Fiction

“These are the best years of your life,” Aunt Connie told sixteen-year-old Christina Falcone at Easter dinner, her voice braying a challenge. “Yeah, I know,” Christina said, a big phony smile on her face. “I’m having a blast.” That might have been too much, she thought, the blast part. She always overdid it. It was…

Madam Tan had decided to ownself buy the flowers. Sure, Luna had offered to bring flowers for the Goddess, but Madam Tan Siew Cheng knew her daughter well enough by now. As soon as they got off the phone, Luna would tap the number on her speed dial and before you knew it, a $200…

Translation from the Spanish by Curtis Bauer   There’s nothing worse than an extraordinary story coming out of the mouth of a mediocre narrator, and that was Eduviges, Señor Ramiro’s assistant, who came to fix my water heater because Señor Ramiro was sick. While he struggled with the igniting mechanism, he told me about his…

You make a dime-size incision within the umbilicus. At the base, hidden. Then a quick push with a needle—pop! fascia; pop! peritoneum—and you’re in. Turn on the gas, you say to the nurse, and the belly balloons with carbon dioxide. Tense and tympanitic, it is a flesh-colored drum. Music, please. Glistening intestines, pulsatile aorta, and…

We moved into our new offices on a Thursday, and they burned down completely around 3:00 p.m., so we were out of the new offices and back into the old offices by Friday afternoonish. Armstrong was the one who started the fire, I think. I saw him messing around with the shredder after I got…

I’ve already decided to call my father about the deluge in my bathroom, even as I pace around and pretend I can fix it alone. The toilet tank is overflowing, so I take its lid off and slide my arm right in, jab at the plastic and rubber pieces, which does nothing. I live in…

In the days before she died, Doug’s wife had given him detailed instructions about how he should comport himself in his future romantic endeavors. (“Ellie,” he said, “I do not want to talk about this.”) First, he was not to introduce their adult children to any women for at least a year. (“Ellie, please—”) Second,…

I used to want to help him. Nurture him, provide the attention he craves. But trust me on this: do not engage with Johnny. If you meet him by the bathroom and he tells you his theory about the id and the color red, do not stop to converse. If he peeks his nose into…

Joseph cursed his face in the cab’s rearview mirror. A mix of old and new betrayed the convergence of time. Grayed goatee and riverbeds of crow’s feet; salt and peppered hair. When he smiled big, dimples sank into his laugh lines. A hint of boyhood lit Joseph’s eyes. He had little else to show for…