Stanley glances at the clock on his microwave. 12:23. He has to be up at 6:00 to drive Melissa to school because Terri's car is in the shop, and then drop Terri off at the dentist, and then go into his own job. He takes a piece of bread and spreads peanut butter thickly on it, before folding the piece of bread over. He prefers chunky. This is creamy. Melissa and Terri like creamy. Which is one of the few things they do agree on.

He takes a bite and reaches into the refrigerator for the milk. He begins to get a glass out of the cupboard, but the thought of washing the glass afterwards fills him with a deep tiredness.

Terri found a condom in Melissa's backpack. Melissa says that everyone got one in their sex-ed class; Terri was skeptical at best. Stanley is inclined to believe Melissa – she is spoiled, unaware of the value of things, but she is not a liar – but sided with Terri. Having an argument with your child means you're a strict disciplinarian; having an argument with your wife means you sleep on the couch. Stanley believes in going along to get along. But he will call the school tomorrow, see if it's true about the sex-ed class.

He drinks milk directly from the carton, and tries to focus on the cool deep pleasure of the milk going down his throat.

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Meredith is watching television. Jake is in his room, playing that video game where you run around and steal cars from people and then beat them up. He showed her, in detail and with a grin on his face that dared her to get angry about it, to say that it was too much and try to take it away from him. Instead she asked if she could play. He seemed immeasurably disappointed, and she wonders if it makes her a bad mother the quick bloom of joy she felt, seeing his face fall when she failed to take the bait.

They don't tell you, when you're in those Lamaze classes or looking at that pulsing life inside of you at the obstetricians, that it's possible to dislike your child. That is it possible to love them deeply, to be willing to die for them in a heartbeat, and yet find them in some essential way distasteful.

She is sipping on a white wine. It has been her new plan – she only drinks wine, and only buys one bottle at a time. She looks at the quarter-full bottle on top of her refrigerator and sighs. It won't be enough. It never, ever is.

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Angela is at the grocery store. She is cooking D dinner tonight, making him a pork shoulder roast. She is out of rosemary and scanning the spice aisle for it. She finds it. Eleven dollars! Eleven dollars they want her to pay for rosemary. It is because of the holiday season, she knows it is. They play their secular songs that hardly mention Christ, they put out their “Happy Holiday” signs, and they hike up their prices. It's ridiculous. It's theft.

Later, when she opens her purse at D's house and finds the jar of rosemary nestled against her packet of Kleenex, she won't remember exactly how it got there, but she won't take it back to the store either.

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Kevin is happy. He is rarely unhappy, which is one thing he knows Stacy really loves about him. They are watching what she wants to watch, and he isn't complaining, because he's found that if they watch Grey's Anatomy there is greater statistical chance they will have sex that night, sex where Stacy might even do that for him. And when it's a night where Abby is at her dad's, increasing the odds of sex with that even higher? Kevin is going to watch whatever Stacy wants to watch, even if it's My Little Pony or Barbie or C-SPAN. Plus she made her kettle corn. She makes really good kettle corn. He begins to tell her that, but she shushes him gently. That McDreamy guy is saying something to the really skinny doctor lady.

The doctor lady is hot. Like, really hot.

He reaches for another handful of kettle corn.

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Oscar and Gil watch the chalk-white moon cast a skein of glimmering light off Lake Lucerne.

“This wine is fantastic,” Gil says absently.

Oscar has to agree. The waiter comes by, and Gil orders another bottle in his broken German, and takes Oscar's hand.

“You think there's a chance this could ever happen again, us getting three months to travel like this?” Gil says, brushing his lips over Oscar's knuckles as he speaks.

Oscar is about to laugh and say no, but then thinks about where he works, who his boss is, how easy a lawsuit would be. He squeezes Gil's hand.

“You know, anything is possible. Anything at all.”

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Karen is preparing to go over to his house. They're driving to Philadelphia to see Architecture in Helsinki, a band he swears is really amazing. He burned a CD for her, and she's been listening to it on her iPod while she works out. She doesn't get it. Or, she gets it, it's strange little pop tunes that have overly cute lyrics and move all over the place, but it's never something she'd ever want to drive two hours to see.

But he's excited, and she likes it when he gets excited about something. She looks through her t-shirts, hoping to find something from college that'll work, something with a fading logo for a business she's never been to. She finds one, and realizes it's from the Gap, and instinctively knows he'll somehow know it's from the Gap and it'll be one more reason most of the time he seems to look about three inches in front of her face, instead of into her eyes. She ends up settling on a v-neck sweater and plain t-shirt.

She listens to Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes while driving to pick him up, turns it up really loud, moves her body with his voice, taps her fingers along the steering wheel rim. She tries to imagine him dancing, like really dancing and not doing some goofy “it's so funny that I'm dancing” dance. She can't.

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Creed waits until the last person leaves, then exits from the bathroom, walks into Michael's office, and dials China. He puts his feet up on Michael's desk and listens as the phone line crackles across all that ocean.

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Michael is still in his work clothes. His tie is loosened, and his shirt is untucked, but that's as far as he's gotten. He's not seeing Carol tonight. He's not seeing anyone tonight, and in the absence of people he feels strangely listless, with barely enough energy to heat up a microwave dinner.

