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Pleasure to Make Your Acquaintance

November 2, 2017
Magdalena Schuler arrived in Hot Springs, Arkansas on a March afternoon, balanced unevenly between two suitcases. The lightest one contained four family photographs, the crucifix that had hung over her mother’s death bed, and her father’s sheet music to Chopin’s Nocturnes. The heaviest one that tipped her to the right held three shirts, two skirts,...

Persons of Interest

November 2, 2017
My next-door neighbor secretly interviews herself. She prefers to imagine talking with Johnny Carson, but she settles for David Letterman, Oprah, and, sometimes, Ricki Lake—though you can tell she thinks she’s too good for Ricki Lake. I first hear her in the kitchen one afternoon, when I’m eating a bowl of stale Chex Mix with...

The Permutations of A

November 2, 2017
There is something Beatrice is doing in the kitchen, but it’s anybody’s guess. She has both hands on the counter, head turned to the side and tilted, thick black hair sprouting from a high ponytail like a severed artery. Beatrice often finds herself lost in thought in this exact location. She doesn’t consciously go but...

The First Week

November 2, 2017
She tries stomping, slapping her running shoes harder on the wood as she nears, but it doesn’t help. Nobody notices Carolyn till she’s on top of them, slowing to a jog, brushing elbows on a curve. There are always couples strolling the width of the deck, the wife lost in speech, gesturing, the husband’s head...

Nice Shot

November 2, 2017
It is late afternoon on Wednesday, and the house is quiet aside from the gunfire and explosions. They are playing a level set in Paris in 1943, which is thankfully devoid of civilians. Jeremy has the rifle and Fred is using the shotgun. Jeremy is trying to figure out how to move over a low...

Summers Off

October 17, 2017
The feeding tube at this college is not wide enough for Sam Blencher, according to Sam Blencher. It is a state college in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, and Sam has mistaken me, his teacher and his junior by fifteen years, as his broadband access to the academic enlightenment he is due. “You tenure profs are babysitters,”...

Guiltless Pleasures

October 17, 2017
Our bus had gotten stuck in the traffic of Friday evening commuters fleeing Manhattan. Now we’d be lucky to make dinner. Recorded flute music played overhead, to soothe us I supposed as we waited in line to check in, but I was distracted by my empty stomach. An effete bearded man wearing a loose smock...

Tundra

July 21, 2017
By the time she was driving a fifteen-passenger van to the Outer Cape, Rose could no longer look at Declan, who slouched in the seat beside her, polishing his gold-plated harmonica. A fellow chaperone on the Barrett Hall senior trip, he’d contributed almost nothing except lazy charm and conspicuous flash. While Rose squinted at the...

The Key Park

July 21, 2017
We weren’t supposed to be in the playground, which was reserved for faculty who lived in the fifties style housing blocks nearby, but Simon’s preschool used it for outdoor play, and kids from his class were always going over after. My daughter Ruby was home on spring break that week and she talked me into...