Fortune

"I don't know why. Why do some people have it so easy? They're the ones who have their path in life laid before them; they get a bump in the road. We get potholes and roadblocks. They walk on water, we just struggle to keep afloat. Stop paddling and you're just going to start sinking, like you've got rocks in your pockets. What made living so hard? Watching those OTHER people, who live so effortlessly, full of shiny happiness, glowing like a model from a shampoo ad; I bet they don't ever have to worry about bills or where the money going to feed your baby, who's started crying again, yes OUR baby, is going to come from. Why aren't we the shiny happy ones? Why them? Maybe it's just fortune, to be born under terrible stars."

Counting stars

"How many now?"
"1,244,237," she said.
"You'll never count them all," I said. "You sure you not double-counting?"
"Maybe. I don't know. 1,244,238."
"Well, just don't stop."

Wrong song

"Stop playing this song, damn it. How can you listen to it again. It's not what should be playing. I want to feel like I'm in a car, not an elevator. Don't you have good driving music? Something to race away to. No not Fast Car. That's a depressing song. Something that gets your blood pumping. But your songs have always been crappily sad stuff. Some time, you really have to just let it go and let music be music."

Sleeping on his lap

"Why do you let him do this to you?" he asked, examining the deep purple bruise on her face.
"I don't let him. He just does it," she replies.
She comes practially once a week to him, her former lover, now divorced, and puts her head in his lap. Mostly they are just quiet, and he runs his fingers through his hair. He will not touch her in any other way since her marriage, choosing a sun-kissed swimming coach whose skin seemed perpetually tanned, with golden hair, who smelled of chlorine and coconut oil.
"This has to stop," he said.
"One day it will," she said, trying to convince herself. But he knew it wouldn't. She would still come here, escaping from the violence that had become her world.
One day her husband came over, finding her head on his lap.
"That's my wife, what are you doing, you asshole?" her husband shouted. His hands were balled into fists.
"She's sleeping. You can hit me," he said.
And he did. When she woke, she found her former lover bleeding all over, with his teeth on the floor. She got up, and walked back to her home, and never returned.

Orpheus and Eurydice

"Walk in front of me, and don't look back until we reach the hotel. I'll follow," Sarah says.
"Why?"
"Just try it. No peeking," she says. "If you look back, I'll be gone. You won't see me again." I knew her enough that she could make those threats real, and better to amuse her than to anger.
So I walk ahead, being careful with my strides. The hotel is half an hour walk, through the humid city. I try to catch sight of her in rear view mirrors, shop windows or the sunglasses of strangers, but I do not see her. Soon, I am wondering if she is actually behind me. I call her name out twice but receive no reply. I am increasingly anxious. The sound of her voice, the smell of her scent, the rhythm of her footsteps all become evidently clear to me as I try to remember them. Was trying to use mirrors and reflections cheating? Did she spy me and thus fulfilled her threat?
The facade of the hotel looms into view. Soon I will look back and wonder if I will see her impish smile, or just the absence of her.

Lost

"So we're trapped in an elevator, and you're the girl I always noticed...but never dared to talk to. How do we get out? My cellphone's not working. It's easier when the conversation is automatic. The usual things to say, isn't it? I'm so awkward with girls. Ok yes, I'll try to find a way out. I've pressed the alarm bell like forty, fifty thousand times. That's a nice dress by the way... yes, I know you're sweating. That guy who came back with you a few nights ago... was he... oh just a friend? Pardon me for asking. Yes, I will focus on the task on hand. Yes, my handphone isn't working. Look at it! I'm not insane. You know, if I could stop breathing so you'd be more comfortable, I would. Without me dying of course."

Gambler

Mark won at the tables again. In their room, the chips were piled 2' high on the small table. He had never like a streak like this. "We're going to get out of our dump. Our luck's changed, and it's all happening now," he said, as they lied in the lumpy bed. He rubbed his hands, tried to dress smarter so he could play on the bigger tables, as he ventured once again to the casino floor.
But Lisa knew, with each victory, each score, each jackpot, he was calculating how he could escape. Other women had noticed his victories and hovered around him, clinging. Soon, he would add another chip to the pile, turn to her and say that it's over. All this wealth would buy a different path through life.