Steve looks rested, has all his teeth and his shirt is immaculate; you would never in a million years think this guy was on welfare. He’s my brother and we meet once a year for my birthday treat at the restaurant of his choice. This year, he’s chosen Olive Garden.
Aside from this splurge, I supplement his upkeep with a monthly check which he demands with the punctuality of a landlord. I’ve paid him thousands in what might be called blood money.
What else can I do? Certainly, no person in his right mind wants to end up like him. According to his caseworker, he’s anti-social. His life has been one long con job though he was shrewd enough to avoid jail by making all his victims those who loved him; people who’d never go to the police. …
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The three older boys hanging out behind our school said that they’d killed a rabid dog at the abandoned air force base. “We slashed at him until I got him in the stomach,” one of them said.
“Did he bleed out?” I asked, trying to sound cool.
“No. He didn’t fucking bleed out,” the tallest boy said, tossing a pocketknife between his hands. “I threw my knife and hit him between the eyes.”
I stared at his knife in awe.
“There are tons of rabid dogs there. Twenty bucks to watch us kill one.” He looked at me and then at my friends, Kyle and Thomas. “Or are you a bunch of pussies?”
“I’m no pussy,” Kyle said.
Thomas and I nodded in agreement.
The tallest boy slid the knife into his pocket and then unrolled a pack of cigarettes from his shirtsleeve.…
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“What a shame,” Nonna said when I arrived at her place after working at the family restaurant. “Mary Muldoon just called. Drunk as a skunk, asking if I knew where her husband Jim was and quite annoyed at the Happy Garden Chinese Restaurant. Said they were sending her pork fried rice and egg rolls at least three times a week. Claims she never ordered a thing.”
“Where’s her husband?”
“Molly, he’s dead. Has been for years. She found him in the living room around dinner time. Massive heart attack.”
“Oh, that’s terrible.”
“She must be having blackouts and forgetting things. Or she’s imagining that they are delivering the food. Mary has squash rot. Poor thing. Her mind’s all messed up.”
“What’s ‘squash rot’ ?”
“It means your brain is rotted from too much alcohol.…
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If he had been sitting on a lazy cloud, looking down at the world, it might almost have looked nice. The patchwork of rice paddies could have been a green quilt thrown over the earth. Henry’s rifle hung heavily from his shoulder, and silently he wept—knowing that I could not weep aloud.
Guns and smoke were tattooed over his mind, blurring the image of five young faces. Even through the haze of regret, he remembered the way the eyes had looked as were jolted out of this world by soldiers’ bullets. Death should be peaceful, a gentle settling, the end to a long journey. Not accompanied by groans and shouts. Not full of agony like flares erupting in their skin. Not pain. That wasn’t the way to die—certainly not at eighteen years old.…
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Barry hated cell phones. He shuddered when trapped in a crowd, people yacking at maximum decibel, as if everyone within earshot was buzzed to hear about dysfunctional families or drunken golf outings. He detested camera phones, users blocking sidewalks, or rudely delaying meals to photograph the perfect tuna melt. He considered “selfies” an addiction for the self-obsessed. It saddened him when couples, heads tilted crotch-ward, abandoned human interaction in favor of text-talk. He’d scream “pay attention” at obtuse blockheads as they attempted to simultaneously type and walk.
But the biggest reason Barry hated them? They’d murdered his wife. Diana was headed downtown in her Toyota Prius when sixteen-year-old Becca Hughes, oblivious to the road while texting a friend, ran a stop sign and killed them both.…
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A man comes to town. He wears spit-shined shoes and a lime-green coat. His hair is all slicked, and there’s a pack on his shoulders. He looks bright and flashy, like a light bulb. I see him walking down the road, the noon sun sizzling on his head, with his feet raising little clouds of dust.
It’s a midsummer inferno outside, and all the windows in our house are open. I’m lying on the grass on our front lawn, Hector at my side, just lazing around. It’s too hot to think, much less do anything. Inside, somewhere in the dim swelter, mama’s cleaning pots and pans.
The man stops at a bakery window and looks in at a loaf baking in the oven. They have it on a rack in there, and it’s going around and around like a little white planet. …
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Oh, but the physicality of my thinking is chaotic. Outside of my apartment someone is walking up the stairs. I sometimes walk up those stairs and stumble. But I wasn’t always like this.
Nonono.
I’m gonna write the letter. I’m sorry for not knowing if I loved you. Because things get confusing and my mind’s fucked up. The tears don’t let me write. If what matters are my actions then I never loved you. But it’s the world—this fucked up world; like a mind-rape.
Right now someone is falling in love with someone that will never love them back. Someone just found out their mother has cancer. Someone is losing a job. Someone is killing a baby they never wanted. Someone is having sex at a bar.…
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