Sofi heard them before she saw them. It was easy to hear and see them because he hadn’t closed the door. Ivan never closed the door. The woman was on his lap, bouncing there, her big unruly tits steadied in his hands, the areolae darker, triple the size of Sofi’s own, and Sofi could see the small jellyfish tattoo beneath the woman’s belly button, the kind of image that would have been a mistake, and then a badge, the hair below it destined to remind her lovers of seaweed.

Ivan’s eyes were blocked by the woman’s head and neck. The woman’s eyes were clenched and distant and satisfied.

Sofi turned around and walked to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. She stared out the window at nothing in particular.

When they finally joined her in the kitchen, Ivan made the introductions. The woman’s name was Jennifer. Jennifer was pretty and timid and polite. Jennifer declined both water and wine. Jennifer said, “No, thank you,” to a snack. Jennifer said she had to be going.

But before Jennifer went, Sofi told them both about her day, told them her news, the news she had been waiting for, working for, hoping for, and Ivan, it was easy to tell, was becoming as excited as she was, and proud, and Jennifer too, Jennifer seemed happy for her, seemed capable of care, and Sofi appreciated that, that choice of his, and then Jennifer left the apartment, and when Jennifer was gone Ivan embraced Sofi with all of his warmth and affection, and later, after a celebratory glass of champagne and some cheese, they went to their bed, the same bed where Jennifer had been, comforter still rumpled, and Sofi wanted to be fucked like he had fucked Jennifer, and they did that, and Sofi thought about Jennifer’s body while they did, her big breasts, her nipples, her silly-cute tattoo and the hair below it, and it turned Sofi on, thinking about all that and the warmth and the pleasure and the passing happiness and comfort and knowledge Jennifer had given to him, and maybe would again.

Kevin Tosca’s stories have appeared in Fleeting, Litro, More Said Than Done, The Bicycle Review, The MacGuffin and elsewhere. He lives in France. His published work can be found at www.kevintosca.com.

Crack! That was the sound of our hearts stopped, the crunch of my soles against the pavement, and I pushed off, straight up from the curb, a thousand feet into the air . . . And what can you ever really do given the situation? Even had any of us been able to act, to move, what was there to say? Time never slows, in fact those are the moments where your mind moves like the hummingbird; touching, dancing over each little thing, or floating, time as an ocean, and that break-beat is wave upon wave of perspective. Could I have known, for instance, as we watched that girl crossing the street in front of us, that one day, years later, Valdez would stand-up at his office job, tear off his tie and begin screaming at the top of his lungs? Or that Goezman would end up living as a kind of pasha, retiring before age 35 with two women to a small country estate? How many times between now and then would I say I’d stopped stock-still to watch some girl’s ass from behind? Ass from the future. Ass encompassing everything, like two snow-capped mountains crashing together. And not to dwell on it too much, but I felt ashamed to be there frozen. All I could think that night was about the plot of the shitty movie we’d just seen, about the Trojan war, with that white hero killing everybody, giving those speeches about immortality and whatnot. And who’s to say those moments don’t last forever, that somewhere behind us we’re not still making the same mistakes, taking the same wrong forks in the road, overestimating ourselves again and again?

Uzodinma’s favorite color is Aqua—no, Lapis. Or maybe Sky Blue. He still doesn’t own a cellphone . . .