“People want to hear stories about good men doing great things. Or they want bad men to be broken down by the great ones. The very edge you can push people to, is to give them a story about bad men who get pushed, by pure circumstance, to do something not too horrible. I heard … Read more
“Ambition,” said “Honest” Abe Kowalski, as he stood over Harlan Winters, rhythmically scratching a spot behind his ear. Tiny flakes of dandruff floated down on Harlan as he kneeled on the floor in the front the camera shelf, marking down the prices on last year’s digital cameras for the pre-Christmas sale. The white flakes decorated … Read more
Buck got the genealogy idea from his mother when we visited her last May. I was meeting his family for the first time, and not thrilled about it. Of course it crossed my mind that they might call me Yoko Ono or Soon Yi behind my back (never mind that I’m only half Asian, and … Read more
My name is Melissa Everett. I am the girl who accidentally cut off Nadia Felin’s legs. I was a ride operator at City Island Park, making $5.25 an hour. I’d only been there a month when the incident occurred. The park had barely trained us what to do in case of an emergency, they just … Read more
The most embarrassing thing I ever did was the speech I gave at my little brother’s bar mitzvah. I don’t think he remembers it. His friends kept waving him back into the game room. My grandmothers didn’t hear it because they’re both too vain to wear their hearing aids. My dad was off dealing … Read more
“You can park behind me.” He was standing next to his car, which he had left running. A 1983 Volvo wagon, the tail end mottled here and there with stickers. Her jeep rolled to a stop, the headlights settling on a faded cartoon of a raccoon with large, startled eyes. Block letters that … Read more
I float along down the corridor like a phantom, through no effort of my own, while the fools on the other side of the black handrail huff and puff, wasting energy, walking. Should have taken the platform, buddy. Come on! My dad is waiting, my girlfriend says to me. I would rather just stand … Read more
The trees were rioting and the air stank of blood. Harding covered his nose with both hands and leaned forward, eyes closed, from his cross-legged position in the doorway. The noise of the street faded and swelled in a soft roar like ocean waves. Gigantic and wild and heavy with humidity, the wind tossed the … Read more
Ana is listening. For the moment. She leans forward across the café table, one elbow planted upon its glassy surface, chin cupped in her hand. Her eyes anchored and blue, settling upon me, negating the existence of the surrounding world. I am trying to tell her something. Explain it in my usual circuitous strands. … Read more
Justine was patient, with her cell phone pressed to her ear as she listened to her dear friend Sarah, but she was tired of the “you’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs in order to find your prince” analogy she so often heard after yet another dreadful first date. Sarah was not … Read more
Just like the movies, journalists had camped in their yard, waiting for them to step outside and express their private feelings. One didn’t have to answer the telephone. People said time healed all, assuaged grief. She had believed as much and gotten used to Jimmy’s absence … in … Read more
Matthew sits at the baby grand piano with both elbows on the dropboard and applies tension to the tuning hammer. He watches the erratic bounce of the needle on the electronic tuning meter and knows it was a mistake to accept a glass of wine when he is working on a piano. It takes the … Read more
Professor Winkle Professor Winkle, eating alone one night at a table for two in the little Chinese restaurant on Main Street, is seen beyond the window by two of his female students who are hurrying along to a bar further down the sidewalk. “Let’s go in,” says the first girl, half-joking. “I swear he always … Read more
Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed – with no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power – with no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who have already died, more fortunate than the living, … Read more
He bought the bicycle in Amritsar midst midday heat weighing in at forty-seven degrees centigrade, a hundred-sixteen degrees Fahrenheit. Equipped with canvas saddlebags he set off. He carried Pepsi-Cola, he carried chapatti, he carried peanuts. He about fell over after two hours. Coming to a halt at the side of the road he yanked his bicycle up … Read more
Somehow I’d connected wearing a bra with a story on television about a young girl with polio in an iron lung. Her hair, head and neck were all that could be seen of the body inside the machine that breathed for her in place of her paralyzed diaphragm. She talked softly, and looked up into … Read more
Samantha set her alarm clock for 5 a.m. every day of the week—including weekends. She had the volume set on two and kept it on her side of the bed not to wake her husband Gene. The soft sound of her alarm lifted her up with out a moment of lag time. She reached over … Read more
Verity.She appeared before us in the City Weekly newspaper, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a bathtub, a child and yet a mummy—swaddled in soggy printers ink one wet September day like the day when the world came to know the name of heroin.The coffee was brewing.Brigham and I agreed wordlessly, Verity was just … Read more
The basket weave butter cream frosting was exactly what Amanda had asked for, as were the piles of roses and butterflies that made the cake look more like a floral arrangement than something edible. But the color was all wrong. “Excuse me, are you sure this my cake? This cake is pink. Mine is supposed … Read more
A glorious, buttery-warm light lit the summer of 1966. This was the summer that surpassed all remembered summers. They started to call themselves The Quartet as school let out. Mary, Colleen, Helen, and Anne were secretly teasing their brothers, who patterned their vacant lot tournaments after the escapades of Zorro and The Three Musketeers. But … Read more
“Kid you got a golden thumb,” declared Cortis Haire. He had picked up the bright-eyed hippie outside of Los Angeles heading north on his pedal to the metal push towards Seattle. Cortis was an independent big rig driver, bringing up a fifty-pallet load of brake shoes to the Pacific Northwest. He was clean and sober … Read more
I always thought I’d drown like Martha did. Thrown overboard with anchors attached, Fighting to breath, discovered six days later, reduced to a skeleton, tangled in a lobster trap. My brother and I delivered her daily newspaper. She was on the front page. Martha was murdered by the hands of her own emptiness, seeking anyone … Read more
1. Our mother calls me to come and look at her. That is how we begin. “Say something,” she says. She tries to sound petulant, but her image in the full-length mirror makes her smile. “A sheath,” I offer, cross-legged on the floor. I hold a pillow on my lap despite the heat. Our mother … Read more
And it seemed that, just a little more—and the solution would be found, and then a new, beautiful life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that the end was still far off, and that the most complicated and difficult part was just beginning. Anton Chekhov The Lady with the Little Dog … Read more
I was right in the middle of a late-night rush in the deli when Jeffers, one of our regulars, came slamming in like a lion late for a feeding. Most of our regulars are a pain to be sure, but Jeffers is in his own category. He’s hairy all over with this crazy-looking, giant beard … Read more
