Fiction

Reasonable & Prudent

Closing in on Missoula from NYC, she’s sped through ten states, stopping only for gas and an Airbnb in Minnesota. You’d think she’d be relieved or feel something like anticipation, but her eyes are half-lidded, devoid of all emotion. The speed-limit sign clearly says 80 mph now, and the Big Sky is no sky at…

Lost and Found

It’s not that I think Elodie borrowed my vintage Balenciaga coat on purpose the day she disappeared, and I am just as desperate as the others to find her, but I hadn’t wanted to relinquish the coat and wonder now, if I had held firm, would it still be in its cedar-lined box under my…

Air Quality

Cora holds the baby until Matt leans in and takes her back. She can smell the oily lank of his hair, the sweet of his breath. She’d suggested a hotel room—there must be something nearby, she said, but her daughter insisted she stay in the apartment with them. Families belong together, she said. Cora’s daughter…

Oasis Room

Before, the space, the first floor of my apartment building that was rented out to business, had been an Escape the Room. Groups of friends booked and were trapped in adventure rooms, then given an hour to find a way out. The game was supposedly great for team-building, or so advertised the storefront posters, but…

The Émigré Engineer

The Émigré Engineer

Dedicated to the one who “blew the minutest kiss with the barest movement of her lips”   1 The Revolution Comes on Horses When Witold Galitzki was in his late teens, the Revolution happened in Russia. People in Witold’s Galician village agreed that it was the business of Russians, and that they could keep it….

Goodreads Warrior

Goodreads Warrior

Kurt Cobain KeepsEagle explored the Harvard Course Guide for Fall 2009. It was like finding a rip in the sky, a secret door he could plunge his head through to see spinning worlds whiz past his face, close enough to grab. For the first time in his life, he felt greedy. I want this, I…