To ensure a head of disproportionate smallness, it is recommended the mother be an alcoholic. While moderate drinking may effect inadequate head size and facial defects, the desired malformation of ears, nose, and digits cannot be guaranteed without regular and heavy consumption of alcoholic beverages, particularly during the first trimester. Spirits are preferred to grape-based products.

“See, it’s Barack and Hilary all over again, only she’s a Latina firebrand married to an ex-priest and he’s a rabbi married to a feminist scholar who’s a dean at Harvard.”

“Hey, what if he’s a rabbi and dean of the religious department at Harvard, and she’s the prosecutor who cleaned up Houston?”

“Works for me.”

“So they hate each other’s guts, but it’s not because of the religious and ethnic differences.”

I played tennis with Madeline Morling each Monday. Everly Trickett and I did tea on Tuesdays. Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays I lunched with other ladies who lunched. I spent weekends shuffling my children to play dates with the Morling, Trickett, and Kipling children, and shuffling my husband, Andy, and me to dinner dates with their parents sans the Kiplings. Andy didn’t approve of Russ Kipling, our newest neighbor, because he had secured their home through what my husband called “a tacky foreclosure.” Also, his wife worked in the non-profit sector while Russ cared for their twins. Andy often said, “Never trust a man with unscuffed shoes, Corrine.” He insisted this pointed to laziness and an unwillingness to provide for his family.

It was Thursday. Thursdays are good for wandoodling your time, but it’s better to put any Time you don’t need into one of those big, green plastic thingies and leave it out for the Midnight Collector. He always refuses to take it but hey ho.

Who invented Thursdays anyway? I stood on the decrepit corner between Pointless Walk and Eville Avenue and I demanded to know the answer. The bins outside number twenty-four were so sparkly but still, they only answered with a silent reflection. Silent reflection is a good practice to keep in public, but like so many other people, I—

From above, probably on a helicopter, we see an island in pandemonium. In the center of the island there’s a volcano that is just spitting magma all over the place, smoke pouring upward, the whole place is rumbling. But what is that we see? Down at the base of the volcano, somehow not engulfed in lava? We zoom in. It’s a hero, and he’s, like, meditating up on one leg. He’s got his shirt off and he’s ripped. Then… his eyes snap open!