He swears that he can feel them sometimes, phantom appendages on his back twitching and thrumming with unlived life. “I swear mummy. I swear.”

But something is wrong with these coots. Why are they moving so strangely?

Everybody gets old, Grandma always says. Everybody withers.

“That’s why I quit politics,” a teen says into his cellphone, juuling with his free hand.

It’s like the menu was created for those of us born with skeletal and jaw problems. Clam chowder, broiled cod, boiled carrots—foods that deliver without crunch.

“Aaron met him in New Jersey, coming back from his twice-annual visit to his sister’s in Cherry Hill, and within twenty minutes he’d asked Max to come home—to live.”