Tulsa

She understood Brooklyn. You needed the right glasses, the right shoes, the right jeans. And my God, the hair. You had to nail the hair exactly. If it looked like you were trying too hard, you weren't trying hard enough.

She didn't understand Tulsa. No one seemed to be trying. It would almost be cool, the way nobody seemed to care, except what's the point of being cool if you don't even realize it. She was going to hate it here.

But the sweater-skirt combination on that lady was going to kill when she wore it home for Christmas vacation.

Carl

The windows to Carl's apartment were always closed. Summer heat and cancer-causing insulation made the one-bedroom flat in the still unseemly section of Brooklyn stink of rot and turpentine.

Carl sometimes paced about with a listless gait. He was married to the apartment, having been outside it only once or twice in his entire memory. There was nothing worth exploring that hadn't been explored years before. The bulk of his time was spent gazing out the window.

But as far as New York City house cats went, Carl had it better than most thanks to the corpse in the bedroom.