When Will’s mother died, it took them a month to find his father.
Ty Stewart was a tall, broad-shouldered fellow with the same riotous coffee-colored curls as Will; he was in the wine business, he said, Married, but his wife lived in France. He looked at his son a bit warily, but he tried. He took Will out to dinner at a diner his mother worked in, sixteen years ago; Ty ordered cheeseburgers, strawberry soda, and hot apple pie. He watched every bite that went into Will’s mouth, looked relieved when he finished.
“Tell me about her, please, Ty?”
Ty didn’t remember her, not really. Will could tell, by the way he skimmed over details and stuck to the basics.
“She was beautiful,” he said. “Had a great laugh.…
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The walls of his cubicle are particularly low. Ruben sits at his desk, his cornmeal oxford shirt crinkled and untucked at the hips, his white crew socks showing, his coiled black hair flattened on one side, glinting with the kind of rich, human shine you only get from not showering for three or more days. Sometimes, I’m reminded of Fight Club when I look at my coworker, but I know that Ruben isn’t the leader of an underground bare-knuckle boxing society. How do I know? That’s artisanal jam on his shirt collar, not blood.
“The Stetson report, I need it before our 10am,” says Kip, finger drumming his pack of Gauloises Blondes.
“I left two copies on your desk,” says Ruben.
“That was last week, dumb dumb.…
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Mid-afternoon sunlight filtered into the Hayfords’ living room, throwing long, thin shadows across the carpet and softly illuminating objects in the room: the bookshelf, creased spines of mysteries and romances lined up beside photo albums, auto repair manuals; the plaid couch, matching crocheted doilies on each arm; the wood laminate china cabinet, glass doors protecting the shelves of plates, cups and saucers inherited from parents, aunts, a great uncle; and the padded rocking chair where Maureen sat, her body still except for her slowly pushing legs and tense, restless hands – which moved between fluttering about her lap and twisting the gold cross around her neck until the chain went taut – as she watched the light touch the objects around her.
Maureen looked from her and Gerry’s wedding photo on the wall to the cold, quiet street out the window, and then at the half-table that was pushed up against the aging wallpaper facing her, willing the cordless phone sitting on the smooth wooden surface to ring.…
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To Create Such a Thing
To create such a thing requires a quality eluding precise definition. It requires the right combination, if you like, of insight and insanity. The silent rat-tat-tats of my neighbor’s creativity come to mind. I call them rat-tat-tats to allude to the soundless quality of the noise of creativity.
Now, letters about noise were written, I admit, but that was about noise from the outside. Sirens mainly, okay? There was no proof that I wrote those letters, by the way, but I was arrested all the same and charged.
I maintain my innocence.
This sound, this rat-tat-tat, haunts the hallway of the place at the foot of Ambler Street. He of the rat-tat-tat creating mode is the freak in 204. I am his neighbor across the hall, the freak in 205.…
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They’re always throwing goodness at you,
But with a little bit of luck, a man can duck.
—Lerner and Lowe
‘If you’re six four and weigh two hundred eighty pounds, maybe you should give up your dream of becoming a jockey.’ Those are the immortal words of the mythic Prussian martial philosopher, Hans Aough, and I’ve tried to make them my words to live by, in governing my own dreams. The thing about dreams for the future is that they have to be elastic because they usually have a whole lot of ass to cover with just a small patch of chintz.
I never dreamed Times Square could be ruined, but it was.
Used to be, you could go down there, score porn, find a hooker, black or white, boy or girl, didn’t matter.…
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Ever since I was a kid, my mother and I knew my dad was attracted to men. My mom
would stumble upon matchbooks with strange handwriting, phone calls, and, toward
the end of the marriage, text messages. Most were from men, some from women,
some she knew, most she didn’t. She knew the larger issue. My father was a garbage
disposal with teeth. He wanted to consume everything. Before turning 50, he ran
twenty marathons, stepped onto all known continents, and rented a storage locker
for all his excess cologne bottles. He wanted to mine life of all its blessings, all its
turmoil, all its love and loose change. Inevitably, he wanted nothing more than to
pass his vociferous appetites to me. As I lurched toward high school graduation,
he pushed me to pursue medical school, law school, liberal arts school. …
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I
A Different Kind Of Summer
—–They were at the summerhouse on the lake. Every year her father explained to her
about the old well.
—–“You mustn’t climb up there or remove the cover. If you fall in, Sylvie, you can never,
ever get out.”
—–The rounded, grey stones were surrounded by high weeds and briars. Once, she had
seen a long, thick, black-silver snake slither around the base. Sylvie stayed far away from
the well.
—–This summer, Sylvie’s mother would be commuting. She explained to her five year
old daughter, commuters take the train into the city to work during the week and return
at the weekend to be with their cherished, delightful daughters. Sylvie’s lower lip
trembled. …
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