The two stories between reveal the hilariously horrific foolishness of maintaining expectations regarding the workings of this world. "Czechs" is a philosophical discussion about individual expression between friends in a Vancouver flophouse, one of them an East European escapee from collectivism. The third story, set on a coffee plantation in a Nicaraguan war zone, is a more active account of political naivete. Not only can you never go home again, apparently you can't really leave it, either.

In "Spray Job," an interloper seeks to dupe a pair of professional Irishmen, only to find them more of what they seem, and less of what he'd like to imagine.

"The men at the bar laughed and leaned together, making Laszlo wish he'd come from some village with a name like Ballyclare or Killybegs. Instead, his roots gnarled back to a Budapest childhood, a decade of black factory smoke and whispers: a pretty neighbour's eight abortions, an uncle's rope-and-rafter solution to communism, a boy who gasolined cats and set them on fire."

Each copy is hand-numbered, signed by the author and available for $8.00Cdn. from Black Bile Press.