He's watching America's Funniest Home Videos. He has a bunch on his TiVo, back when Bob Saget was doing it. He's listened to some of Bob Saget's stand-up, and it's pretty blue stuff, pretty out-there, like HBO Def Jam type stuff, Adults Only, Warning: Explicit Lyrics, 2 Live Crew type stuff, and that stuff is funny, but he really prefers this Bob Saget. He seems so friendly. Someone you could always talk to. Someone who would always laugh at your jokes.

Plus, the little kid on the show just fell down on his butt and said he wanted his mom to kiss his butt! Come on, that's hilarious!

The microwave beeps, and he pauses the show to go get his food.

Kiss his butt. He laughs to himself and shakes his head. He should remember that for work tomorrow.

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Jan is at her office. The cleaning lady moves in to empty her trash. She apologizes, as always, for being in her way. Jan, as always, apologizes for being in her way, the cleaning lady gives her a nervous smile, and moves on with her cart.

She turns around, stares at the city skyline staring back at her. She glances at the clock. Another two hours, and she'll go home. She leans in close to the window. Crow's feet. They're starting. Small lines around her lips, too. She can see it even in the forgiving and hazy reflection in the window. She suddenly wants to leave right now, go do something, be with someone, but she can't, as she leans in closer and closer to her own reflection, think of a single person to call.

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Toby is at his cooking class. One of the things that his ex-wife hated was cooking, and he ended up taking over a lot of it, especially towards the end. Now that he has the time, he's been taking a class every Thursday at Marywood University, at their Hospitality School.

He's not sure who he's doing it for, exactly. Lately, since he's started running, he mainly eats fish, maybe makes himself a salad. Sasha, well, she's a kid. She wants grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza, hamburgers, not osso bucco.

Today his station is next to a blond woman in her mid-thirties. They're learning flambé tonight, and everyone is slightly giddy at the prospect. She turns to Toby and grins, and he finds himself smiling back. “I'm afraid I'm going to, like, blow the whole place up,” she says, pulling her hair back into a pony tail.

“I... doubt you could blow the whole place up,” he says. “I mean, we're only using a cup of bourbon.”

“Well, maybe just you and me then,” she says, and he laughs and wonders is she? She is, isn't she?

“Not a bad way to go,” he says, “death by bourbon.” She laughs back.

He's doing the cooking classes, he realizes, for the next one. Maybe her, this woman that laughs with her tongue poking slightly out between her teeth, or maybe someone else, whomever she may turn out to be. Toby resolves to ask for her phone number at the end of class.

They pour their bourbon on top off their simmering chicken, take their fireplace matches and bring them in close, and their bourbon goes up in a pleasant whoomp and people exclaim and laugh around the class. Toby stares at the guttering red-orange flame and thinks about the next one.

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Kelly is nestled next to Ryan, and they're watching The Daily Show together. She doesn't really like The Daily Show too much, though Jon Stewart is cute and she thinks Ryan looks a little bit like him, but Ryan likes it, and she knows that he likes it that she seems to like it, so there's that. Jon Stewart says something about Trent Lott being the new House Minority Whip, and Ryan laughs and takes a drink of beer, so she laughs too, not to much, but a little giggle. A dainty giggle. He absently runs his thumb around the curve of her ear.

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Dwight is finishing his dinner. It was delicious, though he would have preferred venison. However, even without the aphrodisiacal qualities of deer meat, looking at Angela as she bends over to load the dishwasher is enough to make him breathe a little quicker.

He is a hunter, and she doesn't hear him until he is directly behind her, but she isn't startled when she turns. She is never startled by him.

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Ryan knows that Kelly doesn't really like The Daily Show, that she's pretending for his sake. He supposes the better thing to do would be to watch something they both like, if that television show even existed.

But the thing is, he likes The Daily Show. He turns up the television.

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Jim is sitting in front of his laptop, waiting for Karen to pick him up. Architecture in Helsinki is one of those bands he could never ask Mark to go see with him, and the type of band he probably wouldn't go to by himself, but having someone to go with makes it totally possible. Plus, Karen seems excited about it.

He's playing online poker, sloppily moving all in on bad cards, losing pretend money. He keeps glancing out his window into their driveway. He tries not think about how there seems to be an odd feeling of relief when the driveway remains empty, and he can play one more hand of a poker game he doesn't even care about.

And when his phone chirps and there's a text message waiting, he tries even harder not to let his heart begin to beat faster when he sees who it's from. He reads it once, puts down his phone, reads it twice. There's the sound of tires crackling into his driveway, the sound of a car horn. He shrugs on his coat, begins to type out a response with his thumbs, but then he's out the front door and Karen's leaning out the driver window and he slips his phone, text message unfinished, into his pocket and leans down and kisses her, and she tastes sweet.

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Pam is half-asleep, a copy of Cloud Atlas open next to her head, when her phone buzzes twice on her bedside stand and then falls silent. She glances at the clock. It's nearly one in the morning. She opens her phone, reads the message once, puts down her phone, reads it twice, and then types out the message quickly:

we convince dwigt there are dinosaur bones on his farm

She puts her phone back on the bedside table, marks her place in her book, and turns off the light. She's almost asleep when her phone lights up and buzzes again.

jurassic beet farm. i like it beesley

She dreams of pith helmets and khaki vests and small brushes that, ever so slowly, reveal things large and ancient and beautiful from underneath all that dirt.