At the checkout line, I wave ahead a woman who clutches nothing but a bottle of shampoo. She doesn’t say thank you, but she does smile gratefully, so I’m not too bothered by the omission. But then she and the elderly cashier get to chatting. About courtesy, of all things.
Silas sat on the rotting porch steps and waited. It seemed he’d been waiting all his life—for the sun to come up, for his Pa to pick him up from school, for the lone plum tree out back to bear fruit, red and sticky-sweet inside.
I’m in the elevator with the angel.
“I’m hungry,” I say.
“You can eat peanut butter again.”
My mother hated the smell of peanut butter. As kids, my brother and I got it all over everything. Mom said it smelled to her like dogshit.
Jeff Friedman and Meg Pokrass Discuss Collaboration, Improvisation, and Which Beatle/s They Sometimes Are.