After the fanfare of card tubes and broken tubes came the inevitable deluge of fall pies and the burning petals. The Mexican movie flickered here and the action became too faint to realize, but a wall beginning the chase through the hinterland set the tone for the afternoon. 

Out on the plaza’s lozenge Momma’s kitchen commanded a fine view—spires, domes, towers and irregular columns of gray and green—filling her horizons. Slavishly exploring the avenues of a culinary technique adopted many years before she would rarely leave 

Saturday morning at the zoo, facing the lions’ cage, overcast sky and a light breeze carrying the smell of peanuts and animal dung, the peacocks making their stilted progress across the sidewalks. I was standing in front of the gorge separating the human viewers from the lions. The lions weren’t caged, exactly; they just weren’t free to go.

The Germans were arguing about ­directions. Lennart understood some German—he’d studied it at school—but he was having a hard time following what they were saying.

Mr. Russell, the not-old man who was old, arrived at arbitrary intervals in the mornings, fragmenting her energies as a stubborn thumb crushes a walnut. His cheeks were packed with silver bristles bulging like the sides of a fish. He tongued a cigar. 

For more than three hours the mountains had loomed ahead yet they did not seem particularly closer to Louise. They grew somewhat larger through the wind shield of her truck as it crested

Most nights my neighbor, a middle-aged man in a red hoodie, would stand on his front porch, reaching up every now and then to knock the icicle Christmas lights dangling from the porch roof back and forth.

Little Edgar came home from school wanting to do something to help Little Rose. The “little” thing was something they’d picked up from a classmate’s mother who’d visited the school to talk about Personal Empowerment. She felt that no child should be slighted by being called “little” or “junior” or any other diminutive. 

I’d started to visit Olivia more often because it was obvious she was lonely. The ALS lady who’d been moved to Hopkins had been Aunt Olivia’s closest friend, leaving aside Merton Hillstead, who actually went home. 

John decided to leave for the wedding on Thursday night in order to avoid the Friday traffic. They’d encounter it on their return, no way around that, with thousands of cars on I-95 regardless of the high price of gas.