They put the shock collar on the boy and that was it for the nanny. First they put the collar on one another. They were professors in English and Philosophy, all of them smart people.

You don’t like her much, not that you can tell her that. Slugging along behind you, hands in pockets. Sullen as a fish despite the fucking dawn rising over the city, the glory of it.

She wants to meet the pig—snout down, paraded through the town square of sodden earth and
stump dimples, now trailed by serpentine line of freshly showered farmer with tomato noses and
breath prematurely soured from all that auctioneer talk.

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.

Jakey, face pressed to the window and eyes cupped into makeshift binoculars, could see Mrs. Claddagh sitting perched on her couch, speaking to herself.