Visiting

She watched as her friend picked the vegetables out of the Chinese takeout container, leaving the rice like some bird scattering the less desired seeds to the ground in search of the best sunflower kernels. Eating together felt less like an act of communion and more like accidentally opening the door while someone is peeing -- an awkward encounter of an intimate moment not intended to be shared. She wondered when the closeness had been lost.

They used to write each other letters every week, share their darkest thoughts and most ambitious dreams, but after her friend dropped out of school in the middle of the semester, the letters stopped. When they started up again, they were longer than ever but with vacant, endless descriptions of the landscape that read like a Thomas Hardy novel, with a tragic subtext lying under the surface, just out of sight.

Their conversation that evening was no different, and she had to force a smile as she said goodbye. Closing the door behind her for the last time, she walked down to her car alone.

Wasps

Look, it's like this, he said. Andy Warhol never did anything important. In fact, he was responsible for the deterioration of the entire art world into a soulless commodity market for the elite.

I could give a shit about Andy Warhol, she retorted. What is bugging me is those wasps you've been neglecting outside our front door. When are you gonna deal with that?

It was true that he hadn't dealt with the wasps, but neglect wasn't the right word. Truth be told, he liked to let them build for awhile, getting up their hopes that this time they'd really be able to make something happen, then dash their dreams in one fell swoop of pressurized poison. There was something really satisfying about the destruction of weeks worth of nest-building, the carefully constructed paper tubes filled with larvae that would never experience the freedom of flight.

Years of writing scathing indictments of the artists and galleries in Chicago had brought out a sadistic streak in him. As he rummaged around in the garage for his can of Raid, he felt sorry for the wasps for the first time. Still, he couldn't be dodging wasps every time he left his house. He found the can, and with a sigh of resignation, went out to face the enemy.

Jupiter

Driving home from work that evening, the news of the day described the scientific discovery that billions of enormous planets are circulating our galaxy in the vast empty spaces between stars. Not wanting to lose the magnificence of that thought, she switched to the classical station, coincidentally catching the opening bars of Gustav Holst's Jupiter. It's majestic cadences rose in a crescendo as she sailed over the flyway, the stark geometry of the city skyline outlined in the distance.

The miracle of engineering combined with the miracle of astronomy in her thoughts, and everything fell into place. War, natural disaster and the frozen lasagne thawing on her counter at home all took their rightful proportions in the vastness of the universe, each inherently both infinitely important and infinitesimally trivial.

Tipping point

He was standing in the shower one morning when that scene of the writer occurred to him: the writer, sitting at a desk in czarist Russia, opining that it was impossible to write well unless one were truly hungry. And he realized, standing in the shower, that every time he had gotten to that critical point as an artist, that pivotal point between hobby and livelihood, a little voice in the back of his head had recalled that scene and sent a message through his subconscious: you'll never be any good because you are too well-fed. He didn't know which was more maddening, that his whole adult life hung on the thread of a scene from a Dostoevsky novel, or that, as it now dawned on him, all these years he may have taken the use of hunger too literally.

Whatever. It was too late now. He buried the thought as he hurried through the rest of his morning, shuffling the kids out the door and tucking his Wall Street Journal under his arm as he raced to catch his train.

Honeymoon

The older couple who greeted them at the welcome center had been cordial enough, but when they warned him about the fairies, he had guffawed into his coat sleeve at the quaintness of it all. He wondered to himself why on earth he had agreed to come here for his honeymoon.

That evening at dinner they quarreled over how much tip to leave, both of them exhausted from meticulously retracing their hike three times in the dense fog searching for his lost wedding ring. The couple at the welcome center had irritated him further with their suggestion that not only had he brought the loss upon himself, but that there was no chance of recovering the ring. The fairies have surely made off with it. The thought of their earnest sincerity made his blood boil.

Two years later, as he signed the divorce papers, that miserable day flashed into his mind, and regret seized him by the throat. Choking back tears, he finally understood how a million small choices define a life.

Walking and falling

It all happened so fast there was no way to stop it. One moment he was skipping and singing and the next he was face-down on the rock-strewn pavement, red blood streaming from a gash across his eyebrow. The mother rushed over and simultaneously comforted her child while she tried to make her own assessment of the severity of the situation, examining his eyes for signs of concussion and dabbing around the wound with some borrowed kleenex.

Ten minutes later, the child had fully recovered himself and was begging to stay and play some more. But the mother carried the incident around with her for weeks, the knot in her stomach, the flood of anxiety, the feeling of vulnerability replayed again and again, as though the gash on his eyebrow were a wound in the center of her heart.

Saint Patrick's Day

By the time her husband caught up with her, she had reached the point of no return. She had enlisted the support of two American students, who, unlike the locals, had been oblivious to where the revelry was headed, and were now stuck standing awkwardly on the table with her, while she directed a stream of obscenities at an Englishman in the corner. He was at least twice her size in both height and girth and was watching her with a look of mild amusement on his face, as though taking in a second-rate comedienne, and he was just opening his mouth to heckle her when her husband stepped between them.

Let her alone Tom, you know it'll only encourage her, he admonished. Turning to his wife, he tried to talk her down off the table, but she turned her fire on him. Finally the bartender, another Englishman, came over and threatened to physically remove her from the pub. She gave him swift punch in the nose, eliciting uproarious laughter from the crowd before crumpling into a sobbing heap.

Her husband shot a sympathetic glance at the bartender. She's only homesick, you know, he said.

No hard feelings, the man replied. We'll see you on Saturday for the match, then?

He nodded as he led his wife out into the cold sunlight.