"She craned up on her toes and kissed my cheek..."Don't do that", I said. "You just met me. This is New York. - Jonathan Lethem

Mrs. Neverbody’s Recipe for Making Crocodile Tears To a slice of hanky-panky Add some artificial cranky. Moisten well with canned boo-hoo. Flavor with a spoof or two. Drip this slowly — as it falls Roll it into little bawls. If you’re careful, while they’re cooling You can spread on only-fooling. (This recipe is not worthwhile Unless you are a crocodile.)

A shadow strolled past the car, indifferent to our curbside melodrama. This was my second time imperiled in a a parked vehicle in the space of three hours. I wondered what goonish spectacles I'd overlooked in my own career as a pavement walker.

The world was ersatz and actual, forged and faked, by ourselves and unseen others. Daring to attempt to absolutely sort fake from real was a folly that would call down tigers or hiccups to cure us of our recklessness. The effort was doomed, for it too much pointed past the intimate boundaries of our necessary fictions.