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The Telephone

Anna Karenina, the Peace Corps, long-distance rates

Letting The Cat Out

Peter sprawls across the floor of my living room, which is also my kitchen and dining room, and talks to me about my life. He smells like alcohol swallowed too fast. The cat is under the coffee table, eyeing him with distaste.

Thin Ice

When we got to the pond, he stopped calling her name. The hole was black, and little black waves splashed against the jagged edges of the broken ice. Father took one step onto the pond, but had to jump back.

Into The Flood

Second Thoughts

I had seen the boy many times before, but never really looked. I did not actually know his name until the day he was being escorted to the front office by a smug-looking assistant principal.

Dancing

Miss Valentine’s School of Social Dance, jitterbugging in Calcutta, the “big girl’s ward” in the crippled children’s hospital

On A Narrow Ledge

Lying awake in the gray hours of the morning, I heard a hissing little voice, insinuating, familiar, from the depths of my own being. What it was saying, over and over again, was simply, “Metastasis. Metastasisss.”

Avalon And The Dinosaurs

Serpent’s Tooth

We lived in a walk-up apartment house. The three of us would anticipate his footsteps, listening for them up the tiled stairs and across the tiled floor. He had a variety of walks: a confident, sober stride; a penitential limp; a self-assured, rocking swagger.

Being Wrong

Hitting your sister, watching the rice boil, jumping over the subway turnstiles