The flowers were dead now, forlorn in the gaudy vase. She studied them sadly. We haven’t had sex in that long, she told him. And he grunted.

After he became a celebrity he climbed up a mountain and jumped off and almost died and he was asked why and replied, I believed my own hype.

We were all short kids, playing as loudly as we could. My grandfather called us a “punk band” but disparagingly. So now we play dance music.

Conversation had been lost to the mists of their shared history. We must be telepathic, he’d think and she’d say, No, because she always did.

There had been a lake there once, and a sizeable town as well, commerce, but that was before what historians have dubbed The Impossible Fart.

He sips his tea and stares out the window. He watches his neighbor, the professional clown, jog by the house. What a running joke, he sighs.