He said he was going into the den to pay some bills. He took his beer with him and kissed his girlfriend on the head and said he would back in time to go to bed. She did not say anything but she probably smiled. He went into his den and shut the door and went to his desk. It included pencils, paper clips, an old transistor radio he never used, tissues, a phone book. He sat for a while, sorting out all the paperwork, when his cellphone rang. It was her again. He had to answer. “Hello?” “Hey, Kevin.” “Hey.” “I’m…surprised you picked up. I’ve been trying to get you.” “I’ve just been busy.” “Doing what?” “Just…things. Nothing, really.” They were treading worlds of the past and they were doing it too lightly to…

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Jana backed off from Barry’s fart. No odor but a blast, a massive rip that blossomed the seat of his Royal Robbins convoy shorts before undulating out a leg hole. Okay, maybe she imagined the blossoming and undulating, but not the acoustics. Barry, a meter ahead, uphill, his left boot perched on a stone set in the trail for that purpose, twisted his body and said, “Sorry.” A wide tan hat protected his balding pate and shadowed the mien of sincerity on his salt and pepper face. “Quite all right,” said Jana. “Some things can’t be helped. I suppose.” Barry turned, applied hiking poles to path, and lifted his right foot. Jana let him gain several steps, and several steps later he ripped another, his head making a half turn and his shoulders shrugging. Oh,…

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The stinkbugs came in when Sandra’s sister was dying. Every night after cooking dinner, Robert sat down on his couch to watch “Breaking Bad.” A hum announced itself and his eyes alighted on the perpetrator, a flat brown bug that jetted across the ceiling and then lazed on a new perch. He caught them and released them and wondered how he could eradicate the stinkbugs from his apartment. One time the stinkbug was green. Robert worked at a small furniture startup called Simple Build in New Haven. They sold couches and coffee tables that were easier to put together than products from Ikea. Robert was in marketing; their chief audience was millennials, except all of their furniture was too expensive for millennials. As a result, most of the people who bought their products and liked…

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