He slid a white retainer form across the wooden desk and pointed to the line at the bottom.

I signed my name with his heavy pen and wrote a personal check for two thousand dollars.

Arthur picked up the check, blotted the ink with the side of his palm, and locked it in his middle drawer with a brass key.

At a quarter past three, I pulled into the visitor lane along the fence at Oakmont Elementary.

My eleven-year-old Buick hesitated when I shifted from reverse into park, the transmission giving a dull clunk under the floorboards before the engine settled.

A row of seven yellow buses stood along the concrete sidewalk with their diesel engines idling, white exhaust drifting past the chain-link fence.