What had once been connubial bliss had now descended into armed confrontation.
They faced one another across the dinner table. She was visibly angry, her cheeks flushed. The nasty Glock 88 she held had its laser sight centered on his forehead. His eyes searched for an escape.
"It doesn't have to be this way, Sally! Just...put down the gun! Please! I'll do anything you want, I swear!"
"You swear."
"I swear."
She tossed the gun to the floor. It fired. The bullet missed him, passed through the front door and into the trailer across the court, where a gangster wannabe was trying to impress his new girlfriend. The bullet grazed his beltline, causing his pants to drop to the floor, revealing bony, hairy legs in black net stockings. The girl screamed for a full minute.
"Ok Harry, you know what I need!"
"Yes."
He picked up the lovingly crafted gourmet apple pie and dumped it down the disposal, then began to create the thing that Sally had been getting twice a week for the past year.
He heated the cream and half and half til it was just below a boil, added the rich amber caramelized sugar, then stirred it till it cried 'Stop..no...don't!' then poured the mixture in the cups and placed them in the fridge to cool.
Sally waited. Her anxiety had subsided to trembling anticipation.
Harry sprinkled raw sugar over the cooled cups, then torched the tops until the sugar melted into a crispy sweet shell. He poured a dollop of chocolate sauce in each cup, followed by a spritz of whipped cream.
Now sufficiently contrite, he served the replacement confection to Sally.
Her features softened at the first taste. She ate slowly, savoring each bite, enraptured and transcendent. Harry watched, silent. By the time she licked the last bit of sweet delight from her spoon, the love in her eyes had returned.
"Honey?"
"Yes?"
"Please don't ever take my crème brûlée away."
"Ok."
"Promise?"
"Yes."
"No more apple pie interventions?"
"I promise."
"You're the best." She molded her body to his. Peace returned.

    Room 9214 at the Luxor was tomb-like, cold, and basic. I pulled the blanket closer, shivering, and popped the top from my LargeBucks coffee cup.
     Crap! There it went, spilled into the middle of the bed. 
     Oh well, no matter. We're checking out at eleven. 
     Shit. Now I don't have any coffee, and I had so carefully crafted my four dollar and eighty cent paper cup of enhanced caffeine. It was top-of-the-line, half Afghan espresso, half caffe americano cooled with one dollop of cinnamon frappacino, topped with a floating island of whipped goat cream, and finished with a sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice. The perfect seasonal stimulus package. Grande.
     Should I go get another cup, or take a big drink of Lucy's?       Nah...better not, or when she gets out of the shower and sees her coffee gone, well...I shudder to think.
     Crap. I stare at the big wet nasty brown spreading stain. I pull the covers up, make the bed.
     I stare at my surroundings. I can't tell if I'm looking at authentic faux Egyptian relics or if this is the bastard offspring of Ramses, Ming the Merciless, and the Mummy. I know...I know, that's three people. Anyway...
     It's so depressing. I'm not going down to that stinking casino for another coffee, risk getting stuck again in that elevator that won't stop on the ninth floor. Yeah that happened too. It was major anxiety until a sweet little old lady showed me how to use the elevator pass card.
     "Put it in slowly and pull it out quickly, dear."
     "I tried that," I said, pissed. "Oh. It worked this time." I got off at my floor, then turned the wrong way, walked down the hall. Anxiety mounted.
      A zombie hooker shuffled up to me in one of the deserted halls.
     "I'm gonna fuck your brains out," she said.
     "Huh? So that's how you get the brains?" I asked her. It was tempting.
     "Yes, brains," she answered.
     "Well, thanks, but I'm married. Gotta find my room now, heh, heh. Before the coffee gets....cold."
     "What room are you in?"
     "Uh, 9214."
     "It's that way." She pointed back in the direction from which I had come.
    Look, if in the future I should decide to book another trip to Vegas, even if it is to see Criss Angel, I want you, my friends, to restrain me physically, and if necessary, bonk me in the head with a large wooden mallet. It would be less painful than the intestinal spasms I'm suffering now from the burger I ate at the Vegas airport. 
     Wait, there is one redeeming thing. In the plane I found a SkyMall catalog. Here it is on page 97, the Meerkat Gang garden sculpture. It's so cute. I'm ordering it now. 
     There, I feel better.                    Three Days at the Luxor

