Giselle stopped at one of the kiosks that displayed the layout of the mall and tried to memorize the route she’d have to take to get from the parking lot by Lord & Taylor’s to the back of Waldenbooks. Hey, it wasn’t Walden’s Books or Walden Books, it was Waldenbooks…

The Woodfield Shopping Center in Schaumburg, Illinois is the closest thing to a microcosm of America as you might ever want to find — a hundred and forty sprawling acres all done up in three levels of cement, sheet rock, carpet, tile, chrome, insulation, infrastructure and pizzazz; a million square…

The dream woke her up just before dawn. Giselle opened her eyes long enough to prove to herself that she had been dreaming, long enough to notice that Arabs weren’t chasing her, and Jesus was gone and what was left of that poor black woman was at the bottom of…

She’s in a jungle. It’s hot. It’s humid. She’s hiding under fronds of jungle ferns and the broad waxy leaves of philodendrons. Howler monkeys and macaws are whooping it up in the canopy of palm trees and thick vines. Soldiers are after her. She’s barely breathing. Her heart’s beating like…

The bubbles had mostly turned to nothing but dirty dishwater by the time she finished rinsing the last of the silverware and putting it into the dishwasher to dry. Giselle felt cool air evaporating the moisture between her legs. She hooked the big toe of her right foot into the…

Abraham got up from his chair, kissed Giselle on the top of her head, stretched himself out on the sofa again, shoved the same pillow behind his head and closed his eyes. …

Giselle felt the air from her lungs warm her hands. Her right thumbnail was resting gently under her nose. She was safe with her eyes closed, secure, alone, gone, in another place, another time. “Ain’t nothing but a stranger in this world,” Van Morrison’s words sang to her from the…

They went their separate ways, Abraham up the stairway toward the bathroom and Giselle into the kitchen. He sure seemed to know his way around her house for a guy who hadn’t been there much more than an hour. But where else would the bathroom be? She didn’t want to…

Giselle scooted her white flannel pajama bottoms across the soft carpet, closer to where Abraham Lincoln’s head was propped against a pillow. She pressed her elbow into one of the cushions, rested the side of her face in the palm of her right hand and surveyed the whole of his…