A guy rode my bumper for miles, flashing his lights, laid on the horn, and finally roared past me flipping me off — directly into the mirror of the unmarked police car I had been letting merge.
I was the only night auditor in a half-empty hotel when Room 412 called the desk three nights running. Nobody had checked into 412 in a week.
A colleague sat across from me in a meeting while, at the same time, three people on the floor below swore he was arguing with the printer. Same shirt, same time, two rooms.
The day after my grandmother's funeral my phone rang from her number, disconnected a week earlier. I answered. There was her kitchen radio, her chair creaking, and one word in her voice before it cut out.
On my third day at a huge company I meant to send one private joke to one friend. I sent it to the entire staff mailing list. All four thousand of them. With a typo.
The pond was frozen solid and every kid was out on it. A cold certainty told me to get my daughter off, now. I did. Ninety seconds later the ice cracked open exactly where she had been standing.
Working the overnight at a gas station, a trucker paid, then paused and said quietly, "Lock your door. There is a man crouched behind your ice machine." He had been there, watching me, for an hour.
