It was more than a year since the bombings, but the rates were still very good. The travel agent who handled his business trips had arranged it all in a matter of minutes, and Leo and his wife would step foot on the island less than seventy-two hours after the idea had first come to…
Marty called. He left a message. The only Marty I ever knew. Maybe he said his last name, but he didn’t need to. Forty years, so what? I was back there in a high school desk. Do they still have them, that funny s-shaped chair with the storage box below, a 2 x 2 or…
Now they were in the car, a half hour late, on the way to lunch with Tina. Mary drove. Mary had said she’d leave him if he lied to her about other women again, and now she was leaving. It had all come out this morning. He felt sick. She seemed calm, determined, cold. It…
Kenya, Africa. Africa! Nine thousand miles from Portland. My wayward son Tim walks toward me with four tall, dark-as-midnight women. He has seen me, I’m quite sure of it, but nothing about his gait changes. He arrives at the tent and doesn’t say a word, or make any motion toward me. The thirty or so…
Here in this little town in Pennsylvania where I spend half the week and the whole long summer, we are urged to buy local. This is a pleasure, not a duty or a difficulty. The rewards are multiple: sticking it to the multinationals, high quality merchandise, real personal exchanges. Becoming known. The place in town…
Mrs. Greed had been married for forty years, her husband the cuckold of all time. A homely man with a notable fortune, he escorted her on errands in the neighborhood. It was a point of honor with Mrs. Greed to say she would never leave him. No matter if her affection for him was surpassed…
Now Mike Fuselier would sometimes watch Paul Calder in Moonie’s, chasing Wild Turkey with Pabst, and once Mike had seen him snoring out in the sun at Royce-Anne Park, under the wwii memorial. Often he saw Calder simply wandering the streets of West Medora with a confused, absent expression, as if she was something he’d…
To Alex"s personal horror and professional embarrassment, the Clement College alumni magazine ran an obnoxiously chipper blurb that September, in a special, blue-tinted box. She read it out loud to Malcolm on the phone: Fowl Play Assistant Professor Alex Moore has taught Samuel Taylor Coleridge"s "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" quite a few times since…
Back home where Paul’s mother lived it flooded Friday night. When his catering shift was over, at one a.m., he got his backpack from the servery and saw that she had called. On the message her voice was dull and strained, emptied by hopeless labor. She’d been bailing out the basement since eight, until her…
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