Fiction

  • Hi Howya Doin

       Good-looking husky guy six-foot-four in late twenties or early thirties, Caucasian male, as the initial police report will note, he’s solid-built as a fire hydrant, carries himself like an athlete, or an ex-athlete just perceptibly thickening at the waist, otherwise in terrific condition like a bronze figure in motion, sinewy arms pumping as he…

  • Dressing Up

    "Just in time for cocktails!" our mother’s mother, Gran, says, obviously exasperated, coming to meet us out on the drive. We were supposed to be there for lunch. Now, dressed in her cocktail clothes—white pants, a silk smock, gold shoes, and jewelry—after perfunctory kisses hello (she’s irritated) and the quickest sizing up of our mother’s…

  • Reunion

    When Anna Green walked into the ballroom for the twentieth reunion of Surfview High in Los Angeles, she did not predict that she would fall in love with Warren Vance. She joined her classmates, in their finery, penned by the hotel"s large glass windows, the sky outside black and the cars on the freeways arranged…

  • Do Something

      The soldiers keep Margaret in view. She carries her tripod, unsteadily, and an extra poncho for a bib. That they have let her come this far might be due to the weather, or possibly the kinds of amusements of which she remains unaware. Still, assume that they watch, tracking her as she stomps along…

  • Cry Baby

      a novel excerpt She lost me as the nation was losing Richard Nixon, good riddance, whose head bobbled on his neck like a newborn’s, as mine would have, but whose five o’clock shadow was like the truth coming out. A loss to no one but himself.       She sought for me early in the Ford…

  • Ghosts

    Out on the front lawn, Melinda was weeding her father’s garden with a birdlike metal claw when a car drifted up to the curb. A man with brown hair highlighted with blond streaks got out on the driver’s side. He stood still for a moment, staring at the house as if he owned it and…

  • Winter Worm, Summer Weed

    translated by Rebecca Morris and Pamela Casey A young Tibetan sits in the sand by Zha Ling Lake. He is skinny and about eighteen. The throbbing sun scorches his thick dark hair. The lake is silent before him, a steely blue. The Kunlun Mountains reach up beyond the lake, iced snow coating the tops, peak…

  • Closely Held

    Molly’s father was a physicist, and not the garden-variety kind. He had been in one of Orion’s college textbooks as the Eisenstat Principle of something or other. Matter? Motion? Orion didn’t remember, although it was assumed he knew which. The Eisenstats assumed many things. "I take it the two of you are planning to get…