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Fiction
Manna
I wondered what kind of food could drop from the sky like dew. Something that would melt on the tongue like a kiss and fill the body with strength.
January 1999
Splitting
I come home one afternoon, in my first year of high school, and immediately go down to the basement, known as the “family room” in what were supposedly better days.
December 1998Bikini
In 1960 I was one of the few people I knew who owned a bikini. They had been around for a while but were still considered fairly risqué. Mine was pink, was made of cotton, and tied around the neck.
December 1998Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
On Sunday, Josselyn has promised herself, she will unpack. But on Sunday she’s hung over and depressed, and it’s at least a hundred degrees in the apartment.
December 1998Howard
We never did cocaine on weekdays, only on weekends, and Dave always made us stop by eight o’clock on Sunday, right after Sixty Minutes, because otherwise he was a mess at work the next day.
November 1998Selected Stories
There is a theory that dreams predict future dreams. For example, if you buy shoes in a dream, that means you will be better dressed in the next dream.
November 1998The Mayfly Glimmer Before Last Call
Jackie was nineteen, a cocktail waitress in Niagara Falls, New York. She worked in a bar on the other side of town and would come into our place with the other waitresses after her shift was up. Jackie was something else, the way she shook her hair.
November 1998The Oldest Wine
“This is 1448,” Alija said. “My very-great-grandfather Radmila. He was Serb, I think. His grandfather plant first seeds. This wine is ten years before Ottomans come, ten years before Islam. Some things I know from school, others from Islam. But I learn most from wine, and stones.”
October 1998The Cooking Lesson
A good fire, in fact, is like a perfect lie. It takes myriad shapes, it mesmerizes, it consumes itself and leaves nothing behind. Somehow, in my mind, the perfect fire and the perfect lie had always been intertwined.
October 1998What Miss Lena Prays For
Miss Lena goes into the dressing room, closes the folding three-way mirror, gets down on her knees, and prays. I wonder if she’s really praying for customers, as she tells me, or if she’s praying for bigger things, like peace in Yugoslavia, where she is from and which she calls Yugo, or maybe an end to homelessness. It seems to me you shouldn’t waste a prayer on attracting customers.
September 1998
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