When I was fourteen years old, I began walking on water. My parents watched me walk back and forth across the pond a few times. “Angie,” Dad said, “this looks like a miracle.”

“Sure does,” Mom said. “Good job, Michael.” Then they went back to the house and sat down to figure out the profit angle. Mom and Dad were always looking for ways to make money on the farm. The hills made the place picturesque, but the soil was worthless.

6:21AM

A tangerine Scion pulls into my driveway 6 minutes late. I get in the car and look the rookie over. He’s cut from the funny pages: pink-cheeked and yellow-haired, with a Dennis the Menace cowlick. His new badge gleams.

“Officer Wu at your service,” I say.

“Whup Ass Wu?”

“Only one I know. Sergeant Fagen asked me to ride in with you so we could have a talk before your first run.”

“This is a real honor.” He shows his teeth and we shake hands.

“North and Clybourn is next. Doors open on the right at North and Clybourn.”

The train starts to move. Arms tangle with arms, grabbing for something to grab. Legs tuck in, not to trip other legs. Eyes search for a safe place, avoiding contact with other eyes. I have read the same paragraph seven times. Seven times. And I’ll probably read it seven more. Monkeyfucking Dostoyevsky.

Just by the way the envelope felt in his hand, Lawrence Breton knew what it contained.

“Another rejection letter, of course,” he said, tossing it unopened into the fire. This was not the fireplace with the white brick, the medieval logs, the eloquent wrought-iron grate, and the Kodiak rug: that was the one he thought he’d have by now. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it, but that he only wanted to buy it with book royalties. Lawrence Breton was arriving at the opinion that all publishers were soulless reptiles whose categorical genocide of science fiction writers was the greatest literary misunderstanding of the century.

If he tried hard enough, he could make sense of it all. Everything except the monkey. He was stark naked. That–he was sure—was something that happened quite regularly. The guy to his right saluting him with one arm, the other arm trying to hold his guts in place—he was sure he had seen him before in some kind of movie or something. And the guy in front of him, he was sure his name was Dennis or Donald.

“He’s clean,” Dennis or Donald said over a walkie-talkie.

The other man stopped saluting him and said, “It’s good to have you back, sir.”