Every morning and evening, I trace the same path clockwise starting from the dogwood tree and ending at the chain link fence in the neighboring apartment’s shadow. The walk takes roughly ten minutes depending on the vagaries of Olivia’s bowels, which I confess to knowing better than the amount of my dwindling savings or the time since I last saw a friend or went out on a date.
I should mention Olivia is a brown and silver-haired pointer named after her striking olive-green eyes. Those are the first things that anyone notices about her, or me for that matter. We answered the ad for a quiet and respectful tenant, qualities I prized most in myself, and moved into the small one-bedroom the following week. Once the hour became late, I took a break from unpacking and grabbed Olivia’s leash.…
The beachgoers in Lake Farley knew they’d do well to avoid Earline. By now she was a familiar, if unfortunate, staple of the town. Wild-eyed and manic, her prematurely graying hair flying frizzy around her gaunt face, she could be found each day prowling the sand with bloody ankles and a beat-up metal detector. They knew her at the pawn shop just as well. Every afternoon just before closing, she’d come on in and empty a raggedy old Crown Royal bag onto the glass display case with that day’s findings. Mostly that metal detector of hers picked up bottle caps, broken bits of old belt buckles, pull tabs from cans of pop, and other bits and bobs of uselessness. Earline would pitch every last one of them as priceless treasure.…
Wendy and I had English together and I barely knew her when she told me she was going to the hospital after class to have her thyroid removed. Would I visit her?
At that time in the morning, between my second and third cups of french roast and after a brisk speed-walk across the quad, pink scarf wrapped tight over my neck, hospitals were the last thing on my mind, though I wouldn’t have minded an IV drip and medical-grade acetaminophen for my hangover. When she asked, I didn’t have an easy answer, so for a moment I sat silent and then I asked her if her parents lived nearby. Most of us were far from home, but I thought with it being surgery and serious one should have family on hand.…
The Wanted, always, envies the Needed, regarding it bitterly as the senior party between them. It makes no secret of this fact: How sweet a day must be, it muses, to bask in affections without ever glancing over shoulder, having no cause to dread the turn of the wheel; how sweet to shed the shame of being marked a luxury. Now, the Needed is more coy: It fears not the ebbing of tides, having settled well into a rhythmic life. But, privately, the Needed longs, longs for the thrill of being a thing of covet. There must be a certain grit forged in the disquietude, it imagines, a hard-won self-respect that banishes any doubts as to one’s caliber; for the Wanted thing must fight to hold its keep, always jockeying to charm a fickle appetite. …
Knockout Beauty and Other Afflictions by Marina Rubin (Crowsnest Books)
Knockout Beauty and Other Afflictions by Marina Rubin is a recent collection of seventeen short stories about various female characters such as Daisy in “Jaula” about whom Rubin writes, “In writing circles, she was known more for her beauty than her talent.” It’s a trick for the reader. After she has an alleged romantic encounter with a famous male writer, the critics change their tune about Daisy: “Turns out the girl could write.” The trick could become a feminist critique, the “jaula” of the title a cage into which women characters and often women writers find themselves trapped.
The trick, a sort of epiphany, might even begin with the title, even with the cover of the book itself, showing an attractive blonde gazing out over a vague flame behind the capitalized letters KNOCKOUT BEAUTY.…
When I explained to my grandmother why I took the job, I told her it was because they offered to pay off my student loans, which was the truth. My housing and transportation were provided; I was given a separate stipend for necessities; health, dental, vision – all of it. The money I was making from the salary was pretty much all going into personal entertainment and accessories. With this job, I would have no bills, no debt, no uncertainty about future or quality of life.
Which definitely sounded too good to be true when it was originally offered. I’m not stupid; I assumed it was some kind of scam or sex trafficking thing. But when I was contacted, multiple times, by very public officials from Washington, I figured why not at least listen to the full offer.…
