The Premise I had graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from a fine Ivy League university, and I was looking for a job. The bills were piled on the right-hand side of my desk, and the ads for employment positions on the left-hand side. The bill pile was higher by a…
Her sister loved pepper on everything. Just a little bit more, she’d say, while the waiter stood there, resentful and impatient, twisting the cumbersome wooden mill over and over again, waiting to be released. For Anna, pepper was a take-it-or-leave it spice. Anna loved salt. She loved everything about it: its purity, its texture—the way…
I. In the women’s hospital, past the arch of glass and stone, a grand piano played day and night. All the presidents and the vice presidents loved it. The parking attendants hated it. The rest of the hospital—the doctors and the nurses, the physician assistants and the scrub techs, the billers and the coders, the…
When I started my summer internship at Bible House, I was assigned to the Kids’ Corner exhibits even though I told them up front I didn’t have a heart for children. I hadn’t liked kids much even when I was one myself. Growing up had been a relief. The supervisors at Bible House see a…
Translated from the Hungarian by Marietta Morry and Walter Burgess1 What he noticed at first were white areas here and there on the wall between pictures. There were no replacements, nor did they rearrange the paintings, as if the bare spaces didn’t bother them. Even though the boy remembered that they used to move them…
Freya feels glamorous, commanding, when she exits a plane. In Brussels, in Burbank, arrival feels strong. She likes to be on her feet again, reclaiming the atmosphere, the world at eye level. The person you envision waiting is the one who matters most. The people she sees, even now, are her parents. Not the boyfriends…
You be the flowering lily, I’ll be the broken- down car on the lawn. Isn’t this May afternoon, this glass of iced tea, the breeze worth lying for? Let us drive through the heart of spring and never leave the yard. We’ll wrap our lips around the nozzle of the garden hose and drink to…
What has stayed happened long ago, but Milty can’t remember reaching for his quad cane this morning. On the kitchen table where he sits are the notes he’s written to himself. His handwriting looks like it was done by some old drunk, and they’re yellow sticky notes that Donna bought for him, which he only…
For Alan J. Singerman, in token of friendship Murakami Harukidesu. I am Murakami Haruki. My novels have been translated all around the world, and when the latest one comes out, my readers line up all night to buy it as soon as possible—my books are as eagerly awaited as a Beatles album when I was young….
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