A duppy by default, he was drowned, but he came out of the sea. Never dead, he said, though who would believe him? Life raft, he explained, but his employers-a graying pair, nondescript Anglicans who already spoke of the Will of God to describe his disappearance-now spoke of that same Will to describe his appearance….
1. Those Absent Any reasonable baby shower would have properly culminated in the videocorder with the instant playback feature. The present was addressed to The Formerly Thin Addie Ling from her three tactless brothers, and arrived suspiciously wrapped in a brown paper grocery bag. There was no box or warranty card. If the camera was…
Bobby Bell’s fingers numbered four to a hand. His thumb and pointer were identical to God’s, but the other two were just fleshy stubs, stunted and fused on each slender paw. He was a dumb kid, besides, if progress in school is a fair measure. He sized me up my first week in town, then…
The organist pumped out the blurred tones of “Just as I Am,” the song sinking like a rusted hook in Jack’s chest. Jack locked his ankles, clenched his knees to the underside of the slick oak pew as his grandfather, Emmett, snored quietly beside him. Stop it. Please stop it, Jack said to the whirling…
The young woman in 15f stood looking out her window. Thousands of other windows-wavy rectangles, shaken towels of light-seemed to signal in code, You are not alone. Of course, she was not alone, anyway. Margaret turned back to the living room, where her Nebraska mother was sitting up very straight. “Twenty-eight is not old,” Margaret…
I was living in San Francisco’s Mission District, at Valencia and 14th, across the street from some projects and a Gold’s Gym and above the Lady Luck Candle Shop. On the corner was a dusty convenience store run by two Lebanese brothers. You could get loose cigarettes there for a nickel. Up 14th Street, half…
On her deathbed, as she drew what were to be her last breaths on God’s green earth, the old woman made a confession so terrible to her husband that-even under circumstances as solemn and sorrowful as these-he could hardly take the secret as true, let alone forgive her for it. He listened by her side,…
from The Feast of Love As a Jew, I am drawn in a suicidal manner toward the maddest of Christians. Kierkegaard, being one of the craziest and most lovable of the lot, and, therefore, dialectically, possibly the most sane of them all, is of compelling interest to me. All my life, I have tracked his…
When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed very hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces. The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious…
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