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Fiction
Love, Michael
To me, my brother was his letters home. Even now, his lucid, correct handwriting remains more vivid in my mind than any picture.
November 2000Reptile Man
I’ve read that it’s common to be repelled by someone you later find attractive. My attraction to Reptile Man was like that. He hung out at Red Emma’s Deli, arriving at ten every morning like clockwork. He always read a newspaper someone else had left behind and spaced out three coffees over a period of about two hours.
October 2000The Holy Virgin In Queens
Last Year, not long before I left New York, I went to Queens to see the Virgin Mary. I went with a girl named Catherine, whom I knew only slightly, though I saw her around all the time; we had a lot of friends in common. I guess you could say Catherine and I were both part of a particular group — queer girls in their early twenties, living in New York City.
September 2000Hope Wood
When Sligo and I got there, Mr. Albert was out in front of his place, painting the trim on an antique cash register. He drew characters, too: yellow giraffes spotted with orange, motorized cows, and chariots with little black boys drawn along by giant brown horses. He painted everything eventually, using high-gloss exterior latex from little cans. His work was lousy with redemption. You couldn’t look at it for very long without wanting to forgive someone.
September 2000Ten Things
He had a special way of doing everything. He developed a method of eating watermelon with a knife, cutting slices so thin the seeds would slither out, and setting aside the juiciest fillet from the middle to eat last. There was an order in which to read the newspaper (sports, business, style, metro, front page). The two of you never left a football or a baseball game until the last second had ticked off the clock, regardless of a lopsided score or a ten-below windchill or being late to meet someone for dinner. He always carried a pen in his pocket and kept long lists of things to do and places to see on little yellow sticky notes inside his wallet.
August 2000Birds
The summer of 1975 found my mother still waiting for her life to pick up again. In the years since she’d divorced my father, she had been without a man, without money, without friends. When she wasn’t bogged down with her night job cleaning the Ben Franklin five-and-dime on Main Street, she waited at the kitchen table or in front of the TV for the phone to ring, so something good could happen. She waited through packs of cigarettes and cups of coffee and baskets of folded laundry and episodes of Happy Days.
July 2000Cementhead
I can see where my spit blood turned the ice pink. Finally, I catch him in our goal crease. We butt heads before I haul him down and fall on him with my stick over his throat. I lean on the stick and grind a little until I feel that collarbone give — ka-pop.
June 2000Green
Katrina had been talking about the garden for years, as long as he’d known her. Some women dream of white weddings, or sandy beaches, or new diamond rings; she dreamed of spinach and lettuce, garlic and tomatoes, and tall native grass in the spring. Each day, the man looks out the window above their bed and sees that there is more to be done, that her garden is green but not green enough.
May 2000A Life Without Consequences
The psychiatrist wants to know if I have allergies, if I take any medication. I tell him I have hay fever. He rubs his bald head; I rub mine. His window is covered with wire mesh. Outside, it’s starting to rain. He pages absently through his manual with a large thumb, not really looking for anything. I can feel the rain in my bones. Since I ran away a year ago, I’ve spent a lot of cold, wet nights huddled under boxes, hiding in boiler rooms. Running, running.
April 2000Last Bid
He is genuine and soft, not flirting or wanting anything, and his kindness drains her. But it also sends her a wave of courage; his honesty has made way for hers, and she will try to get as close as she can to saying what cannot quite be said.
March 2000
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