Panorama City

The joke was: What are the three parts of an old-fashioned stove? Answer: Lifter, leg, and poker. Your grandfather and his guests, they had been drinking, all of them laughed hard and I didn’t understand why until I was in the so-called heat of the moment with the woman who would become your mother, and so that’s why I was suddenly consumed with gi

I imagined a bus with no windshield and no back window, the bugs could pass straight through.

I had seen the plaque before, of course, the plaque hung to the side of the counter, everyone could see it, customers and employees. I had seen it and wondered whether I could ever become Employee of the Month, I had pictured it as a jewel in the crown, so to speak, befitting a man of the world, but the longer I worked at the fast-food place, the s

I wondered why Aunt Liz had set me up with a job working at the fast-food place, I wondered why she hadn’t set me up with a job as a therapist. I have always been an amateur at talking and listening, but how hard could it be to turn professional, there wasn’t any equipment involved.

The police had questions for me, which I answered truthfully, which is a fine strategy for talking to police, though it can confuse them.

In all the time I worked there, I never saw Roger anywhere near the dumpsters or the trash, he did not have to physically handle any of the stinking garbage, public, private, or otherwise, he didn’t ever have to get his hands dirty, as they say, and as such he had principles about the dumpster, which is the main thing you need to know about princip

I don’t need to tell you that I can be a slow absorber, I’ve always been a slow absorber, but it’s better than the opposite, your grandfather used to say, which is to be a quick absorber, or sucker.

The head needs sleep to make everyone else’s words into our own words again, it is a conversion process.

He threw another tray, and could I not smile while I worked, it made him crazy, he said, throwing a third tray, it made him crazy to see my teeth and my eyebrows, he could tell the difference between a real smile and a fake one, and he could see that my smile was real, and if it had been fake he could have tolerated it, but he could imagine nothing

Paul called it the Grapevine and said that L.A. wasn’t far. He said that was the real world down there, which I did not understand until I got there and saw that it meant a place where it is impossible to make friends with everyone, there are too many people, you’d run out of time. He said that we thinkers had to stick together. That’s when I got t