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yes. It begins like this, then that happens, then it ends.”
   Confused, he told me the story. I fell asleep during the climax. He woke me up and asked if I needed him to repeat the climax.
   “I can tell you what happens in the climax,” I said, prompting him to repeat the climax. Then he backtracked and told the story from beginning to end. He shouted the words of the dénouement . I put in a pair of earplugs. He slapped me across the face and the earplugs flew out. I stood defiantly. He implored me to calm down and take a seat. He apologized.
   He told me the story.
   I told him my wife and daughter were expecting me at home.
   He told me the story.
   I told him I was hungry and had to go.
   He told me the story. He told me the story.
   I told him he had told me that very story, like, twenty-one times today, not including written accounts, and not to mention how many times he had told the story to me the day before, and the day before, and the day before . . .
   He replied, “At the end of Time, in the anus of Entropy, when the universe burns out and all the stars turn into black holes, the only thing left will be my story.”
   I told him I disagreed; other people told stories, too. I also wondered how his story might survive in the wake of human oblivion.
   He said it was my right to disagree. He said it was human nature to wonder about things. Then he said, “Now listen to this.” And told the story. And told it again. And again, and again. Over and over. And over again . . .
   Eventually he grew tired.
   His neck gave and his head tipped to one side, to the other side.
   His shoulders slouched.
   His voice cracked and got raspy.
   He fought the urge to fall to his knees.
   On his knees, he fought the urge to fall to his stomach.
   On his stomach, he whispered the story, with resolve at first, but his voice gradually petered out as his eyelids weakened, flickered, closed . . . He continued to mouth the story in silence for a few minutes before slipping into a deep, catatonic sleep, at which point the story may or may not have played out in his dreams, rerun after rerun, like a doorbell that goes on forever, like a curtain that perpetually rises and falls, daring the audience to set it on fire . . .
   Before leaving, I called my wife and told her about my day. “He kept telling me this story,” I said. And in the calmest voice she could muster, she replied, “I know that story, darling. We’re waiting for you.”

 
    FATHERS & SONS
     
    “Dad’s dead,” said my father. “I better put him in the freezer.”
   Grandpa lay on the kitchen floor, tightened into a fetal curl. He looked like a crumpled sheet of sandpaper. Dad picked him up and slung him over his shoulder and went downstairs.
   I waited.
   He came back later. “Dad’s in the freezer. I had to fold him up to get him in there. But he’s in there.”
   I didn’t know what to say. “That’s good news,” I said.
   He made himself a ham sandwich with American cheese. No condiments. I asked if he would make me a boloney sandwich. No cheese. He made me a peanut butter and banana sandwich. As he sliced the banana into long, precise rectangles, he explained how fruit had not always been as readily available at the supermarket as it was nowadays.
   The sandwich tasted good.
   “Oh.”
   I stopped chewing. “Did you hear that?”
   Dad shook his head. “No.”
   “Somebody said ‘Oh’.”
   “Ohh.”
   “There it is again.”
   “There’s what again?”
   “That ‘Oh’ sound. It’s coming from the basement.”
   “The basement,” Dad echoed, and clucked his tongue.
   I put my sandwich down. My father finished his sandwich and poured a tall glass of milk. He drank it and wiped the milk mustache from his overlip with a shirtsleeve. He licked his overlip and wiped it again. Licked it again.