Thanks in advance.

Thanks, Craigslist:

no -- it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests...but if you were traveling on the Brown Line and found the copy of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" I'd left there last Tuesday along with the registration card for my new hard drive that I'd filled out and was using as a bookmark but hadn't gotten around to sending in, go ahead and email me. I mean, you can keep the book (I already stole my roommate's copy) but I want that card back. Or, if you want to slap postage on that baby, you can go ahead and send that along to the manufacturer and just email me, letting me know that you did that. I'd really appreciate it. I'll even read any solicitations you may wanna send along, contradicting the beginning and end of this post - but ONLY IF YOU FOUND THAT CARD. If you haven't, and you send some pitch for C1Ali5 or SEXUALLY EXPLICIT pics, I'm going to find you and your children and your neighbor's dog and lock all of you in a shed where an endless loop of Norwegian free jazz is playing at 180 ass-chafing decibels, along with a button from which is hanging a sign that reads: "Pressing this button will turn off the music, but will also, one second later, fill this shed with hungry gonorrhea-infected mice, while the free jazz will be replaced by Gilbert Gottfried's audiobook reading of 'The O'Reilly Factor for Kids.' One hour later, the doors will open."

So thanks in advance for sending that card in, or letting me know that you have it. It's nice to know that, even in this world fraught with cruelty and indifference, small kindnesses still abound.

Bagel.

Louis Pound’s last bagel was a Magnuson’s Onion, toasted and spread with reduced-fat cream cheese. One half lay a few feet from his outstretched hand, underneath a stool, face down; the other half a few feet further away, leaning up against a carton of orange juice that was, like Louis Pound, leaking its contents onto the floor of the deli.

Beyond the twisted frame of the truck now bent into the front of Mr. Magnuson’s deli, Louis could see figures peering inside, shouting, running. He could hear Mr. Magnuson’s sister, Polly, groan from the other side of the counter.

He tried to turn his head. The room started to turn brighter and indistinct, so he stopped, and stared along his arm at his hand, now an unfamiliar color, pale, turning noticeably darker as he watched.

Where’s my phone? he thought. And then: There was going to be chili at the barbecue on Saturday. Dammit.

He listened to something dripping from the cab of the truck onto the tile.

At least I won’t have to call Angie, She’ll still probably be mad, though. It was weird, her so crazy about needlepoint. That’s odd, right? What kind of 28-year-old is crazy about needlepoint?

The peaks and curves of cream cheese on top of the bagel started to undulate and turn, like waves on the ocean. He stared into a tiny white sea, with a feeble grey light, shining, inexplicably, through the center of it.

From the back, he heard someone pound a door open, and figures scrambling inside.

I wish I could have had a chance to eat my bagel.

Well, someone’s coming, I think.

Someone’s coming.