There was a  chalkboard sign outside the Vietnamese restaurant. Andrew liked restaurants with these signs. Hand-drawn messages. Cursive letters sometimes. Drawings sometimes. They affected him different than electronic signs or those god awful TV screens that displayed horrible stock images. He hated those.

The message outside the Viet restaurant read "Have...

Once he got stomach  cancer he began recounting how many meals he had had without ever being truly grateful. Now his time was limited. But everyone's time was that way wasn't it? Since the day they were born. Nobody lived forever. Although some people wanted to live as long as...

It was dark when a voice rung out. He recognized it. You didn't need the light to recognize a voice. In fact it made it easier.

"Blue. Is that you?" it spoke the same way he  remembered. In those days back at Victoria Park. That cold winter . It was not...

The first thing I did after hanging up was drive out to the ravine. Jesse and I didn't come here often. But when we talked about ourselves with other people we made it sound like we always came out here. Matter of fact, we didn't hang out much at all.

Yet...

"Wipe that smirk off your face."

Kyle brushes his hair behind his ear. Stared at her.

"Stop it! I mean it!"

He walked over to her slow. Soon they were kissing. After it was finished they lay there. He thought he could use a  cigarette . Damn he would want one if it...

The mist was thick. He felt like he was walking through water. It reminded him of the  aquarium in  Chicago . It was dark now just like it was in that glass sea tunnel back when he was a kid. It had been a school trip. Over three hours to...

Affleck giggled. Then he was about to take a sip of his  cold brew when somebody came over and decked him in the face. That was the last thing he remembered. He woke up in an  emergency room . He thought about saying "where am I?" but that felt like...

The voice on his phone sounded dangerous. Not that it spoke in an aggressive tone. Just that he knew what was on the line. Everything. Or the only thing. Where the fuck was Diego?

After hanging up he did the one thing that gave him any sense of joy anymore. When...

Mark Love. The name slipped off his tongue. He laid on the floor beside his head, which had a six hundred dollar mattress. When he wasn't sleeping he felt more comfortable laying on the carpet. He liked the way it felt against his bare feet. He liked the way it...

Give me that. 

Carl handed him the coffee. Frank threw it immediately into the trash and said, get up, we got to go. No time for a hot coffee right now.

Where are we going?

But his supervisor didn't answer. Carl didn't understand why his super did this. They were walking so...