Even though it was June, the entire island was still engulfed in a soft gray mist like a widow’s mane, and I felt it caress my face with curiously skeletal fingers as I stepped gingerly down the shaky gangway they provided for foot pedestrians . . .
“Honey, I’m home.” Home to sulky silence, the absence of pounding footsteps, and the discordant music of two contentious nine-year-olds. I move through the eerie, foreboding silence toward her. Her—the mother of our children, and my wife of choice on most days . . .
Robbing the liquor store went well. Took less than a minute. Alex didn’t even need to shoot his gun at all . . .
Fade in:
Flat on my back in the middle of one of the most famous intersections in the world, Hollywood and Vine. Cars slalom around me. Finally, it becomes clear, like a fade-in from a bad movie: what it all means. The pictures run through my mind at twenty-four frames per second . . .
When the young soucouyant first realised there was a baby growing in her, she held the thought in her head tightly, boxing it in the same way you might wrap a pastelle: fold one side over and seal before folding the other side . . .
My fiancé Jeff offered up his family’s hunting cabin in northern California so I could finish my novel. No phone, Internet, or TV . . .
My life seemed great in college . . .
Jack MacHugo took a swig of Hammerhead Amber and said, “You’ll pay me and you’ll fucking like it, even if you have to sell off your precious . . .” He choked as his beer went down the wrong pipe, but Stan Mulalap knew J-Mack was about to say piss hole, the term he always used for the island’s ancient doughnut-shaped stone money. The worthless sot always repeats himself, thought Mulalap. Like a parrot with Alzheimer’s . . .