And of course she had asked him what he was doing that day, why he was just sitting there staring at the ocean—she had asked him twice. Once the day they got back from vacation and once on the day she left for good.… Continue Reading
The trouble with oranges materializes when it’s time to access the fruit inside. That rind, so useful at protecting the orange, is a terrible ordeal to get off. How can you bite into fruit to enjoy it if you can’t even get the peel off? You need to dig your nails in, even to get the first chunk out. It takes a real commitment to dig deep enough to get through all that white stuff.… Continue Reading
Mullinax’s immaculate uniform, his ramrod-straight posture, and his ever-present slightly-critical gaze were all carefully crafted to suggest a well-cultivated and unimpeachable military bearing, an effort that was fatally undercut the moment he opened his mouth and his thin, nasal voice escaped into the night air.… Continue Reading
It’s how the story ought to end, though. A tale of brothers always ends with brotherhood broken—all the better if it’s broken by the other brother.… Continue Reading
Hurley didn’t drink, really, but the liquor store was his favorite place to buy lottery tickets. He’d never heard of anyone celebrating a multi-million-dollar windfall at the gas station where some teenager with a face pierced full of tin randomly generated winning numbers between yawns.… Continue Reading
They assembled into a funeral procession led by Gator, first in line, who belted out “Died like a man,” then slapped the top of the door, spilling a bit of his drink on his otherwise pristine black apron, and they entered the shop for the last time.… Continue Reading
After you accept that no one can uphold competing, contradictory gender mandates, you can do whatever you goddamn want.… Continue Reading
Bev is singing Karen Carpenter songs. She’s getting that thin. Her voice steals across the sand to me. From the cottage. She’s making love with Mike. I’m on the lake beach watching their two kids sink ankle deep, knee deep, hip deep until I snatch them out. I roll them and sand sticks to them like I intend to fry them up. Maybe I will.… Continue Reading
A mad woman doesn’t know what she is doing or thinking, I know, so don’t bracket me, I hissed. I don’t open my mouth because it has the garbage of the world that the oceans have left behind, the kind that can choke blue whales and leave them on the shores like impossible spectacles.… Continue Reading
I think of my less than $200. From that, I subtract my half of the rent. And from that, I subtract the cost of my misery, of the sense my times about to run out, that everything I was supposed to become is slipping away. Every subtraction pushes me further into the negative, deeper into a spiraling surplus of regret.… Continue Reading