Autocomplete

His mind racing, Martin stared at his laptop. A swell of nausea washed over his insides. He’d hit “send” without checking the address. His wife’s and Maria’s names both began with M.

His tie loose around his damp collar, Martin drove home from work, the radio too loud. He tried to imagine what might await him: boxer shorts strewn across the hedges, shards of China littering the hallway.

The late-day July sun blazed down on the highway blacktop, softening its edges. Rush hour traffic, always heavy, slowed to a turtle’s speed.

Behind him sirens wailed. In the far right lane was a red Toyota Corolla, its left side ripped away. The driver lay on the road covered with a plastic sheet.

Martin got out of his car and ran. Scorching waves wafted up from the asphalt. The last time he’d seen Melissa’s car had been that morning in their driveway.

Turkish Coffee

So there we were again, in that little Japanese place near Martin’s Square. Kenan orders sushi for both of us. He asks me if this is OK.

“Of course,” I say. What am I supposed to say?

Kenan wears a gold chain around his neck as wide as a baby’s finger. He tells me about his wife, Christina—how she doesn’t understand him—as he slides his fingers along the back of my wrist.

When we leave the restaurant, the silky air of the June night envelops my bare shoulders like a veil. My sandals click against the pavement.

“We will get coffee,” Kenan announces as we approach a café. White bistro tables line the sidewalk.

His hand slips beneath my dress as he tosses back his espresso.

Christina makes him coffee like this he tells me. He drinks it at all hours. I have no idea how he sleeps.

Housekeeping

Melanie Parks rolled her steel cart, heaped with towels and complimentary pens, up to room 217. She slid her card into the lock.

In the twenty-four years she’d been a maid at the Greensborough Hilton, Melanie had seen almost everything, including a Vietnamese pig helping itself to the mini bar. Once she’d found a diamond ring in the shower drain. And although it could have ended most of her troubles she’d reported it to the manager.

Melanie opened the bathroom door, her housekeeper’s fingers grasping the brass handle. On the counter sat a brand new bottle of Chanel No. 5.

The glass was weighty and luxurious. Its contents shimmered like liquid amber.

She sprayed the perfume into the air, the mist filling the windowless room.

Unexpectedly she was nineteen again, waiting in the basement of First Baptist for her wedding.

She slipped the bottle into the pocket of her apron.

James

When I got to the rental house in Santa Fe, I slammed the car door. I hadn’t meant to. It just sort of happened, the way things do when you’re not sure of yourself. I’d just left my job back East for a year, to write a novel. At least that’s what I’d said. I hadn’t wanted to admit the truth. It was because of James.

I’d met him on a mountain in Vermont, a ski instructor with fantastic arms. He lived in the desert with two Labradors and a beat-up Ford pickup.

Come to New Mexico, he’d said in the email. I’ll teach you a few new moves.

But when I stepped onto the patio the Sandia Mountains rose up purple and auburn. James faded away like early morning fog in the hot sun.

In the kitchen I made tea. Then I unpacked my laptop and began to write.

Snowstorm

The wipers barely keep up with the snowfall as our van inches up, then down, another steep mountain road. No one expects heavy snow in October.

Ben is tired from hours of driving but won’t say so. There are eight people in the van, our college friends on a weekend reunion. I haven’t seen any of them, even Ben, for years.

The inn is a blessing. A fire roars in the lobby’s stone hearth. Ben sits next to me as we relax with drinks. His eyes sparkle as he talks. A small scar is etched above his lip.

“There’s a problem with your room,” the clerk tells me.

They are overbooked due to the storm. They can’t turn people away.

“You can share mine,” Ben says.

In the big feather bed we read aloud stories from the Times. We fall asleep with our legs entwined.

The snow piles up outside.

Evicted

“We have to move,” my husband said, taking off his jacket. “The landlord called and said that he sold the house.”

“When?” I said. We’d just moved in ten months before.

“Three weeks,” he said.

Our toddler son pulled at his shirt tail.

I’d had to stop working when Milo was born. There was barely enough money to pay for diapers.

The next day I walked Milo in his blue stroller. I pretended things were normal. The air smelled like roses.

When I got home there was a balding man banging a “For Sale” sign into the grass by the sidewalk. He smiled at the baby.

Later I went outside and pulled the sign from the ground. It was wooden and heavy, but it didn’t take much to throw it over the back fence into the river.

There’d be another sign, I knew. But it was all I could do.

The Defender

Ben Brady snapped his cell phone shut with a soft click, running his fingertips across his damp skull. The radiator in the corner hissed. He struggled to remain composed.

When the DA had shown the grisly slide show of the nurse’s swollen body to the jury, Willy James Lockheart had looked on with the rest, horrified, his giant hands resting in his lap. That day, and every other of the three-week trial, Brady would have wagered his partnership that his client was innocent.

But the voice still ringing in the attorney’s ears told him he'd been wrong.

The mailman had found her, beneath Lockheart’s portico. The police warned that there may be others.

Brady unlocked the center drawer of his desk and withdrew his shiny Smith & Wesson, never fired. He tucked the gun into his belt, beneath his suit coat, and told Margaret he’d be out for the afternoon.

The Host

I watch from the café balcony as Gianni strolls down the sidewalk. He is all man, like a 1950s Marlon Brando. His shirt tails are untucked.

We’d met once, at a wedding in Calais, two years before.

I don’t want to be caught staring. I talk with someone at the table, a teacher from Barcelona. But it takes too long for him to arrive. Hornets dance inside my chest.

At last, I spot Gianni at the top of the stairs and remember the clean smell of the sea the night he walked me to my hotel. The other guests shake his hand, embrace him. His laugh fills the room.

If only he sits where I can see him, it will be worth coming to this party, on an overcast Sunday night.

“Is this seat taken?” Gianni points to the empty chair next to mine.

“No,” I say. “Please, sit down.”