Archive for November, 2007
The Lepidopterist
At 35, or what she reckoned to be precisely middle age, Elaine decided to get an intimate tattoo. She reached this decision quite emphatically one night, sitting alone in her darkened, corner office. She ditched Marc for good, her third long-term relationship with a man who had tolerated her for a few years and then demanded commitment. She finally realized that it would be impossible to find a man unthreatened by her success, one who didn’t require the same level of attention as her career. Given this fate, she decided the time had come for her to live her personal life like her professional life. It’s all business, she reasoned. The business of me.
Read More..>>I See You
Driving to the hospital I think about the fishing trip. Not the one I took last spring with the old man, the morning of his stroke, but an earlier one. I might have been ten or eleven years old. On that trip, I remember, Dad spied this big rainbow trout behind a water-worn rock in the middle of the stream, right where he thought he’d be. He’d caught fish in that hole before-mostly eight-to-ten inchers treading water headlong against the current, waiting for food to drift downstream. The trout sat in the eddy just behind the rock, close enough to ease their struggle against the current but far enough back to dart left or right when something edible hit the rock and was driven by the current to one side or the other. The trick, Dad explained, was to land the fly in the center of the current so it would drift naturally to the boulder and trail left or right around it. When presented correctly, Dad said, no self-respecting fish could resist.
Read More..>>Caretaker
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On driving toward my father’s certain death
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The Thirty-Third Street Club
Awarded New Millennium Fiction Prize
First appeared in New Millennium Writings, Winter 1997
let me tell you somethin
Runnin as quick as these stupid high heels will carry me, and over my shoulder I see Amahl comin up behind me. Ain’t runnin, but walkin real fast so he don’t attract no attention. The street crowded from all the people walkin to Rockefeller Center to see the tree light up, all lookin at me like I some kind of thief or somethin.
Quick turn up Fifth Avenue to Forty-Eighth Street where I cross into the plaza. Jammed with people, but I turn the corner and throw myself into the doorway of some office buildin. The door locked so I just sit there, real quiet, breathin fast, out of sight. Some of the Yuppies stare at me.
glare back at them
Feet screamin, I take my heels off, leave them in the doorway and start windin through the crowd. Think I lost him, but no harm in workin a little deeper into hidin. After a few blocks an alley where no one is hangin, and I squat behind a dumpster to catch my breath.
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