Fiction

The golden toad is extinct. It was last seen north of Monteverde in the elfin forests of Cordillera de Tilarán. The pools where incilius periglenes would breed dried up and its eggs desiccated. For those who may have hatched, a crueler fate awaited. Their life sustaining water incrementally drawn down before the metamorphosis from nascent…

Pillsbury Avenue, addiction row—a whole street of mansions close to downtown, long ago abandoned as tax write-offs and turned into treatment centers, methadone clinics, job centers, halfway houses. I parked behind her building, 1950s four-story stucco with steel-framed windows and rusted white metal awning above the front door. Across the street a tortilla factory, Mexicans…

Wratchford slaps a folder down on her desk. The blast of air sends a piece of paper drifting to the floor. She tries to ignore it, but I can tell it bothers her. I bend over to pick it up, but now I can tell she didn’t want me to do that, so I release…

We’re all waiting for Yolanda, Yolanda’s all we think about, the Yolanda no one says aloud. We say your wife instead or your nobya, since they’re as fierce as any storm especially during their monthly. Lorenzo says he’d like to be the first to taste her spray when Yolanda makes landfall, and we all laugh…

1749 I never answer when my mother searches for me. She calls to me in Dutch and sends the dogs after me, but I hide in the tall grass. Foxy and Abby are great big bulldogs, one mottled like a rainy sky, one white as snow. They never bark when they find me; instead, they…

We bought the nylons before evening prayer at a twenty-four-hour grocery three miles away. They came folded inside paper envelopes, tawny mesh showcased under cellophane windows. We bought a dozen. They tend to rip. Later, we disagreed about whether the envelopes could be recycled. If paper’s affixed with plastic, is it still paper? Eventually, we…

I’m stepping into an espresso bar, fragrant with strong coffee and sweet cornetti, when my attention is drawn uphill by a weathered pink-and-green sign offering a vacancy at Il Piccolo Tesoro. The small treasure. I’m not greedy. The adjective appeals as much as the noun promises. I chose this Ligurian village in the sensible way,…

“The Rabbi’s father is coming!” Rose, the secretary, always overly exuberant, was telling Miriam Goldman the news. When they saw Claire walk in, Rose turned to her. “I’m so excited about your father’s visit!” “Thank you,” said Claire. “It’s so sweet he’s coming all the way here.” “It is,” agreed Claire, and hoped her insincerity—and…

from The Swank Hotel There was a girl, way back, who was going to become the patron saint of the mentally ill and their caretakers. The girl loved her father, and her priest loved her in a fatherly way. Her father, the petty king of Oriel, loved his queen. To him, the queen was perfect,…