Fiction

So far, I thought while snipping hairs from my nostril, the visit was going fine. I hadn't been expected, first of all, and so the initial surprise pleased my parents so much that any mention of our past difficulties dissolved in the affectionate air. Rather than asking – either pained or demandingly – why I…

The two boys stood mute with the anticipation of commerce. Talmidge was giving them last-minute instructions. "Now, your business is to sell. Stay out from in front of the spectators. And don't ever just stand still watching the matches. Keep moving." "When do we get our nuts?" Nick asked. Talmidge ignored the question. He was…

When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, and during the years when I was first falling in love with books and girls, I used to imagine that my Uncle Nathan was twins. Even back then, I guess, his life was a great sadness to me. What I couldn't figure out was how a…

Butch, determined to wait out the cold, took a stool near the end of the bar, away from the cluster of regulars gathered where they could see the Motorola TV. His back was only two feet from the front window. He could feel the cold seeping through the glass, hear the mean wind off Lake…

The air at the bottom of the garden was damp, but when Cecilia Lofton opened the gate, a gust of the chergui, loaded with needles of hot sand, struck her in the face. Raising her hand defensively, she squinted down the dusty road that meandered among scrubby palms and shacks of tin and cardboard until…

She is sitting in the car and I do my number. Looking down the sight I see an auriole fly to the right and left, all around in haloed flutters. Then it wavers like underwater noons, I have to split, my Uncle doesn’t wait. He says be back, be quick, be reverant. We pray for…

It is late afternoon, the Sunday before Labor Day. Paul looks over the classroom assigned to him and then goes outside, down the steps into summer heat and sun. In the middle of the dusty street, a girl with long legs leans into a car, talking with the driver. She balances on tiptoe and her…

for S.H. Not once in forty years have I gone without a meal or slept without a roof over my head. I’ve known less deprivation than anyone I know. My father died two months before I was born, it is true, and my daughter passed away before she ever spoke a word. But it’s hard…

In April when she drove away he looked at his hands. They were oily from the boat’s engine, from the garage. But what a thing to notice. He turned and saw the children, who were watching from the steps, and wondered what she had given him now. The day before she left they discovered something…