A child is two patterns on the vibraphone.

People who live in ice cube houses shouldn't melt.

My brother moves to town to record an epic radio documentary. He retrofits an old black suitcase with a mixer and holes for microphone cables. His plan is to take the subway to a secluded part of Bronx. The raw sound material will be real but he will use it to tell a story of ninjas. We lose the suitcase on the platform and ride the trains for a few hours. We run into Asbury Jones, who kneels and teaches my brother to sing. A young woman watches us from across the train. This is the consort come too soon. Brother decides to return home without the suitcase but we find it where we left it on the platform.

We are released from the field trip into an underground luncheon complex. My friend waits on line with everyone else at the macrobiotic stall, but when he attempts to make small talk with the attendant he is booed out of the sector. As she threatens a self-immolation if the rudeness continues, I recognize her as the boss's daughter. I forget how to get back up to the open-air concourse where there is a South Indian thali stand, which I am pretty sure is gluten-free. So I go back to the welcoming party in the basement. There I find a young reporter who, in interviewing me, reveals that she is actually the daughter of the enemy emir on a reconnaissance mission. I take her into my confidence and show her the monkey bars, but she falls off, and when someone tries to leap down to help, she suffers a blow to the head which knocks her half-conscious.

At work, all the surfaces are clean. Someone refers to "Thomas Fried-barn" and I have to be told it is a joke.

A spider under the skin of my forearm. It pricks where he burrowed in and it stings where he crawls. I try to crush him and hit a pressure point by mistake. He plays dead but he won't go out the way he came.

The Youth Zionist Dating League convenes at an apartment on the Upper North Side. I stare through the orientation and training. When it lets out I give three women long hugs in front of their boyfriends. Later at the pantomime, we are three of the last to leave. Before the show is over an old woman hurls mango pulp at whoever is left. We shake our heads but our faith is strong.

Treading dark water off the coast, we try to stay directly above an Apple logo on the sea floor.

We see a small plane circle and then go down into the lake. I think I may be involved. I am the first to arrive at the pilot hatch but am hesitant to go in. When a searcher arrives I stand watch and keep his oxygen tube unkinked. But there is nothing but polyester stuff sacks and cinches underwater. Maybe the pilot escaped before the plane went down, or maybe it never had one. Later, we are moving into a new fraternity house on top of the hill. It is dark and humid when I get a chance to see my room. Back in the house where I was born, there is an old time song circle outside. I start to sing and play mandolin but have to go back inside to clean up a can of orange juice concentrate that gooped through three drawers when I went on vacation. The kitchen understands.

On the side of a mountain a nuclear reactor is built from tin and caulk. Predictably it misfires, killing all crew and taking out half of the mountainside. The mother nations are on high alert; they have no choice but to assume the blast was an act of war. This is the smell of progress in a benighted land, I say to the ambassador, who is an orphan.

Two older cousins gone missing.

At a shoreline equilibrium, a friend is pushed back by the current to the mouth of the river. We tell her to cross next time in ignorance.

The house on Valley Lane has a steel plate in the ceiling that has been eaten away by rust.

My boss escapes to a castle with his lady companion. They scour the basement for a bottle of vodka. It all lasts two hours.

The same damn predicament.