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At the end of the third week of April, Anna looked to her calendar and felt nothing for the retriever who’d started off the month with such vivacity. It had excessive hair, as usual, billowing in the wind, but the dog’s smile felt forced. Anna flipped the page and stabbed May to the wall with […]
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This dress I am wearing in this black-and-white photograph, taken when I was two years old, was a yellow dress made of cotton poplin (a fabric with a slightly unsmooth texture first manufactured in the French town of Avignon and brought to England by the Huguenots, but I could not have known that at the […]
It was a day of holocausts, cataclysms, tornadoes, earthquakes, blackouts, mass murders, eruptions, and miscellaneous dooms, at the peak of which the sun swallowed the earth and the stars vanished. But to put it simply, the most respected member of the Bentley family up and died. Dog was his name, and dog he was. The […]
1982. Without her, for years now, murmur at the defrosting refrigerator, “What?” “Huh?” “Shush now,” as it creaks, aches, groans until the final ice block drops from the ceiling of the freezer like something vanquished. Dream, and in your dreams babies with the personalities of dachshunds, fat as Macy balloons, float by the treetops. The first […]
As the train rocked dead at Livingston he saw the man, in a worn khaki shirt with button flaps buttoned, arms crossed. The boy’s hand sprang up by reflex, and his face broke into a smile. The man smiled back gravely, and nodded. He did not otherwise move. The boy turned from the window and, […]
42–PIEDMONT. Slow bus to Jack London Square. Maids and old ladies. I sat next to an old blind woman who was reading Braille, her finger gliding across the page, slow and quiet, line after line. It was soothing to watch, reading over her shoulder. The woman got off at 29th, where all the letters have […]
When I try to remember how I ended up spending an entire summer in Samarkand, I am reminded of an anecdote about the folk hero Nasreddin Hoca. Walking along a deserted road one night, the story goes, Nasreddin Hoca noticed a troop of horsemen riding toward him. Filled with terror that they might rob him […]
Ten candles in a fish stick tell you it’s Gully’s birthday. The birthday girl is the center of attention; she squints into the popping flash cubes. The black cat seems to know every smooth cat pose there is. She is burning for discovery in front of the camera. Gully belongs to Mrs. Carlin. Mrs. Carlin […]
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate! Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer […]
It was all to be done in thirds. I was to get 1/3 for doing the typing, and she was to get 1/3 for doing the editing, and he was to get 1/3 for writing the novel. We were going to divide the royalties three ways. We all shook hands on the deal, each knowing […]
She sat on a chair her hair cut short revealing her narrow neck. I wanted to cry and I wasn’t quite sure why exactly, that’s not true, I knew why. She gave me that intrusive thought that I always get when I am looking at someone I want to fuck but can’t muster up the courage […]
Traveling with a movie star Twice I have sat next to a famous man on an airplane. The first man was Jason Kidd, of the New Jersey Nets. I asked him why he didn’t fly first class, and he said that it was because his cousin worked for United. “Wouldn’t that be all the […]
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