Fiction

Crazy Red Head Devil

Diane holds the map in her hands and turns it counterclockwise. She notices how awful her dry, broken thumbnails look, and she tilts the palms of her hands upward to conceal them. "This is the park where we were dropped off, so I think we are here somewhere." Diane taps Zhonglu Road with her index…

Sugar Bowl

from The Searchers The song on the radio reminded him of Puerto Morelos. It was syrupy and trashy and reminded him of the girl he’d loved there, briefly, at sixteen. Reminded him of ceviche made fresh on the beach and bananas con leche, and of the couple who owned the bar, Tony, the gringo hippie…

The Woodwork

It turned out there was another mother at my son’s nursery school whose father had killed himself. I learned this when I came back to Boston, ten days after my father died. I dropped my son off at the school and watched as he darted off, quick as a released minnow, into the space that…

One Leg

In September of 1965, when I was eighteen years old, I traveled from London, England, where I was living, to Hamburg, West Germany, with my friend Carl Jurgen Kurtz. Carl was twenty. We’d met at a boarding house in Chelsea I’d lived in for a few weeks after I’d first arrived in London, and where…

Eleanor’s Music

  "Do be sure, dearie, that you get the plain yogurt for your father. I brought home vanilla by mistake last week, and he was ready to call out the constabulary." "Entendu," Eleanor called back, straightening her collar in front of the spotted mirror in the hall. How like her mother to use the phrase…

Chasing Birds

Maybe it had been raining for years. By the second night, it was easy to feel that way. They had come to this spot, in the heart of Panama, two days ago, and even then it had been raining. There was no sign of respite. It was as if they had come to a different…

Spectators

  They drove the eighty-eight miles from Elgin up to Lake Delavan on cruise control without saying more than a few tight, courteous words. Marion had been experimenting with reticence lately. Though she had told Arnie not to take it personally, he found it hard not to add this to his list of other worries….