When autumn comes, the leaves fall off of the trees onto the ground. Actually, I should say it like this: When the leaves fall, autumn is here. I have to work on improving my style. Last time the teacher wrote: Style, wretched. It’s upsetting but there’s nothing I can do about it. I like autumn. 

Every Christmas Eve, my father used to drive us down to Uncle Wayne and Aunt Phyllis’s house: a two-bedroom box in a subdivision backed against the Connecticut Turn­pike.

Before I pressed the up button on the elevator, I saw my reflection in the shiny metal doors and said to myself, maybe even mouthed some of the words, Take the elevator back down and leave this building and never return.

Later, after his arrest, Vadim Semin was at a loss to explain his actions. It was a perfectly ordinary concert, perhaps not as big or as successful as he’d have liked, but the sort of charity engagement he’d fulfilled dozens of times. 

Consider mentioning, early on, that Dick Grunstein is the president and cofounder of Millipede Films and that after I script-doctored a zombie movie for him in 2012, we made a blind script deal for a project provisionally entitled Sizzle Reel.

Last summer, flying back from Frankfurt, I happened to look up at an overhead screen while trying to learn my lines in Twelfth Night, and for a second I thought I saw myself in a promotional video for Singapore Airlines, among a crowd at JFK two weeks earlier. 

My classroom was on the first floor, next to the nuns’ lounge. I used their bathroom to puke in the mornings. One nun always dusted the toilet seat with talcum powder. Another nun plugged the sink and filled it with water. I never understood the nuns. 

Do you like to go to the club, Mr. Buht?” the girls drawled coyly, withdrawing ­vialed potions and little studded mirrors from their purses, unclasping powders, fingering the heavy pendants and charms that clanked and jangled at their beautiful cleavage—and he realized, no.

At thirty-three—having misspent his twenties dithering and drinking too much—Paul Wakeling was proud of how far he’d come. He was married, a new father, three years sober, and had recently gotten hired on as an adjunct at the Big Local University.

Seamus lived in Wheaton, Maryland, in the last house on a quiet street that dead-ended at a county park. He’d bought the entire property, including a rental unit out back, at a decent price. This was after the housing market crashed but before people knew how bad it would get—back when he was still a practicing Christian Scientist, still had a job and a girlfriend he’d assumed he would marry.