Blynn entered the kitchen where Jeremy sat with his device instead of eating his breakfast cereal and showed him the drone she’d found stuck in their chinaberry tree.
“Another one?” Jeremy said, without looking up. Nothing seemed to shock him anymore. But he was known to burst out with laughter for the oddest reasons.
Evidently, finding the fourth drone in their backyard chinaberry was no longer funny.
It was serious, Blynn thought as she put it on the counter with the other three drones.

Sure, why not? It’s no skin off my teeth. Sure I can do that. Yep. No problem.
But can you do this for me: tie my shoes. I’m too lazy to do it myself. I don’t want to bend down. My stomach gets in the way and I feel like I can’t breathe.
Thank you. That is very good. You tie shoes very well. No, I wasn’t planning on asking you for anything more today. But I might later this week.

No, I am not just going to make up things for this week, for you to do for me. But so what if I did? Isn’t that what you’re doing, have been doing for the last twenty years?

You haven’t? Oh. Okay. Sorry.

Or else, he said
Or else what? I said.
Or else I won’t love you anymore, he said.
Fine, I said.
No, I mean I will never love you, he said.
Fine with me, I said.
I mean never ever, he repeated.
I’m okay with that.
Well you’re going to do it anyway, he says.

No! Not baby steps! Big steps! Hurry, you’re running late for your appointment. The appointment you should have made and could have made decades had you not taken so many fucking baby steps. You’re seventy-two years old now. All those baby steps amount to the mind of a twenty-four year old. You are decades behind. And now, frankly, from the looks of your painfully, tiny, slow steps, you are only doing this because of your arthritis.

“But there’s no where to hide,” he said, as he looked wherefore he should darteth.
“Of course there isn’t,” she said, gun cocked, ready to aim and fire. “Who said anything about hiding?” And with she aimed and fired.

Hey, girl. You will never die. You are the one exception to the Universe.
So party on, my friend.

I must tell people that I was not born with this face. I must tell them that I’ve had a nose job. Someone from Johns Hopkins built my beauty.
And as I tell my friends and colleagues about my nose job I know they will have questions, for which I am prepared to answer. I’ve been preparing for years.
I’ve practiced the answers, read them aloud, committed them to memory.
I must also tell them that my explanations are built. My whole personality is built. I must tell them that although I am attractive and gather large flocks of people who now want to engage in conversations, sex and fun with me, that I have no fucking clue who I am.
I must tell them I am lost beauty. I know they will laugh at me. I am prepared for laughter. I am prepared to laugh back and tell them that surgery will not fix their whole life. It will only expose questions and answers and the constant fixing of them.
I will then tell them that I am having a face lift next week and so they won’t see me for a bit.
And I am prepared for those questions.
But I have yet to prepare my answers.

It rang but I couldn’t find it. I nearly upended my entire bedroom.
And to make it worse, it wasn’t my phone. It was a strange ring tune.
Musical. But with a hint of menace.
So why would I want to find the damn phone. Much less answer it.
It wasn’t the phone. It was who the phone belonged to. Because the news was not good. And I suspected it was about me.
Or worse: Not about me.

Watching you sleep: this is when you are your most behaved. When you are awake you rail against the world and throw your dry bowl of cornflakes at me and pick your teeth with my favorite hair comb.
You told you me you wanted a divorce last night. Now you have the nerve to sleep there, unconscious, with no conscience, at the moment.
I’m left to shoulder the burden of your asking.
Maybe I’ll have to sleep on it and decide whether I will give you that divorce.
Go ahead. Snore all you want.
I’ll wait.

I smelled the rain and it made me sneeze. So I grabbed for the tissue box. But there were no tissues. So wiped my snot on the front of my shirt.
It was a black Henley, my shirt. People noticed. They also noticed my hair in disarray.
What did soften their grimaces however was my announcement that I was giving everyone the day off. Because our company had made a record deal on that particular Thursdays. But before they were allowed to jump away from their desks, I told them I wanted to buy them drinks.
Their grimaces then returned.