I wake to the unmistakable sound of a man urinating. I must have kicked off the blankets during the night, and when I roll onto the empty side of the bed I see that my bedroom door is wide open. I think about the man whose stream I can hear subsiding, who is probably shaking his penis and leaving coin-sized drips on the bathroom floor and I wonder what my life would be like if I were to marry him.

Two girls with swollen bellies are comparing stretch marks in the girl’s bathroom mirror. It looks as if kittens have clawed out of their insides. ‘Almond oil is fucken useless, man,’ one girl complains. ‘I’ve got three more today,’ her friend replies, scratching at her skin distastefully. ‘Yeah, but you’re tan so can’t see them. I look like a white tiger.’

At her Urban Beekeeper’s Group, Michael Isthmus had quite a reputation as a ‘botherer’. Swimming against a tide of popular support for the bees, he’d been diligently policing the New York City Council’s ban on city beekeeping for the past five years. He was charged with the job of monitoring hundreds of covert beekeepers who were establishing hives all over the city.

My friend, I’ve come to the conclusion, is selfish. She has a new boyfriend. They spend all day in my friend's room. I hear the vibration of their voices through the wall. Laughter mostly and sometimes sounds I wish I didn't hear. Before her boyfriend, my friend was depressed. It used to be me who would lie next to her in bed. I would tell her jokes to make her laugh and stories about all the bad luck I’ve had with men.

Lockhart was lost. He crossed a border of shade to stand in the sunlight, looking around for a sign. At every step the coins in his pocket jangled. He was in the habit of carrying loose change about him to throw to beggars.

Last night he woke to squall thunder and the thud of something falling and he thought one thing – ‘snow’ – and fell asleep again, forced himself asleep so he wouldn’t wake and worry about what fell and what might break in the night.

Day 1: Aljazhab. The oldest city in the world seems a likely place to find ghosts. The cab plunges into a hot, dusty turmoil of traffic, crowds and distorted calls to midday prayer.

She was unaccustomed to the light. The screen door banged behind her as she rested a burnt frying pan on the rail. A cloud of dust rose over the paddock where the men were harvesting. She shaded her eyes.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 dawns humid and somewhat cloudy in southern Vietnam. Millions of men and women ready themselves for work. Some make their way by scooter to downtown Saigon, or District 1, in the centre of Ho Chi Minh City. Some go to the market.

Joe scrapes a homemade metal knife along the underside of a cowhide. Fat collects along the edge and he wipes it on his overalls. The hide goes into the pit, I throw buckets of salt on it and he starts scraping the next one. Inside this shed, just beyond the abattoir, Joe turns animal skins into leather and makes sausages. In town he lives alone, smokes too much and smells of preservatives. In the high school library, he teaches me how to play chess.

Dimity is about to sneeze. She is lying in the yard, watching the bees around the clover. Grass between her knuckles, and at the back of her heels and her daisy-chained ankles. She turns her face to the sun, breathes in and –

It took a full two days for the post-cyclone rain to ease.

I have a layover in Shanghai for a night which I mainly spend getting on and off the metro and walking, sweating in crowds, buffeted by warm bodies.

Jon Dootson woke up in the morning to find he’d been transformed into a long, skinny white man.

I was in love when New York’s disintegration splashed its light onto my face and walls.