A gray fox

Turbulent, dangerous water washed across the bridge no more than a hundred yards in front of Rock. He was on foot, attempting to walk to an island a mile off the coast, but the sky had darkened and wind from the sea howled across him. It was obvious he would have no chance, so he decided to return to the beach.
Before he moved to turn back, he felt what seemed like an animal's tongue run across his left calf. He looked to see a gray fox that in an instant ran past him in a downhill sprint toward the water. Rock assumed it wanted fish, and he thought a few would likely splash across the bridge.
He wondered if this frightfully beautiful scene was a product of climate change. A pretty woman stood beside him. Rock thought he knew her, but he wasn't sure from where or when. "Do you think global warming caused this?" he said.

Our cat

It was a hot, hazy afternoon and weathered colors of dust and asphalt rose in heat waves from the barren four-lane highway. Rock and his young brunette girlfriend or wife were fifteen miles from their house, about to merge onto an interchange when they saw a gray and white cat roughly the size of a school bus jogging along the access road near their car.
"That's Jo, isn't it?" Rock's significant other said.
"You know what, it is," Rock said.
He stopped the car on a vacant patch of dry weeds and dirt beside the road.
"Don't you think we should just let her get home on her own?" the young woman said.
Rock didn't know the name of the woman seated beside him. He had never seen her before, but he carefully considered her question. He recognized its logic, something about the importance of cats finding their way, but they were a long way from home, and this was an awful place for a cat. Rock stepped out of the car, picked Jo up, and they drove away.

The worst trip

This was like no interstate highway Rock had ever seen. He was in transit from Little Rock to Los Angeles, and his itinerary required him to rent a car and drive between airports somewhere in the midwest. On his drive, the busy eight-lane thoroughfare suddenly narrowed to a single lane. It had no shoulders and was composed of a series of sharp, steeply-banked turns.
It seemed insane. The passage was entirely too narrow to support the kind of speed its turns required, so to compensate for his car's lack of centrifugal force, Rock reached out and pushed down on top of it. He was almost stunned to find that his effort worked.
After he reached the airport, Rock literally ran onto the plane he thought would take him to Los Angeles. Once aboard, his two carry-on bags tore apart from the weight of their contents, which spread in a jumble across the floor and his and an adjacent seat. As he began to pick up the dozens of things he'd packed, most of which looked completely unfamiliar, he heard a man's voice call his name.
Rock turned to see an old acquaintance named Dan, a former Hash House Harrier. It had been at least fifteen years since they last met, but they had always been on very pleasant terms. Rock was delighted to see him. "Dan, how are you, man?" he said as they shook hands.
"I'm doing great, Rock. It's good to see you."
"It's good to see you, too. So what's up? You going to LA on business?"
"LA? No, we're going home."
"Home? Don't you still live in North Little Rock?"
"I do. That's where we're going."
Rock didn't know what to think, but he suspected the worst. "Wait a minute, Dan," he said. "Isn't this flight going to Los Angeles?"
"No. It's going to Little Rock."

A new, old restaurant

Rock rode every night on a local light railway from his apartment across a river to a downtown assortment of restaurants and bars scattered throughout old but solid stone buildings typical of many European cities. On this warm evening, he stepped from the train and was immediately drawn toward a place he hadn't seen before.
It was a modern restaurant that stood alone in a large parking lot. Rock assumed it was part of an American chain, and at first its incongruity rung out, but then he noticed it was built into the ground floor of a building clearly as old as the rest in that part of the city. As he looked more closely, it became apparent that the only difference between this business and the rest nearby was its bright interior lighting. It was crowded, and cars were parked all around it on the narrow streets.

Hunger

Several men and women discussed how to best remove the contents of Rock's back bedroom and bathroom without disturbing his cat, Jo. It was an undertaking Rock did not at all understand. He stood in his bathroom and watched Jo as she looked on from the hallway. It seemed she shared his confusion.
Earlier, Rock had discussed with two women of undeterminable ethnic origin their possible purchase of a large wooden box they found in the storage area of a department store in an abandoned shopping mall. There might have been money at stake, but he remembered they were offended when he told them how fashionable he thought their look had become. It appeared to him as if they were spawned from a genetic mix of people from several regions, possibly including Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Iberian Peninsula, and perhaps Africa. There was no way to know where they were from outside of asking, and even then, he imagined they might not know. Either way, it was clear from their disdain that they found the topic inappropriate.
Rock wondered whether he should clean some before the people returned, and then whether or not they were ever there. All he knew for sure was he was hungry and Jo wanted out.

