Head injuries

The huge press box was packed. The game wouldn't start for at least an hour, so Rock sat in a hospitality area with a plate loaded with onion rings, jalapeno poppers, and fried chicken wings. As he ate he noticed a blonde-headed boy about ten years old approach the deep fryer, which was set up in the middle of piles of fried food.
The fryer was empty of anything but sizzling oil, and the boy looked into it with a curious expression. Then, to Rock's horror, he fully submerged his head into the grease.
There were no signs of damage immediately after the boy pulled his head from the fryer, but his face was unnaturally and eerily pale, nearly white, almost as if it had been bleached.
Rock didn't have a cell phone with him and rushed to a group of older men on the other side of press box. "Does anyone have a phone I can use? We have a medical emergency."
As Rock dialed 911, he turned to see the boy had begun to vomit across the table, onto the food and Rock's equipment bag. Before an operator answered, he realized he didn't know know what town he was in. "What's the address of this press box?" he asked.
Of course no one knew. No one ever knows the address of stadiums. The men looked at Rock with barely disguised indignity and contempt. "Just tell her it's at the football stadium," one of them said.
Rock was embarrassed to have to ask the name of town but knew he had no choice.

Yard work

Three teenage boys walked across the street from their house and down Rock's driveway toward his backyard. They carried lawn tools, including a rake and a hedge trimmer. Confused, Rock walked out of his house and spoke to the boys just as they walked through a gate beside his garage. "Hey, fellows," he said. "What's up?"
They stopped and turned toward him with shy, embarrassed expressions. "Our dad sent us over here," one of them said. "He told us he wants us to clean up your backyard."

Dead air

There was a moment of panic for Rock moments after he climbed from his bed on Friday morning. It was a few minutes past nine o'clock, and he realized he hadn't played a single song from the cartridge they gave him for his new radio show. He remembered being in the studio earlier, while it was still dark, waiting with several of his co-hosts for a live group of jazz singers to finish.
Everyone at the station had seemed excited about Rock's show. It was primarily a talk format, with music sprinkled in, or at least that's what he thought he understood. But now he wasn't sure why he was at home. He was afraid for a moment that he had simply left the station in the middle of the show, driven to his house, and fallen asleep.

The top

Circumstances like this were sure to make even the best of Rock's days. Jenny Liberty had shown up at his door that morning from her home in Virginia, followed moments later by Chris and Erin from Corpus Christi. Their visits were completely unexpected, and Rock was pleased beyond reason.
It was a dark gray, cold snowy morning, and they road through it in Chris's enormous pickup truck for lunch in the Heights, where they gathered around a table in a small cafe.
They had already decided to order pizza but were still working on what kind when a slightly overweight, pretty blonde waitress walked up to take their order.
"Hi, y'all. What can I get you?"
"Well, we know we want pizza, but we haven't yet made up our minds what kind," Rock said. He turned to others. "Here. Y'all decide. I don't care what we get, so long as it doesn't have pineapple on it."
"But if you get a pineapple pizza, we'll give you a free slice of pineapple on the side," the waitress said. "That's our special today."
"Wait a minute," Rock said. "A free slice of pineapple. Heck, that might be enough to finally put me over the top."
His friends and the waitress laughed uproariously, which surprised him. He knew his thought was funny but thought it worthy of no more than a grin or wink.

The horses

Any time Claude Akins came to town when the court distributed thoroughbreds, there was no doubt he would have his choice. There were just two horses available this day, and everyone, including Rock, knew they were Akins's for the taking.
They were spectacular looking animals, both large, lean colts, one a bay, the other a chestnut. The bay, like Akins, was tall and dark and almost menacing in appearance.

Magnet

Someone at a run of the Little Rock Hash House Harriers asked Rock what he would want his obituary to say, and he said, "Rock, who died after he was shot by a 32-year-old husband with whose wife he was having an affair, was 106 and sharp as a fucking tack."

Later he sat back against a large boulder at the right side of a pretty woman named Trisha. Though her husband sat to her left, she leaned her head on Rock's shoulder. "You are so funny," she said. "I love you, Rock."

Seminar

The blonde looked like the sort of girl or woman who had attracted Rock as long as he could remember. He met her among a group of college students who, along with Rock and Todd Taylor, were making their way through a jobs seminar.
Rock and Todd were about thirty to thirty-five years older than anyone else there, including the blonde. They agreed she was lovely. Her hair was cut in a short, simple style, above her ears. She was a little over five-feet tall, weighed at most a hundred pounds, had blue eyes, and tiny features, highlighted by her small, soft mouth. Dressed in a simple, navy blue-tennis skirt, Rock assumed she was an outdoor girl.
It occurred in an instant to Rock that he had known her for several years and that she had never acted so much as remotely interested in him. They stood together at a table advertising the U.S. Army and Rock picked up a heavy, hardcover book with an olive drab cover. "Have you ever considered the military?" he said to her.
"No. I'm not at all interested."
"Really? You know the services, all of them, offer great perks."
"There's no way I'd join any of them. Absolutely no way."
She began to look around at the others around them, clearly it seemed looking for the young people she had arrived with.

