It was too late when I was called in, but it was probably always too late, which is to say there was really never any hope. People didn’t want to believe that—even some of the people who were closest to Beth, maybe them most of all. They would ask me for a long time after…
Oscar bought a mannequin so he could drive the HOV lane at rush hour. He bid her off eBay and dressed her in an oversize pantsuit that his wife hadn’t worn since college. She had jagged cheekbones and a black wig. She was lean. His wife, Daphne, called her Dora. “Dora?” Oscar asked, staring at…
The last time this type of celestial event was visible from Earth was more than seven hundred years ago. The Dark Ages. Dante was at work on the Commedia, writing in the mornings, breaking at noon to masturbate and have his tea, then back at his desk until dusk. King Philip IV ordered the kidnapping…
The woman having a miscarriage bumps into the woman getting an abortion. It is New Year’s Eve. They are both in line at the pharmacy, buying ibuprofen. One carries a basket holding a bottle of wine, the other four candy bars. There are many people ahead of them. “Those look good,” says the first, glancing…
The Sahara it is not. At night, the little tourist caravan arrives at a wave of dunes cresting beneath the starry sky. But during the day, they carry on through splotches of the unvaried scrub that is Rajasthan’s Thar. Trees are occasional, of a variety that gives the camels gas and causes them to slobber…
She doesn’t know which aspect of the piece makes her want to become part of the space of the room—the midnight safety of the gathered sheet, pulled up at one corner to protect, to comfort, to block the light so white, to be sucked on around saliva-wet fingers, to hide; or the white light of…
Colette published this exploration of jealousy around the time she separated from her lover Missy, the Marquise de Belbeuf (1862-1945). It was first printed February 22, 1912, in Le Matin, a newspaper edited by her soon-to-be second husband, Henri de Jouvenel (1876-1935). I’m chewing on a sprig of bitter herb that makes my saliva…
My father was alone when he picked me up, which I found deeply disappointing. He explained that his new VW station wagon was tiny and Ernest was tall for fourteen—too tall to fit with my luggage in the back seat. I’d never had a brother before and I’d never been to South Africa before. The…
I. Mostly it was a great job—a real joy, the nurse usually told people when they asked—but every once in a while there were things that shocked her—or, rather, things that when she had first come to the ward shocked her: now nothing did. Or almost nothing. Every once in a while something happened that…
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