The fire

A sheet of fire extended from the living room of Rock's father's apartment through the kitchen and front wall and across a ridge of tile to the street. Rock didn't know whether he or his cats Pam and Jo would make it out alive.
This circumstance had evolved in mere seconds.
Minutes before the fire started, Rock had found the cats slathered in old, filthy cooking oil. They apparently had waded through a frying pan in the kitchen. Rock used a kitchen rag and water from the sink to clean them and then carried them to the living room where his father—Richard, who was away for the morning—kept a somewhat exotic dryer. It was a shoe-box-sized, hard black plastic machine from which stretched a flexible hose of steel and mesh and a nozzle that combined to look and work exactly like a kitchen-sink sprayer.
Rock sat on a couch and used the device to blow hot air across his now soggy but clean cats, but within seconds, water rather than air began to spray from the hose. Next, the handle became so hot he could no longer hold it. He dropped it on the couch as sheets of water sprayed through the apartment's immaculate front rooms. Just as it occurred to Rock to concern himself with Richard's expensive, suddenly water-damaged stuff, he saw that the sprayer handle had become so hot that it ignited a quilt on the couch, which almost immediately exploded into flames that began to spread everywhere.
No more than a second later, it was clear that the fire was already beyond his ability and resources to stop. He knew they all needed out, but there was no obvious way. The fire had engulfed everything between them and the street. Even the tile-covered lawn was aflame.

Contrasts

The contrast seemed bizarre to Rock. Just two or three years earlier, he had been at the epicenter of a political investigation so complex and far-reaching that it was the talk of the world. It boggled him as he attempted to recall the details, most of which neither he nor anyone was ever able to connect. Hillary Clinton was tied in there somewhere. He remembered that and how the hosts of conservative radio talk shows had hounded him. His house and garage remained littered with files and other evidence, much of it jammed into a chest of drawers in his back bedroom.
All of that was in his near past, but it had begun to dawn on Rock that all he needed to concern himself with on this particular Monday were two interviews scheduled for noon in Conway, twenty-five miles away. He would talk to a football coach and a defensive lineman. Otherwise, there were incidental matters of his fitness, his golf game, and the performance of his fantasy football team. He had nothing to worry about.

No idea

Hundreds of people Rock had never met appeared at his birthday party, including a reporter from the paper, an approximately twenty-five-year-old named Luke. Rock overheard him talking to another young man, dressed as Luke in khakis and a casual wool sports jackets.
It was soon evident that they were engaged in a heated conversation and that Luke was on the defensive. The other man had been a world-class distance runner whose career was cut short by a severe knee injury, and Luke had written a story about his demise. The runner's complaint was that Luke had left out any mention of his past. "You don't even know where I'm from, Luke," he said. "You never asked."
Luke appealed to Rock for help, but Rock had no idea who the runner was.
"Man, I'm sorry," Rock said. "I used to really keep up with track and field, but I haven't for years."

Miller Pete

It was early in the morning. Rock had slept on a living room couch at the house of the Marion and Kim Waugh family and was awakened to find everyone in preparation for a tribute to his birthday. Kim had spent the previous evening making high-top basketball shoes that resembled cans of Miller Lite—mostly white but with the traditional navy blue Lite label, except the word Lite had been replaced by Pete, Rock's most common nickname.
All the Waughs and several of their neighbors would wear them in a benefit basketball tournament scheduled for later that day. Marion seemed very excited. He also was clearly pleased by Rock's favorable reaction to the shoes.

Age restrictions

It seemed odd to Rock that people as old as Bill and Elaine were participants in a climb to the top of Mount Pinnacle. He wondered whether there were regulations against such behavior.