the blue pencil of the wave shots of yellow road a steering wheel an insane woman sitting next to you

My drinking slowed down the next week. I went to the racetrack to get fresh air and sunshine and plenty of walking. At night I drank, wondering why I was still alive, how the scheme wor...

Lydia and I were always fighting. She was a flirt and it irritated me. When we ate out I was sure she was eyeballing some man across the room. When my male friends came by to visit and ...

they’d come around and they’d ask “you finished your 2nd novel yet?” “no.”

once we were young at this machine. . . drinking

my mother, father and I walked to the market once a week for our government relief food: cans of beans, cans of

he carried a piece of carbon, a blade and a whip and at night he feared his head and covered it with blankets

The boys on Dorsey station didn’t know my problems. I’d enter through the back way each night, hide my sweater in a tray and walk in to get my timecard: We had a game going, the black-w...

Bobby’s wife worked two nights a week and when she was gone he got on the telephone. I knew that on Tuesday and Thursday nights he would be lonely. It was Tuesday night when the phone r...

Then I developed a new system at the racetrack. I pulled in $3,000 in a month and a half while only going to the track two or three times a week. I began to dream. I saw a little house ...

The next day we picked up some of her stuff at this motel. There was a little dark guy in there with a wart on the side of his nose. He looked dangerous. Hector was sitting on the edge ...

I was back in L.A. about a week and a half. It was night. The phone rang. It was Cecelia, she was sobbing. “Hank, Bill is dead. You’re the first one I’ve called.” “I’m so glad you came ...

we tried to hide it in the house s… neighbors wouldn’t see. was difficult, sometimes we both h… be gone at once and when we return… there would be excreta and urine a…

The first three or four days at Mears-Starbuck were identical. In fact, similarity was a very dependable thing at Mears-Starbuck. The caste system was an accepted fact. There wasn’t a s...