New York City is as authoritarian as a communist country. Right now, I'm stuck at a STOP sign.

No go sign.

I must get to the hospital NOW.

I dash across the street. I barely make it.

It's hard to breathe; I am overweight. I smoke.

My chest hurts.

I ...

When Frick and Frack rode to Boot Hill, it was because they were fighting over Marylou, the new saloon dance hall girl.
Bullets flew, gunsmoke filled the air. The racket woke the dead.
They rose, attacked, and buried Frick and Frack, still alive, in six-foot-deep graves. Their deaths became known as the ...

On the Seventh day, after creating the heavens, the earth, the seas, and creatures big and small, and after birthing Adam and Eve, God rested.

The next day, He considered what remained undone.

On the Ninth day, He envisioned a world filled with people but wondered what they would be like.

So He ...

His stories had happy endings, but in his dating life, women left him like an umbrella left in a taxi.

To ease his loneliness, he toured the city, enjoying the view from elevated tracks. Whenever he did, a passenger would ask.

"Yes, I am that writer," he said.

The other passengers would whisper ...

The elevator in my South Bronx apartment building worked as often as a spoiled child. Then, one day, on the sixth-floor landing, someone held a fashion show; on the fourth, someone installed a disco; on the third, movies played, drinks were served.

Tenants organized street fairs. The drug dealers relocated. The ...

I don't ride horses. I don't like people on my back; I figure they feel

the same. I ride carousel horses. Ride them likea pro.

I lift my hat to the ladies waiting for their cowboys, and if I see a bad guy, I don't shoot. I capture.

I don't ride on ...

As the flood approached, our bad habits left us.

They must have known we were not long for this world.

Pride went to the plants, envy to the animals, and so on. All' we had left were our manners.

Thousands, like I, who lacked the sense to leave earlier, were in line, at ...

Fredrick's face resembled a Halloween mask. He worked when he needed to eat and drank when he became sober. He watched people from his sidewalk cardboard box, saw a boy chasing a ball, and a car racing his way.

He rose from his box, a frightening sight.

"Look out, kid."
Seeing Fredrick's wobbly ...

Ten-dollar-an-hour laborer Tim Scott's wish came true.

He was out for lunch when the wind turned menacing. Slips of wallet-sized paper flew from his body. Two quarters where his eyes had been took flight. Viewed from a certain angle, they resembled bass drums in a dollhouse marching band.

It was like ...

Seeing her tentative at the light, cars whizzing by, hands filled with grocery bags, Watch it, Lady" I said before escorting her cross the street. I'm thirty; she looked about 100.

"Live far away?"

"Not too far."

"Need help getting there?"

"Don't know, not there yet?"

"Married?"

"Was. Irving died, said it was from my cooking."

We ...

On buying shit I don't need day, I bought a hobby horse, mounted it, and off we went. The Lucas gang robbed the bank.

Alongside them, I said, "Stop in the name of the law."

They did.

"Ride yourself over to jail."

They do.

At home, I tied my horse to a parking meter, turned, ...

I left the womb complaining.

"Tight fit, Mom."

I walked the next day, wobbly at first, but when I sobered up, problem solved.

At two, I wrote my first book about a fish that couldn't swim. I illustrated it the year before.

I played the piano at age four, became a lawyer at five, ...