Fiction

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…

The billboards into Lovelock, Nevada, promised dinner and drink coupons, a roll of quarters, hot showers, cable television, king-sized beds, breakfast coupons, twenty-four-hour free coffee, air conditioning, and a swimming pool, all for only thirty-nine ninety-nine, and Benjamin West, after three nights dozing in rest stops by the side of the interstate, could not help…

How could a grown man with any self-respect sit in the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory at eleven o’clock in the morning and eat a hot fudge sundae with mint chip ice cream, hold the nuts? It was Charlie’s own question; his answer was that he wasn’t a grown man, he was a grown boy, or maybe…

Right away, I started meeting people who knew my brother. A bank teller cashing a traveler’s check for me was one. At first, she gave me a half-glance when I passed the check through the window towards her, more interested in the amount than my identity. Then she noticed my last name and slowly lifted…

She made some big changes that spring. The first one was moving out of David’s house in Beachwood Canyon and into a one-bedroom apartment in Park La Brea. “Old ladies live there,” was David’s comment. “I like old ladies,” she said. “Old ladies are quiet and considerate. They don’t have car phones, either.” “I’m at…

Mother calls two or three nights a week now, trying to make me come see my father, who is dying of cancer in the hospital in Missouri. “He asks for you,” she says. “Come on.” “Don’t you think he’s sorry for things?” “He’s never said so.” “You were hard to handle.” “I was a kid.”…

When she needed to say something just to hear the sound of her own voice, she said “Sam,” struck to find his name on the tip of her tongue: she would have reasoned she was so angry that his name would have needed some summoning up, but no. The stream rilling past Jenny’s boots ran,…

Rhonda felt Cy’s ribs through his T-shirt that proclaimed rock-and-roll in thunderbolt letters. The leather jacket he wore today magnified him: his height, the breadth of his shoulders, the glimmer of fear he struck in her. Suddenly she was afraid that this was all they had, a striking look that turned heads, a few sexy…