Arturo was looking at me funny. Again. I feel like every town has one: that quirky, odd (usually older) artist-type, who is operating on some upper plane of super-intense brainwaving, who doesn't seem to have a regular, you-and-me job, but is living in the biggest space in town that's been converted into both an art studio and the coolest apartment you've ever seen. Clothes that are somehow both stylish and paint-spattere...

"Do you smell that?" I asked. "I'm not making it up, am I?" The cute, curvy front desk clerk sniffed and made a face. "No," she said. "I smell that too." She leaned a bit towards me and waved a finger towards a vent in the bathroom. "A lot of people think they can get away with smoking in their bathroom, especially when it's cold like this outside. I'm so sorry it's drifting into your room." After countless stays in count...

Nico was making coffee. The bright Florida sunshine of a new day illuminated the white-and-sea foam green of my hotel room, glinting off the small kitchenette, where she was trying to be quiet. I was happy to see the sounds were coming from her making coffee, and not from her trying to slip out, that morning after ritual of "I'll call you," of slipping on enough clothes to carry your shoes and bag and whatever else out th...

I could tell it was going to be a long, long summer. The owner of my coffee shop, always on the lookout to expand his dinky little place into a massive, nationwide chain, met a guy who knew a guy that had a bar that needed a summer pop-up. In the North Fork of Long Island. Maybe you don't know the Eastern End of Long Island: take the ugliest-souled people you know, give them tons and tons of generational wealth, and put t...

There is a small landing at the top of my building's staircase, rising above the 4th floor (where I live), that exits to the rooftop. The door to the roof is, understandably, alarmed; but unlike other buildings I've lived in, the landing itself is not monitored by some ear-splitting, motion-detected alarm. This affords a small, removed space that is detached from the usual doings of the building (not that there are many)...

It was a great little summer rental. I had one of two small apartments in an old beach house, at the back, with a tiny bathroom, a tiny bedroom, and a tiny kitchenette, all shiplap, uninsulated windows, and the unmistakable smell of "old person's cottage." Mismatched utensils, mismatched towels. My job allowed me to work remotely, and I was tired of looking at the same four walls in Chicago, so why not rough it for a whil...