Jack forgot his hat. His gloves. His coat, too. Down the street to where he thought Betty was. She wasn’t. Across the park, if it was a park. Grass anyway. Big empty blue sky. Tired. Sat down on a bench.

So stone cold. Jack wanted to go home. Forgot where.

Paul Negri has twice won the Gold Medal for fiction in the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Writing Competition. His work has appeared in The Vestal Review, Bartleby Snopes, Piff Magazine, Jellyfish Review and other publications. He lives and writes in Clifton, New Jersey.