Paula

She asked my mother if she could have some of my dad’s remains. When my mother refused, she inquired of her brother, a veterinarian, if any dogs had died recently and been cremated. This is an unanticipated complication of bigamy: both wives wanting your ashes.

Wanda

Whoever wallpapered the bathroom left a message for Wanda underneath. I can’t make out the punctuation mark at the end, so the message is ambiguous. Was the motivation anger (Fuck you Wanda!) or a somewhat unromantic but straightforward invitation to sensual delights (Fuck you Wanda?)?

A hippie friend

Living off the land sounded so romantic, although the basement became a landfill, the births of your children were permanently etched in blood on the mattress, and Canadian winters necessitated participation in the cash economy to avoid dining on turnips for much of the year.

Tim

Was it the rocking, the anticipation of destinations unknown, or the train-going-through-the-tunnel imagery that created the romance? You said you would marry me in an instant if we could spend our lives on a train, but we kept coming to the end of the line.

Katrina

Katrina doesn’t merely nurse a grudge, she hooks it up to life support in the ICU. When she rants and raves about settling the score one is appalled yet entertained by a plot that resembles a Coen Brothers remake of The Godfather.

Smugglers infiltrate the cross-border shopping crowd

I’m in one of the stalls, an earwitness to smugglers describing their latest exploit. One woman returned on a bus wearing 3 bras, 5 sweaters, and a pair of designer jeans underneath sweatpants, ready to plead eccentricity should a border guard challenge her fashion sense.