Fiction

"On any given day, Mother could have her pick of maids. The women, usually Hmong, would line the open markets and scurry after her, offering to carry her bags. Mother decided that she was going to plan a special meal. Father was coming home from the military soon. They would celebrate. The end of his…

They had no contract. It would be a simple transaction. A sublet in Tribeca for the month of September. Two bedrooms and a terrace: $3,000. They were almost forty years old, children of responsible, middle-class parents, and had created this mess out of their own sordid desires. Josh and Clarissa had lived for twelve years…

  It was not as hard to steal the collie pup as he thought it would be. From early morning when the woman set up and wiped her table with a cloth until the time the silver container of coffee was emptied by those coming to look at the dogs, there had been somebody around…

I escape. I board Northwest 18 to New York, via Tokyo. The engine starts, there is no going back. Yesterday, I taught the last English class and left my job of thirty-two years. Five weeks earlier, A-Ma died of heartbreak, within days of my father’s sudden death. He was ninety-five, she ninety. Unlike A-Ba, who…

When my brother tells me he’s been seeing a psychiatrist, I say, "That’s great, Jack." He says, "Why—you think I’m fucked up?" I say, "How’d you find him?" He says, "What makes you think my psychiatrist is a man?" Her name is Mary Pat Delmar, and Jack tells me she is brilliant. He says, "She…

I squeezed the trigger, and another steel beer can wobbled off the fence post with the dull ping of a shiny copper BB. Cocking the gun again, I heard Monkey Tail and Cookie far off. Their sounds came at me slowly, in waves, like an echo. That meant Lonny was on his way. When you…

  Poland, 1920 In darkness they at last reach the bridge at B—, which the retreating Poles in their fury have dynamited. Undaunted, the division commander consults his maps by lamplight and gives the order: "We will wade across." Horses, creaking carts, tachankas—the long column streams down the bank and plunges headlong into the black,…

A girth for pack or saddle; a tight grip; a thing done with ease; a certainty to happen. —Webster’s for cinch Two years had slipped by since Cinch moved into the interior to be closer to the projects where he did most of his work, but mostly Cinch was here because this was where he…

Sasha wished that she would never have to see Boshen again after this trip. She ran to the bathroom the moment they entered the McDonald’s, leaving him to order for them both. He had suggested a good meal in Chinatown, and she had refused. She wanted to see downtown Chicago before going to the clinic…