I read this collection after a friend quoted a character on dining out: I wanted to go home, but more than that I wanted dinner. I had not eaten dinner in months. I wanted to choose my food from a list of food.Curtis keeps a kind of deadpan that highlights the alarming situations her protagonists get into. 

First published in Harper’s Magazine, July, 2002 and available to subscribers here. Collected in Twenty Grand, Harper Perennial, 2007