Permanent Residents

You don't need a ticket to Burning Man to meet a man in a top hat, a thong, and flip-flops. You need a slow Tuesday morning at a crisis office in Sagebrush City, a desert city in the Southwest.

He said he was there for his appointment.

The names have been changed, and so have a lot of the details, to protect everyone, including me.

Some clients become permanent residents in your head. They moved in without asking, and now I pay rent to them in the form of sentences.

Every few months, the coroner's office called and asked if I could come take a look. A near-photographic memory makes you the person the coroner calls to put a name to a body. The room was always too bright. The body was always somebody I hoped I wouldn't recognize. Usually I did.

A tiny old woman on home care watched her aide's boyfriend follow the aide to work and start beating her inside the old woman's house. The old woman picked up a frying pan. By the time I got there, the boyfriend was in the back of the police truck. The old woman was still holding the dented frying pan, and she wasn't about to apologize.

A twelve-year-old explained, calmly, how to burn only part of a house so the fire looks like an electrical accident. His therapist quit after two sessions because he took notes on her wiring.

Permanent Residents is one of ten Sagebrush City books. Read them in any order.

Ebook (epub), delivered right after purchase.

Included free: Jukebox, a short bonus Sagebrush City book.