It was the end of a perfect day. If only her best friend could see her now. It was a haul to get to the vineyard and expensive considering her small salary as a receptionist. Whatever she earned was already spent on her apartment, her food, her dry-cleaning. She dipped into her paltry savings for...

Wednesday, 2:00 a.m. In the artless sterility of an unsterile motel room, water gurgles and drains through the pipes overhead; sirens and traffic sounds leak in around the dead-bolted door’s frame. A woman’s sweater and a man’s shirt hang on a rod near the cracked sink. From above the wavy mirror, a garish fluorescent light...

It is fall and I’m talking long distance to my boyfriend in Milwaukee, we just finished talking sex talk, talk not virtuous but virtual because he’s so far away and you know how you feel just after making love, when all of your breathing feels gracious, it makes a man sleep, a woman talk, seeming...