My Cardboard Balcony

Broken Hound Spot by Belinda Roddie You kept sixteen coonhounds gnawing at snow at the Broken Hound Spot, which served cold tea with hot whiskey and hot whiskey with cold tea. You made a pretty penny from the game those furry bastards peeled from all the trees and digging burrows in the Shasta winter, drooling on the old ripened carcasses. But you made a fortune on the gold vein. Twenty-six years later, you've got a tabby fattening its liver by the octogenarian stove, and a sighing clown of a labrador with its tongue on your shoes, and you couldn't be happier, you damn fool, drinking cold tea with hot whiskey and hot whiskey with cold tea at the Broken Hound Spot every Tuesday.

When I first saw the size of the airship, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Rubbing them and blinking rapidly didn't change the image, though, so then I assumed I had temporarily gone mad. But there it was, the majestic dirigible. The Count Lazarus. "Eight years old and running as smoothly as the sea on a calm winter day," the captain boasted. "You gotta love her."