There is a man shaking my
hand outside the
Chinese Theater. Pumping it, just shaking vigorously
and with great excitement. He marched up to me a moment ago, here on
Hollywood Boulevard, grinning and waggling his
eyebrows. Ah ha ha, he says. It’s perfect. You’ve done it right. You’re his
twin!
I mean, he continues, the
Spider Man, sure, the Elvis, yes, the Marilyn. We expected to see all of them.
And they’re all sort of piss-poor, just disappointing. But you, you could be
the real deal!
Nothing he says gives me a
clue as to what he’s talking about. He hands me a dollar.
You’ve earned it, he says.
Then he asks to take his
photo with me. Everybody snaps pictures of me. People press themselves next to
me and wrap their arms around my shoulders, grinning at cameras, pointing their
fingers at me.…
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Tess
walked down the streets of the Back Bay of Boston until she got to Copley Square.
It was evening. She stood for a few moments as the setting sun painted the Square
and the Hancock building with pinks and golds. This was her favorite time to be
here. She took a few moments to enjoy this particular sunset. Each one was
unique in its own way. She walked down the steps to the subway and caught the
train to the red line. She stayed near the door because she had only a few
quick stops until the green line intersected with the red line.
Boston was Tess’s city now but she was new to it. Though she wouldn’t say she loved it yet, she had a fondness for it that had taken her a little by surprise over the last few months.…
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1.
There is only one thing more complicated than living in Venezuela and that is dying in Venezuela. Caribbean bureaucracy has a predilection for making people’s lives as miserable as possible, even beyond the earthly boundaries. Lencho was well aware of this, as was everyone else in the country. But after his daughter’s death, he was naively hoping for some sort of institutional mercy. Or, truth to be told, he wasn’t.
He had learned
from a very early age not expect anything from anyone, particularly from those
in charge of signing and stamping paper. Those, under the supervision of others
who also had to sign and stamp some other papers but never without previously
obtaining a different stamp and signature from someone else above.…
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They said I’d be fine. They said I
was doing all right and they added that it was only going to become easier. And
that they had every reason to believe that I’d be my old, cheerful self again,
and soon at that. Yes, I said, I think you’re right to believe so. They said,
why don’t you take a course, we offer courses, in cooperation with the city
council, one of them might interest you, and then, who knows, maybe you’ll find
a new passion, or a new occupation, both are important, don’t you think? What
is life without passion, they asked, and I said, yes, yes, I might do that.
Just give it a try, they said, what’s the harm in trying? And I said, all
right.…
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Because her brother, Ian, is prone and crying, Millie feels cross; she’s
already ten and super interested in
castles. Mummy enters the living room, pivots over a yellow building block,
like a chicken, and hoists him up by the armpits:
“Come on, you’re a big boy. There’ll be a maze
and an adventure playground! You can watch television any day of the week–but can
you see a castle?”
She carries him under one arm–a big bellied
troll with a captured kid–and restrains him in the child-seat where he whimpers
until the engine’s vibrations seem to hypnotize him.
The car flows into traffic, turns glacial and
solidifies and the children both grow stolid in harmony. After the road has
come to a standstill Millie watches Ian blink and nod.…
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My
house just fell down.
I wish I was kidding. I’m sure, when the shock wears off and is replaced by devastation, I’ll wish that I was kidding even more.
It’s a Tuesday, my only day off work this week. I’d been down at the office, doing (and I’ll try not to go too into detail here) some work. My boss, whose name (and I’ll try not to go too into detail here) is Geoff, said I could go home early. He said it like he was taking a bullet- ‘ah, you know what, Tim? You can go on home. Yeah, on you go’- but I know he just wanted an excuse to also leave. It’s not like it’d impact the company in any way; most of what he does at work, most of what I do at work, can be done at home anyway.…
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When Leslie Bobeck was in fifth grade, a boy everyone called J.B. nicknamed her “Lezbo,”an obvious combination of her first and last names. Now a junior, sixteen years old, she occasionally heard “Lezbo” mumbled nastily in gym class or behind her in the cafeteria’s cashier line, but Leslie was relatively sure that J.B. and his friend, Bodie, were the only ones who used it. Her best friend, Larissa, tried to address it once with Bodie on Leslie’s behalf, but when Larissa approached him, Bodie spit his gum onto her shoe, and she backed away without saying a word. Leslie told the bawling Larissa that she was sorry Bodie had been such an asshole to her, but that the Lezbo thing was old and stupid, not worth their time.…
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