The sky was clear and pale that July morning in Anaheim, California.  Michelle covered her brow with one hand and shifted her weight to her hip.  She wore white plastic sunglasses and she kept her brown hair back in a white, loose scrunchy.

James stood next to her wearing jeans and a Padres cap.  He held a water bottle in one hand and fanned himself with the other.  He was at least a foot and a half taller than Michelle.  They stood in line beside each other for a few minutes without speaking until James, desperate to avoid boring her, spoke softly. Read more…

The streetlamps ended as soon as the road turned into highway and snaked around and over the evergreen dense mountains.  Alan gripped the steering wheel of the old Ford sedan with two hands and drove at a pace adequate enough to keep up with the luminescent road signs, which slipped past his headlights one after the other.

He wiped his thick, gray mustache and stubby chin with one hand and looked at the passenger seat, where Simon slept with his mouth open.  He had a blanket curled snugly around his fists and a closed bottle of arthritic medication in his lap.

The car approached the top of a steep mountain and on that horizon the sky glowed faintly.  Alan wiped his mouth and mustache again.  The old Ford sedan rocked suddenly and the front tire blew out jerking the front end of the car to the right.  Meanwhile the glow over the mountain road intensified and formed into a definite concentration of light. Read more…

George pushed his glasses firmly to the bridge of his nose.  He hunched over the freestanding wooden chopping block in the center of the kitchen.  The morning paper lay open in front of him and his cup of coffee produced a thin, dissipating vapor.  Outside birds sang to each other in the violet half light of the early sky.

He woke up before everyone else on Saturdays because it took him a day to adapt to the weekend schedule and because this was the only time he got to himself.  Margaret would be up later, than the kids: Kaily and John.  George scratched his face and sat on a stool.  The coffee, evoking almonds and chocolate, tasted exceptional this morning. Read more…