The last ten stories

It had been fifteen years since Rock last edited newspaper copy, and he couldn't quite remember an old rule he learned back in the late 1980s, something about always starting with the last ten stories from the night before.
He scrambled through endless copy, but nothing made any sense. There was a story near the top about a high school football coach nearing retirement who had won several state championships. The coach hung plaques at his school that indicated the seasons his teams had done well, but it was nevertheless impossible for Rock isolate his championship teams.
Deadline was minutes away and he didn't have a single story ready for publication.

Terrorists

The elevator was packed. There must have been twenty people onboard, which amazed Rock. It ran along a transparent shaft on the northern side of the Democrat Building that offered a vibrant view of downtown Little Rock, which bustled with traffic and people in bright blue sunshine.
As Rock watched, a thin, sixty-year-old woman grabbed his arm in both hands. She looked panicked. "Please help me," she said. "There are terrorists in this building and they're trying to get me."
"OK, calm down. Where are they?" Rock was immediately skeptical. Everything seemed perfectly normal. He led the woman off the elevator into the building, which was crowded with people going about their jobs. She clung to his right arm as if she were in imminent danger, but nothing appeared unusual in any way.

Phone trouble

As soon as Rock walked into the sports office, assistant editor Matt Spencer asked if he could have a feature story about a tennis player ready for the next day's paper. It was early in the day, but Rock hadn't done anything concerning the story. No research; no interviews; nothing. "I'll tell you what, Matt. I'll do my best to have it for you, but don't commit me yet. I'll let you know one way or the other a little later this afternoon."
Before he started, he found that someone had removed the telephone from his desk. He began to look for it all around without luck. After a few minutes, he found an old, stained, pink phone under some rubbish near a wastepaper basket, but he soon realized it didn't work.
It had been at least five or six years since Rock had been inside the Democrat Building, and he had forgotten where the maintenance office was. He thought it was on the second floor, one floor down.
He couldn't believe the change. Rock opened the door from the stairwell and was stunned to see vast hallways with artwork everywhere. It looked like a modern museum. There were hundreds of people walking or riding bicycles as if they were outside. The walls were made of glass, and bright blue sunlight washed across everything.
Rock asked someone where the maintenance men worked. He was told their office was on the third floor and suddenly remembered its exact location from years earlier.

Dogs and cats

Rock was on a sidewalk near the front door to the apartment he rented a couple of days earlier. He was there to straighten things out and see what he needed to move from his house, which was in the same general area though about a mile away.
Two young women from an apartment next to his had just walked out to introduce themselves when Rock's cat Jo approached from a row of parked cars. It amazed Rock that she had taken so little time to find him.
Seconds after Jo appeared, Rock's other cats Pam and Samantha followed. Then came dogs named Scout and Soccoro. They belonged to friends of his from Texas, and he hadn't seen either in over a year.

Eternity

There was a loop of eternity connected to Rock's house, which he awoke to discover on a Saturday morning. He was in it and would remain there forever. All was taken care of. Nothing need be done.
However, he soon realized there were two puzzles he must overcome. One concerned a team boxing event and the other a box filled with a Santa Claus costume and Santa accessories.
The boxing tournament seemed to extend from his right hand, as if his fingers were the fighters. Once he recognized the absurdity of such a circumstance it cleared up. The Santa Claus stuff was in a box in his back bedroom and he knew any problem with it could be easily resolved. At some point he could take it to his garage.

The next brunette

The Dow Jones had bounced up and down all day, and Rock watched with interest as he sat on a pier at the lake where a friend of his kept a large sailboat.
A cute thirty-year-old woman with long brunette hair, a girl-next-door midwesterner Rock had known for years, walked onto the pier and sat beside him. "How's the market doing?" she said.
"It's hanging in there. I don't think anyone will get rich or go broke today."
She placed one of her palms on the back of his right hand and squeezed it softly, and he was immensely pleased. It was apparent to him that he had a new girlfriend.

Over-under

Since no one asked, Rock didn't need to explain why he had taken the under on an over-under Super Bowl points-scored number of twenty. Obviously the number was extremely low, but as the game neared its conclusion, it was obvious to Rock and everyone around him in the large hotel banquet hall that the two teams would not come close to scoring more than a total of twenty points.
Rock's receipts were printed on two cheap, flimsy paper plates. Combined, they showed he was about to win a total of forty dollars.

The Web

He wasn't sure where he was, but Rock watched a crazy program on the Web that apparently was in the process of documenting a man being fleeced on some bizarre golf tour. The man sat beside another man—an authority of some sort—who pointed out on a computer screen before them some of the golf courses where his finances had been particularly hard hit.
"Right here, for intstance," the authority said as he pointed to a video replay of the man golfing somewhere. "They charged you fifty-thousand dollars for this. I'm telling you, it goes on and on. All told, they're into you for several million."