When people asked what he did, Donald Long’s standard riposte was, “I’m a mechanic of the dream.” Meaning, he was a projectionist.

I can hear him, in the next room but one, typing away. An answer to Pamela’s Special Delivery letter perhaps? Or lists of moneymaking projects. Possibly even a story, or a revised out line forPopcorn, in which he will refute the errors of our age.

Okay. We’re finished, done. My head careens, heart flops. She clenches her teeth, whirls her back to me, says “Just go. Please? Will you just leave?”

I wrote a novel for Sarah and sent it to her. She wrote back, “For me? How sweet. Nobody has ever done anything or presented me with anything near to what you’ve just given me. I’ll treasure it always.

“Goodbye,” and she goes. I stay there, holding the gift I was about to give her. Had told her I was giving her. This after-noon, on the phone. I said “I’d like to come over with something for you.”

He examined the chessboard. There was no doubt he had the other fellow’s king in check. The guy must be nuts or something to say “check” right after him. Nobody, absolutely nobody, was near his king.

In 1917, my father's naval training completed he received his ensign's commission and shortly thereafter sailed as a signal officer on a troopship to Europe still in the wrong-colored uniform among deckloads of backpacking, leg-putteed doughboys.

They’re nothing new, you can read about the Leather Man for instance, a hundred years ago making his circuit through Westchester, Connecticut, into the Berkshires in the summer

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. 

The night Coin Foreman was returned home from his wanderings, the Corinthian Baptist Church of Christ burned to the ground in a five alarm fire.