The man is large, but he speaks softly. The dog is wary of a kick, but the smell of bacon fat on the outstretched handkerchief is too tempting, and it has been too long since her last meal. He strokes her and speaks in thick but kindly tones as she gobbles up her meal. Soon the dog is licking his face eagerly. The man has no trouble in persuading her to follow him.

The great eye of the sun rose hot; rose up from the bubbling, frothing sea, warmed the beach and glinted off the windows of the shoreline hotels, rose between the palms – waving green, dewy in the morning – then up between the white stucco towers of downtown, and at last took its place within the infinite blue of the daytime sky. There was a scattering of clouds on the horizon, and the weak crosswinds left it a mystery whether they might make landfall.

“More ice on floor two.”

“More ice?”

Susan Hollings threw down her newspaper. "Why do they print this stuff?" The newspaper landed on her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Susan always brought p-b-&-j for lunch, except every other Thursday when she ate leftover sausage pizza. "They offer facts like condemnations!"

I bit into my meatloaf sandwich, chewing slowly to make it last longer. I was younger than The Ladies by a decade or more. Male. Considered the outsider, even though I'd been teaching at Bison Trail Consolidated High School for the last eight years.