“I looked up ‘steeplechase’ yesterday,” says Percival nervously.

“Okay.” Jephthah duct-tapes Percival’s wrists together. “Boaz, bring them steaks over!”

“It’s a British horse race! Also a track event. There is a canine version, but not combined–”

“American traditions are different,” Jephthah says. “Hold still.” He finishes strapping Percival with ribeye and begins attaching the Burger King crown, which says GORGE 3. Behind him, the dogs bay wildly.

“King George wasn’t even alive on the first Thanksgiving!” Percival shrills.

“Well, depending on how careful they are,” says Jephthah cheerily as Boaz releases the hounds, “you just might live through this one!”

Mauri painted her toenails the other day on a dare from herself: one foot blue, the other black. Afterwards she wore slides, then sandals, then no shoes at all. Nobody noticed her toes.

Mauri sits with her toes in her hands on her bed. On the wall, between two windows, is a print of a Cornell box, which flattens it out but who cares. Outside the window in the Cornell box it’s blue. Her son is throwing his father’s clothes out the window into the white sky, shouting. Mauri squeezes her toes in time to blue skies, wet sand, green bottles.

The clouds aren’t like in cartoons, with spring and bounce; they’re just clouds, but there’s a surface underneath them, as hard as glass. Brea’s heels go click on it.

The clouds are low tonight, and up above them are the tops of buildings: square office blocks, blinking radio wireframes, the tip of a steeple. When she sweeps aside the mist to look down, though, the bottoms of those buildings aren’t where they should be. She thinks of aquariums. Refraction.

All the windows up here are dark, but the clock tower is lit from within. She walks toward it, click click click.