He sat in a relaxed posture—unhurried, one hand flat upon the table while the other rose and fell. I suppose he cost the establishment a good deal of money.

In fact, not long after we became regulars at one particular restaurant, the price of the buffet increased from $12.95 to $15.95, so we stopped going there.

It was a pity, because it was my favorite. There was a very grand feeling it gave you. On each table was a little lamp in the shape of a dripping wax candle. At the top of the lamp was a clear glass bulb like a flame, with an orange filament flickering inside, and at the base was a small button that, when pressed, summoned a busboy to your table lickety-split.

On our last visit there, after four glasses of water, I made a trip to the bathroom. I glided along—past the other diners—admiring the patterned carpet, the gilded wallpaper, and the glossy plastic plants, the leaves of which looked to have been regularly wiped of dust.

Daylight came through the front wall of windows, which went all the way up to the ceiling. The windows were framed by the tallest drapes I’d ever seen, heavy velvet brocade, held in place by gold-tasseled ropes.

The blinds on the windows were discreetly raised or lowered by the busboys depending on the angle of the sun. Two of the boys were working to lower them, tenderly tugging the cords and releasing the slack.

Just past the busboys, I saw him. He was chewing—then he stopped. He seemed to be darkening—dwindling. He squinted, then turned his face up and sniffed.

We drove home with the defroster blasting. In my mouth, with my tongue, I found something small and sharp—stubbornly planted—up in a place I couldn’t reach.

PLAYHOUSE

They are a family of four, our neighbors, with one biological son and one adopted, but so near in age and similar in appearance it seems a little funny, as if the parents had their minds set on twins. The boys do not like each other and they do not like their parents and their parents do not like each other and they do not like their sons, neither one of them.

In the morning as the father backs his car into the street, one son runs from the house and throws himself onto the hood. The father honks until the boy rolls off, sullen, his arms hanging like clubs. Inside the house the mother will scream for minutes at a go. We have our hands on the phone to call someone about it. But then she stops, steps out onto the patio, sits and props her feet onto the ottoman, and lights a cigarette. Her hair is smooth and her clothes look pressed and cool.

Sometimes comes the surprise of another day, another night ending, quietly, and without incident. The father returns from work and drinks a beer on the patio. The boys play basketball in the drive. The mother flips pieces of food on the grill. But in the small hours of the morning, one son is chasing the other in the yard with a pair of scissors. It is early enough that we could be dreaming it, the half-clad boys running and tumbling like satyrs in the blue light of the lawn. Our dream disperses when the father bangs out of the house, puffed up, trailing his untied bathrobe. He throws his arms around the scissor carrier, and they topple into the grass together.