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He planned three months for a proposal at a window table on the Peak, until a black rainstorm shuts Hong Kong down and they end up soaked under a noodle stall tarp on Gage Street, where Auntie points her ladle at the ground, he kneels on the wet concrete, and she pulls out a ring of her own, because she was asking him on the Star Ferry tomorrow.

A Lisbon woman gave her brother a spare key, came home to a square of dust where the television stood, and never changed the lock, then cut and mailed him a new key every time she moved, until one Thursday in October, nine years later, he is at her door, one year clean, with her key on a string around his neck, and he knocks instead, and puts the key to his own room in her hand.

For twenty years two best friends have walked from opposite ends of the Lake Street bridge every Sunday at seven and met above the middle of the Mississippi, where Minneapolis turns into Saint Paul, until the winter one of them stops coming, and the other walks the whole bridge and two more miles to sit on her step and talk to her door every Sunday until March.

In a brand new red coat with her song in her earbuds, Hana struts through downtown Toronto like she's shooting a music video, with a subway grate for a wind machine, a coffee cart cup caught on the beat, and a banker doing her moves, all the way to the tower lobby, where the security guard tells her it's Saturday, so she says take two and walks it back to brunch.

On a packed uptown 4 express at rush hour, her boyfriend breaks up with her on a call stuck on speaker, the whole car takes her side, and while the train is held under Grand Central a nurse, a hard hat, and a kid with a cello case help her write the reply she delivers at Fifty Ninth Street before the doors close.

Six minutes in the Shroud and one more chest too many, so a looter dies with a full bag at zero, wakes at the Flame Altar in rags, crafts a wand from two Bones, and sprints back through the fog for his tombstone, only to spot another chest on the way out.

A friend grapples him up the Pillars of Creation at sunset, and the two of them double jump and glide side by side over Umber Hollow with a sabertooth watching from below, stamina running thin, while he works up the nerve to say something if they land it.

Deep in the Kindlewastes Hollow Halls, a survivor finds a page from an undead child remembering a mother's candles, a saffron-dyed orange blanket, and sweetened chamomile, and having woken alone too, reads it out loud, lights every corner, and promises to come back for the child.

A daughter in Queens has interpreted for her father since she was nine, from mortgages to her own report card, until the day a doctor says a word she knows in both languages and she can't get it out, and he takes her hand and says it himself in the English he has secretly practiced for years in his produce truck.

A first time marathoner who trained five months for a serious finish photo gets stuck all twenty six miles beside a dentist in a banana costume, hits the wall in the Bronx, and gets carried home when he tells the whole crowd her name, then shows up next year as the strawberry beside him.

Promoted at work with nobody to celebrate her, a woman misses the last train in Shinjuku on purpose, rents a karaoke room for one, and sings until dawn, until the night clerk grabs the second mic and the salaryman next door harmonizes through the wall.

For two years she has ridden the night train from Paris to Vienna once a month to see him, saving every return ticket in a shoebox, until the ride where she carries a one way ticket and a second suitcase.

Two kids stack milk crates into stairs behind the corner store so they can reach the second-floor window and leave a paper valentine for Mrs. Delaunay, who never unlocks the alley door.

After she dies he keeps her piano bench warm every night teaching their daughter the songs she left penciled in the margins, until the girl slides him over and plays the last one alone.

A year after the divorce he still shovels her walk before dawn every snowfall, and she answers with a coffee on the mailbox until the last storm of March.

A marina dockhand ties the same family's boat every summer until the kids grow up and stop coming, but he still checks the harbor cleat like they might.

A sister keeps resetting the porch light timer every night for a brother who has been saying he will visit next month for three years.

Every time Dot lets him go, her no-good ex rolls back like the ball return, until she buys a ball with her own name on it.

Thirty-eight months of partial payments end with one red stamp.