Only

He hated his boss and only hung in for the pay-check. If only he hadn’t lost that stock tip, he would have made a mint and been able to tell the bastard to fuck off. Then he would have finished his novel – only all his ideas were in that notebook. If only he could find it, the book would be a best-seller, and he wouldn’t be in the rut he was in now. Carrie might never have left, especially if he’d stopped drinking.
     If only he’d gotten a few breaks along the way. All he’d ever had was serial misfortune.

Moonshot

     Werner von Braun tapped a wooden pointer on a corkboard to draw attention to a sketch of the command module.
     “How big is that thing?” Neil Armstrong asked.
“A little smaller than zhe Volkswagon camper van,” von Braun replied. “Unt zis,” he said, waiting for a whitecoat to tack another chart on the board, “iss the lunar landing module.”
     Armstrong exchanged glances with Buzz Aldrin. The capsule was the size of a VW Beetle.
     Their mission relied on the knowhow of German rocket scientists. Why, he wondered, couldn’t someone, in the last twenty years, have shown them a goddamn Buick?