Fiction

for John Casey   It is only ever about power, see. Pick the crowd and pick your vantage point, then watch. Learn the con, you have to learn to look for what does not originate in ordinary. Hats will tow you in; and shoes. One good hour on watched shoes you learn the lessons of…

The Low Road Soon she headed into the wind. Sepulveda Boulevard would lead her to the cornfields and crows of Scripture, a field gullied by rainfall, and parking lots where men sat in cars smoking. Sometimes they got out of their cars and went to the bathroom in a cement barrack. This action scared her…

for Melissa and Ricardo of Melissa’s Piano Bar Santorini, Greece Are they crazy?” “Yes.” “I think my officers would like to shoot these crazy people.” “Of course. But their deaths would reflect badly upon me.” A white woman and two white male companions lay unmoving on the ground, on their bellies, their hands tied behind…

The advice note, dropped on my father’s desk in the first week of September 1955, lay unread for a week. My father was away from home, resolving a dispute over burial sites in Manchester. He was a synagogue troubleshooter, the Red Adair of Anglo-Jewish internecine struggles, and it was his job to travel up and…

Fei Lo noticed the new clerk right away, a persimmon in a basket of oranges. Three letters on a gold-toned plaque spelled out her name. So as to make no mistake, the old gentleman wrote it in his notebook, fur. He liked to know the names of all the women tellers, as he flirted with…

He thinks about the water often: sitting in traffic; in a chair in his office; in bed with his wife, Jeanette, who is now asleep. Together they live the life of the city, Phoenix, where the smog blisters the horizon and the swimming pools are treated by experts. Byron, his brother-in-law, runs a pool cleaning…

This is my tale about the Vietnam War; at least I think it qualifies. This story, however, comes no nearer to Phnom Penh than 10,000 miles: blame this lack of action on my year of birth-1954-and blame it on my gender. A muddy river does appear later on in this story, and you’ll see a…

There was a beautiful young woman named Shining Agate, the oldest of three daughters, and she was very proud. Always, she insisted that her hair flow loose and free of tangles, that her dress be sewn from the most supple skins, that the meat of her soup be tender and cut into very small pieces….

Marquette Henley’s stepson, Lance, had always been a distant boy, dull-eyed and solitary, not at all like the eager young athletes Marquette waited on in his store. Lance spent most of his time watching television with the lights off and the curtains drawn. Blond and pale-eyed, he had skin that seemed to whiten with each…