I prayed for the city to be cleared of people, for the gift of being alone…which is the one New York prayer that rarely gets lost or delayed in channels, and in no time at all everything I touched turned to solid loneliness.

More from Nine Stories

• Life is a gift horse in my opinion.
• She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she reached puberty.
• And I don't just mention it, for God's sake, to show you I was once an Emotional Young Person Just Like Yourself.
• Certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.
• Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
• I am kind of a paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.