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Any Old Antwerp Night
 
The Villa Tinto was built in January 2005, designed by a celebrity designer, Arno Quinze. It is said to be Europe's most high tech bordello. It has 51 suites, safes to store cash, a biometric scanner which identifies the workers, an on-site police station, a panic button under the beds for the girls' safety, and a control room manned by a fellow prostitute. It is the district's pride.  
 
Chika Unigwe

 

I Promised I Wouldn't Write
 
A middle-aged woman tells her husband she thinks she sees land, but I know she does not. We are two miles above anything solid. At seventeen knots we overtake and parallel the strand. We see the Sargassum rise and fall on the four-foot swells, and the lady tells her husband she realizes it's the golden weed on the water.  
 
Fernando Morro Emerson

 

Dying with Dignity, Mexican Style
 
Took a taxi across town. Decals of the grim reaper and a laughing skull adorned my side of the windshield. Conversation pieces perhaps? Or maybe, while other cabs post assurances of the driver's safety record, Mexican taxis prefer to remind us that death comes to us all in our own time, thus the beer-scented chauffeur furiously street racing his amigos has nothing to do with it.  
 
Lyn Fox

 

Leaving Home
 
Ithaca, meaning home, is the smallest of the Ionian islands west of the mainland of Greece. Just 29 km in length and 6.5 km wide, it is so small it doesn't appear on some of the maps. But despite its rich history, most people get off the ferry next door, at the more popular and touristy Cephallonia, home to Captain Correlli's Mandolin.  
 
Andie Miller

 

Dinner with Vera
 
Vera and I are less than a year apart in age. We have gone through adolescence, boyfriends, heartaches, and eventually, marriage, motherhood, and menopause—in tandem. Our daughters were born a year apart and have, in turn, become best friends during the eight years we spent in Rio when they were children. The fact that my marriage and job took me from Brazil and kept me away for most of our adult lives did not affect our friendship.  
 
Lygia Ballantyne

 

Casupito: The Mountain That Is a Woman
 
Early in the morning watching the sunrise, you might imagine yourself in the American Southwest or the north of Mexico. The lemon trees out by the front gate, the mandarins along the curving dirt drive, the grapefruit down toward the mango grove, might be growing in some back valley of California. It's not hard to see why someone might want to settle here.  
 
William Reese Hamilton