Fiction

  • Wealth Management

    The husband of this couple sitting on the opposite side of the booth is his wife’s work friend, more or less, probably more. For sure more. Drew doesn’t want to be here at this Saturday night dinner. But his wife, Chloe, informed him, “It’ll be good for you.” “Good how?” he’d asked. She repeated, louder,…

  • Hope

    I had never been on TV before, and didn’t even pull a comb through my hair before I came out to face the cameras. As soon as the light came on I smiled, then begged the abductor—rapist, murderer—to turn himself in. My smile a gash across my face, I pleaded with anyone who might have…

  • The Death of Hunter Romano

    In Hellensburgh there was a slaughterhouse and a bank. The post office closed at noon. The high school had five teachers and my uncle, a teacher, was the football club coach. Many of the schoolboys, thick-legged and silent, took up jobs in the slaughterhouse when they turned fifteen. The money was good. The boys would…

  • The Pines

    The hotel is ideally placed for business and pleasure, with the turnpike close at hand. An underpass gives access to a range of outlets. Across the fields is the faculty, bringing visitors from around the world. All find a welcome at The Pines. Mrs. Parfitt and I pride ourselves on it. I was born into…

  • Down to the Levant

    South of Van, Kamal switches off the headlights. It’s superstition more than anything, but it makes me uneasy. “Are there checkpoints this far north?” I ask. He shrugs. “Possibly.” It’s supposed to be ten hours to Nusaybin, our destination, although that’s in a bus, by day. Not by night, without headlights, on our way to…

  • Sharon by the Seashore

    Sharon sells sex toys by the seashore. She drives her red convertible down the streets of Delray Beach, parks in front of the lemony condo off Ocean Boulevard. The lot is already full of convertibles, many with vanity plates: 2hot4U, hotMama2, and variations thereof. Inside, the snowbird ladies welcome her, their hair frosted and tufted,…

  • The Story of the Stone

    If on a January day you should get in your car and start driving on the steep Chalus road toward the sea, you will at last come upon a place near the dome formations where you’ll see a stone, a smallish slab of rock with the flat, written part facing you: “Mani, Taraneh, may your…

  • Day One

    It was barely daylight when she left him on the porch. Hearing her stir, he’d gotten up, followed her around the house, his hair a mess, his eyes sunken, sleep-deprived. “Mama,” he said to her, a thing she relished, because up until Charles went to prison, he never called her this. “What’s that?” she said….