Verbatim

A young guy in a striped shirt pushes a Livejournal page up and down across his laptop screen, giggling. His girlfriend looks at him quizzically, and he turns the computer around to show her. She looks hard at the screen for a moment and smiles approvingly. The guy says, “I think that’s my new favorite site.” He turns the computer back around, just as a kid with nappy hair walks into the room. The street kid holds up a cardboard sign with a green haloed splotch painted on it. He waits a beat, then turns around and walks right back out.

Woman standing in a grocery store checkout line late at night, laughing into a cellphone: “Heh heh heh. You quoted me. . . Verbatim! . . . Bitch.”