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surprisingly sentimental. The attic rafters were crammed with every Mother’s Day card I had ever made with crayon, Christmas ornaments, my red tricycle, battered from several ill-planned trips into the gulch behind our house, along with the odd antique, like a moth-eaten bowler hat and a croquet set that looked well used, although we’d never played. Eventually I started to rush through the debris like I was on one of those crazy shopping game shows, pulling out photos by the handful and tossing them in the boxes without looking, making split decisions. Baby teeth? No. Kindergarten macaroni necklace Mother’s Day present? What the hell, sure.
    My father, on the other hand, kept surprisingly little.
    Contents of my father’s closet: ten identical short-sleeved polo shirts in muted colors and six pairs of wool slacks (black and gray). Contents of drawer (he had one, and only one, in the mahogany dresser): six pairs of boxers and six white T-shirts, folded with military precision. In a shoebox under the dresser I found a tarnished silver ring and a broken pocket watch. The ring was engraved with some kind of Celtic knot, and there was a dull red stone in its center. He’d always worn the ring on his right hand, a mirror of the plain gold wedding ring he wore on his left. It was oddly missing from the baggy the funeral director gave me after the wake, jewelry taken from their cold bodies and presented like some kind of corporeal parting gift. I thought he’d nipped it and even sent a few heated texts that were never replied to. So, on rediscovering the ring, I decided to do the smart thing and slip it into the zipped pocket of my messenger bag, which I keep on me at almost all times. I put the shoebox in one of my large cardboard boxes, leaving the rest for the executor to donate. Of course when I went to look for the ring later, it wasn’t there, and I never did find it again—something that haunts me in a recurring dream where I look down and see it on my finger, only to watch it slowly disappear.
    The boxes are currently sitting in my apartment closet, taped shut. I haven’t opened them in a year, and in fact I don’t even use that closet. I find that the floor works perfectly well for coat storage and umbrellas.
    Two weeks. Everything you love, own, and cherish, can be gone, liquidated , and lost forever in two weeks. Give or take a day.

    By the time four o’clock hits I’m wondering if it’d be worth it to pull the fire alarm and get an extra hour of my life back, when suddenly Bob, uncharacteristically ashen-faced and sweaty, roughly pulls on his jacket and bolts out the door.
    Myrna inadvertently catches my eye.
    “What’s up with him?”
    She icily swivels her chair out of my sight line.
    My phone buzzes. I hope whoever died is someone I have a file on, because there’s no way I’m staying past five.
    But it’s just Mac. “Kid, you still here?”
    Mac likes to call me “kid,” which makes me wonder if I could sue him for age discrimination. For a moment I consider gently placing the phone back on the receiver and ducking out the back through the fire exit, but then I remember my rent is due.
    “Sure I’m here,” I say in a busy, curt voice, tapping loudly on my laptop. “Got a lot on my plate. What’s up?”
    “Bob’s gotta go to the hospital for a colonoscopy, for Christ’s sake. Afraid he’s got polyps in his ass.”
    This brings up the single most disturbing visual image of my life. I rub my forehead. “That really sucks.”
    “You bet it sucks, ’cause it’s Halloween and I already paid Maddy sixty bucks to do her psychic voodoo thing at the Aspinwall place. Huge fuckin’ feature in the Saturday paper, and Bob’s freaking out, ’cause he’s got blood in his shit.”
    Second most disturbing visual image of my life.
    “So, guess what? Today is your lucky fuckin’ day. I’m gonna put your two-week notice on ice and let you write the feature. How do you like that shit? I mean, no