He wanted to crawl into that grating and join the Red Ninjas. He wanted to hear their breathing, see their maraschino-red silks, bathe in their insistent, warm breeze. If he could, he would have those sensations, and no others, eternally. But the time with Dr. Donnelly always ended. They would return him to his room at the Home, where the Nibelungs played their clang-bang-clang opera inside the steam-heat radiator. 

Buford Theodore Williams III sat behind the wheel of his old pickup truck, fighting with the screw top on his steel flask. Sharp arthritis pains coursed through his fingertips. In his youth, Buford had been the wildest of the shit-kicking hell-raisers of Itasca County, but now it was a chore just to clasp the metal snaps on the front of his jeans every morning. 

Andrea imagined she received a Valentine card from Tommy: it showed a dimpled pink Cupid shooting an arrow at a shiny red heart. The inscription would’ve been “You’re the best.” She put her hand over her heart and smiled. She could feel it thumping and winging toward Tommy.