When I saw Melita walking across the street with a jerry can, I took note. It was not so much the jerry can that intrigued me, it was her leaving her house. I’d never actually seen her in the full light of day and her …
Us on a concrete park bench, my hand in my pocket, until he pulls it out and makes room for his. His hand in my pocket, and his other hand in his own pocket. My hands flounder, in his hair, at my knees, wherever. Fine. …
“It’s like I have a burnt spot in my brain. I don’t even know what I know. Maybe you should be talking to someone else.” Clara stops. The TV crew waits. A look flits across her face, her attention has passed behind a screen of …
His attitude turned to one of amazement when he walked out of the hotel and into the crisp morning. Seoul’s tired streets now looked like Fifth Avenue. Here was a Benetton, nearby a Coach, and a Starbucks on every corner. America, with its potholed roads, crumbling buildings, and panhandlers, was a second-class country in comparison.
Whenever the mega millions reached 100 million, a bunch of us in the office would start a pool: Dana in Communications, Angela in Programs, Umang the web guy, Barry in Finance, and me in IT. We didn’t tell the managers. They made too much money. …
This is the first thing you think as you crawl out of bed, the noonday sun beginning to warm the room. A breeze pulls little eddies of air into circulation, stirred by all the vague pressures like heat and the density of pollution. The smell of depression-sweat and rotten fruit floats around, but you don’t gag like you used to.
It’d been a rough weekend. The kids were antsy from too much time in the house, and the weight of the low gray sky was working silently in her, firing an almost maniacal longing for sunlight.
He put on his socks. They were white, bleached, and clean. Socks without smells. Not even a scent from the dryer. Blank cleanliness. That was the kind that would do. Anything else reminded him of germs. Of disease. Of infection. Of himself.
As the months passed Tom became more methodical in his work. He found a number of websites that listed accidents on New Jersey highways and roads, including those with fatalities. He put the locations and dates of the fatal accidents on his list and waited a week or two before going to the site. Not always, but frequently, a memorial would sprout up on the spot and he would find it and root it out.
She comes in through the faucet. I’m pretty sure. Colin’s former lover. You’d think I’d know, that I’d notice something like that.