the twill of night.

Her cell phone shattered on the floor.

The Cadillac showed no signs of use.

Used, borrowed, and stolen books narrowed the staircase.

It was too hot to sleep in the same bed but they chose to suffer together.

"I'm afraid we might have to perform a biopsy."

The choking taste of grenadine coated his throat.

The hidden, slicing metronome of the mantle clock made the gradual shade of sunset sound to Pedro like the operation of a massive, simple machine, with gears that met almost silently but with pronounced advancement while the tinted mask of night turned slowly over the earth.

Up close, the gray droppings that littered the basement floor like spilled BB's were the remains of dessicated pill bugs, each rolled over on its back with its legs and feelers curled up inside its papery carapace.

They were forced to borrow linens from the neighbors.

Weakened to a cinder's lightness by the fungal dry rot, branches from Deuce Square's resplendent, vaselike elms split along their bark lines and shattered on the sidewalk.

Fifty dollars fell into a hole.

Green pasty grass smeared into the seams of his white shoes and browned in the sun.

Luck is who your parents are.

From Steinbeck: "It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it."

The ghost elation only absence can afford shivered Jonas in his bed before sleep.

He belched.

"You gotta pay to sit there."

A decrepit arrogance permeated the room, the smell of stale cologne and reckless investment.

Doughnut grease made his fingertips slip over the grips of the steering wheel.

At least, she thought he did.

Wet cement curled around Sheila's fingers as she pressed her palm into the sidewalk.

Soap bubbles streamed off the roof.

Her breasts were sore as ever.

The wool sweater itched against his bare skin like a juvenile guilt.

Decisive failure and the chance it offered for reconstruction and regeneration appealed to him far more than limp optimism.

He decided to trust the ice.

The Canada geese's cylindrical, evenly formed turds blended into the grass of the baseball field like discarded core samples.

Look up and cough at the abundance of stars.

Might as well have stayed home.

No amount of blood upset her.

They awoke in her furnished basement.