Ba can’t find his body, he wrote, and passed the little piece of paper before he could talk himself out of it, and then he got up and left early. Such an elemental response; if only it were all so simple. It was autumn, gray skies and damp leaves under his feet; it would be dark in an hour.

He was almost to his car when she ran up and slipped the piece of paper back into his hand; she held it there, pressing hard before disappearing into the crowd at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. Ba needs to let me help, it said.

Things can happen so suddenly, and now he hates remembering all of this, hates that it was Lil who always reminded him.

The man from the train was on his way to do the right thing, just doing his job and going to warn the northbound train, but he slipped and fell, and he later took his own life, the burden too great to bear, too much darkness to see. And the older you get, the more there is to see, and the signs are everywhere: the teeth and bones and heart and brain, creases in the lobes, capillaries in eyes and cheeks, bubbles of cholesterol, and moles too dark not to fear. Or what about little slips of memory? Or a bit of plaque, part of a crumbling wall breaking off and racing along a river of blood straight to the heart, a rusty old valve creaking on its hinges. His grandfather had described the human body like an adventure trip, and now the rivers of Frank’s body are struggling to keep flowing, the source is all dammed up, and it’s too painful to wait for the break. Why wait to be felled by what you know is coming anyway?

“I hate surprises,” Lil told him right after they got married. “Please, never surprise me beyond a little something of note on my birthday or our anniversary.”

He didn’t say it then, but he hates surprises as well, and the best way to not be surprised is to head things off, take control: put down the suffering dog, pop the goddamn balloon, and pull the trigger.

Harvey

Jason told Harvey that there’s a place not far from where he goes to school called Munchkinland and if you ride through there after dark a whole bunch of mad little people will come and flip your car and try to kill you, that there are people who went there and never came back. People said to stay away, because bad and crazy things will happen to you. Harvey asked the teacher and, sure enough, it was in a book about all the ghosts and bad things that have happened. His mom has heard of it too, but she said it was very, very sad, little children picked on by mean bullies.