I stare up through closed eyes at the rough pink ceiling, where Nureyev’s family has come to dance.
He is in the middle, holding the others in his arms, and they move as one, their bodies a rippling slim ribbon of emerald waterdrift that shimmies up the stairsteps into the place that is beyond seeing. The choreography is minimal, no pas jeté, no plié on one pointy toe, no staghorn leaps across the stage, only the liquescent arabesque of dreamtime.
The music comes from indeterminate spaces, a digital shower of audible champagne. The melody joins the flowing brook that is Nureyev’s family, and that ribbon unwinds ever faster, a synchronistic ragtime blur that simultaneously enters and leaves the rememberance horizon.
At the end of my sentient compass a key has been turned, a locked room is no longer forbidden and the window in that door opens to admit the Nureyevs.
This place that I desire is less than effortless to enter. I guide my raft through the open window and join the Nureyev family. We are now four, linked together. I think “portée” and as one, we step through air, riding with the music. We are free, suspended. Our feet do not touch down, and we do not need to see one another. All that exists is the river and the harmony between us. I am in that place where time means nothing. I no longer hear my heartbeat. The tour en l'air is endless, we float, float, float atop the viola’s pizzacato, until the ceiling once again comes into view.

Something went horribly wrong recently on the internets, those pipes of informative speculation and slander, that series of omnipotent tubes. The incident may have been just chance, or maybe by design, but nevertheless, it should not have been allowed to happen.
For the very first time in post-industrial western society, a lone geeky teen in East Hell simultaneously Tweeted on Twitter, Peeped on Peeper, Flipped out on Flipper, Tripped on Tripper, Wanked on Wanker, Spanked on Spanker, and in a final desperate act, Doofed on Doofus.
Cody Roberts, aka C_Bob, had alienated himself from his family and had been, according to his mother, spending entirely too much time parked in front of his computer screen, but to her relief, he wasn’t playing Redneck RoadRage anymore. She simply failed to understand exactly what it was he spent every waking moment doing.
When he collapsed at his desk, foaming at the mouth and writhing in self-afflicted pain, his mother, panic stricken, called 911. Minutes later, he was piled onto a stretcher and paramedics rushed him to East Hell General.
The ER doctors had never seen anything like it. The kid lay in a fetal position, drooling and alternately crying out, “Leave Britney alone!” and “Who’s Britney?” and just before he slipped into unconsciousness, “Britney, leave me alone!”
Poor kid. The specialists who reconstructed his actions that day found that, his brain fried from Tripping, C_Bob revived himself with a 20 minute Peeping and Spanking session, then attempted the unthinkable. He Tweeted while Wanking. He was then advised in an angry instant message from the Flipper administrator that he had better leave the site immediately, and log on to Doofus, where he belonged. The beleaguered juvenile complied, logging on to Doofus, while keeping his other sites open. His first couple of Doofs drew a loud chorus of misspelled, unintelligible rants, threatening him and the horse he Doofed in on. It was too much information.
The kid had it coming. The city had lost so much bandwidth to this unsupervised miscreant, that it was necessary to create special wireless zones, hot spots where you could either Tweet and Peep, Spank and Wank, or Flip and Trip. You could Doof on Doofus anyplace, though. Everywhere was a Doofus zone.
He is in recovery, daily therapy consists of intense scared-straight sessions with former and assorted Peepers, Wankers, and Trippers.
The tubes are filling up, people! How much more of this can we take? I for one have had it. I do not intend to go quietly into a night of unmitigated Spanking. Unless, of course, I can have a Peep first.