Fiction

Carleyville left late because of the rain. That morning the phone had finally been disconnected, after a ridiculous argument with the phone company, when the supervisor he was finally connected with agreed to disconnect after asking a series of questions he could not possibly answer. With his credit card, his “code” was his mother’s maiden…

Lily Stark’s mother had just said the facts of the murder were too horrible to repeat. But Lily’s father insisted a story as awful as how Mr. Sam was slaughtered would teach Lily something about this world. “I don’t care about the world you even mean,” Lily said. For a long time Lily had been…

On the evening of D-day, the pub is packed. It’s a close June night in the Welsh hills, with the threat of thunder. The radios of the village cough with static. The Quarryman’s Arms, with the tallest aerial for miles around, is a scrum of bodies, all waiting to hear the Prime Minister’s broadcast. There’s…

You know, there is this amazing thing that happens when you begin to create a common history with someone. Each detail is fascinating. You could just go to a mall and hang near the fountain in the atrium, and you’ll find yourself going over that time as if it were the Zapruder film. -Mark Leyner…

You say there’s no time like the present. But what is the present here? I’ve watched TV for ages and seen movies since I was three. TV’s daily life and movies are a communal fantasy. Today is in color, yesterday’s in black and white, and there’s no agreement about tomorrow. I hear music everywhere, and…

The room was alive. I knew it better than my body. The whole house sighed and shuddered, breathing inaudibly through its doors and windows. In and out, in and out I went, and one existence melted like snow into another. The sun was fierce and crazy. I cooled in green pools or under the shade…

At the Boston airport they were separated. Julien had to go through the line for foreigners. He was carrying his big black artist’s portfolio, five feet by three, zipped up. In it were plans for all his major architectural projects. He looked very respectable, if pale. Austin, of course, had been waved through Immigration, and…

In the cave, eons of time are marked in drops of water bled from stalactites. The old man guiding Phoebe is called Jean-Pierre. Short, hunched, bandy-legged, mostly toothless but still a smiler, he grabs Phoebe hard from behind, pulls her back into his chest, pointing with his penlight up into the cavern. There. Can you…

At Tin Mill Canal the left headlight burned out. Darker now: eight eyes blinking at the nailing darkness. The sewage treatment plant and its sooty gray sewage-treated smoke rising openly into pinkblack air went grayer. Near the end now nothing to worry about-did you do that, Rootie?-you saboteur you sly bastard you it’ll take more…