We couldn’t find the labyrinth, which was maddening because I’d been there before and was convinced we were in the right place. Much of what I’d remembered seemed to have been drained or extracted from the scene. There was no more outrageous, biblical sea foam that had once claimed so much of the beach. The dozens of painstakingly stacked cairns previous wanderers had constructed for those after them had been disassembled or washed away. Most disconcerting was the total disappearance of the …

We met at the gentlemen’s club near Times Square with a dark, damp interior that imitated the color and heaviness of a black forest cake. I moved in a slow pull around the golden mini stage pole next to the V.I.P. lounge. I was there for the view of the man who had the entire section roped off. He sat, body like a soup dumpling, with dancers all around him, but his eyes were focused on me. As I stepped off the stage, he motioned for me, flicking the other girls off like gorged mosquitos. My …

One of the more unfortunate things I inherited from my ex was the desire for homeownership. In the early heady weeks of the relationship, as we stayed up all night in inexhaustible confession, he described at length his yearning for a home after he had split from his family, how he had traveled far and wide to find the house of his dreams, how much personal charm it had taken to nail the negotiation. What was more, it was set in a prime location in an up-and-coming city that would guarantee a …

Mulberries grow in deep pockets of my memories. The sepals turned fleshy and purple, tight as brains. As children, my brother and I made clubhouses in the mulberry shrubs on the campus where our father taught. Curtained and cool in the heat of the quad. My brother, who never made it out of childhood, believed the shrubs were time machines, taking us back to a time before sidewalks and cut lawns and flagpoles, before mail in the post office box and paninis at the campus cafe.  He’d push the …

To mix a cocktail is to tell a story. Each bottle you pour from has a history, some mundane and some grandiose. And when you combine each ingredient, whether to create a classic of the trade or something new, the finished product inherently takes on life.  Narrative. The Manhattan, for example. The first time that a bartender plucked the whiskey and the sweet vermouth and the bitters from their shelf, stirred the ingredients over ice, and strained the dull red concoction into a coupe, they …

My dream begins like a fairy tale. Wild wolves are in the house—not tame ones, like the insipid talker that seduced the girl in red—but loud, howling wolves. Their mouths open, their teeth gleaming. A whole pack of them disrupting a party my mother has planned for weeks. They tear through the buffet: the carefully arranged relish tray, perfectly seasoned chicken casserole, elaborately decorated raspberry torte. Not to mention what they do to the guests. Terrorizing people I don’t even …