Two bald eagles soared overhead, circling each other as the afternoon sun started its decline, and we were on our backs, admiring the day, listening to the water clap against the hull of the Chubasco. The docks were still, and we looked at the row of sailboats bobbing in rhythm, slowed by the wall of tires and old wood that surrounded the marina. No one was in sight. The eagles flew to the wooded hillside across the bay, a fish caught in the talons of one.
“Do you think it’ll pick up? The wind?” Mary shifted her back with the hull’s subtle movement. Her brown hair, long as ever, splayed against the dirty white fiberglass.
“Eventually.” I stood and stretched. Eventually, this damned boat will be out of our hands.…
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My brother has a tattoo of a dark cloud on the inside of his left forearm, though if you ask him he will deny the fact that it is a cloud at all. When I look at it, all I see is swirled up ink.
“I don’t know, it just looks cool,” he’ll say to anyone who asks what it is or what it means, and I can’t help but think of Oscar Wilde with his theory of aestheticism. “Art for art’s sake,” he’d say, and my brother would probably agree, even though he probably also wouldn’t entirely know what he was agreeing with.
When visiting our grandmother he covers it up with sleeves, knowing that she’d likely curse him to hell if she ever caught sight of it, and I can imagine he probably fears she would actually have the power to carry that out.…
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I need to pack, but I find myself doing anything to avoid it. I’ve scrubbed the sink and polished the silver. I called my brother, for God’s sake.
I used to like to pack. She taught me how to pack. Then I killed her.
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1. Wear your heaviest clothes—coat, jeans (If you must have jeans…),
running shoes. (If you really think you’re going to run….)
2. Decide on one-two-three-four. (One jacket, two bottoms, three undies, four tops.)
3. Roll. (Folding is for novices.)
4. Compress. (You can’t go wrong with Marmot bags.)
5. Fill a quart size baggie with three-ounce containers of Grey Goose. (Ten will fit if you’re creative and committed.)
6. Pack. (Voila.…
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George arrived at the office a few minutes early this morning, so he headed over to the employee break room to grab some breakfast before starting his day. The hardwood floorboards swished cold and smooth beneath the soles of his bare feet, and from the way the wintery chill seeped into his skin and settled into the marrow of his aching knees, he could tell the new office manager had forgotten to turn the heat on.
A few moments later, George stepped into the employee break room. Here he saw a man sitting at the lunch table, eating a bowl of corn flakes. George had never seen this man before, but from the rumors he’d recently heard floating around the hallways, he figured this had to be Greene’s new office manager.…
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The gray sky looks threatening, and the inflation rate too. “Watch out. Something big is going to happen and soon,” Lloyd says. “I can assure you, Jennifer. A change in the algorithm.” He coughs for emphasis.
She rolls her eyes. She’s good at rolling her eyes. What algorithm is he talking about? Lloyd is not sure exactly, but it’s a big one. It might involve the crypto-currency markets. A lot of clues come from his chirpy birds at the feeder. “Possibly, a calculation regarding the spread of avian flu.” He fumbles with the seed bag.
“Your birds, right, like you own those chickadees,” Jennifer thinks. She helps him install a fresh suet cake in the cage and re-hang it off the eave.
Lloyd waves a finger in the air.…
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A curtain shifts slightly to the right and a woman, freshly bathed, blond hair coiffed, a cigarette in her slim hand, watches a dark man walk slowly as if he has all the time in the world. He peers carefully into the garage of another residence, six houses away down the street. He looks at a couple of recently acquired antique cars that reek of paint. After he studies them for a long time, he gazes at the Mercedes parked on the next driveway. He continues walking and pauses to glance at a three-car garage, a new addition to what used to be a Colonial, but is now an elegant pillared residence. The raised garage door reveals a Saab and junk: wires and cables and boxes. …
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The breeze felt nice on her skin: cool, crisp, a subtle autumn breeze. Maggie often came to this spot, this high rocky cliff overlooking the inlet, where she could watch the planes that came into land at the airport behind her. The air always smelled salty, with a hint of muddy silt, and the sound of the waves on the rocky beach below was soothing.
Every ten or so minutes, she would see the glint of a small plane as it approached on the horizon. It would get bigger and bigger the closer it got, until it roared over top over her and touched down on the runway to the north. Sometimes, they flew very low, and it seemed as though she could reach her hands up and touch the belly of the plane.…
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