The three of us, Dan, Tanya and me, sat in Dan’s cubicle, plotting how to take over the department. We were sick of the bullshit. We were sick of Morgan, the editorial director, all her stupid procedures, so we were going to take over the department by force. Dan wanted to use box cutters and [...]
”Hi, love.”
“Lee,” she started, “you’re not dressed yet?”
“What for?”
The door shut behind Elsa and framed her disbelief like a painting. “Lee, I told you. We’re going out to dinner with Henry, Jen and Gracielle.”
“Oh,” he looked up at her. “That tonight?”
“Yes, that’s tonight.”
“Huh. Didn’t know that was tonight.” His eyes fell back upon the magazine [...]
The living room was dark, save for a triangle of pale green light. Audrey’s glow-in-the-dark panties. They seemed to float across the room, past Ken, who watched from the couch. He held his breath, trying not to make a sound. The panties moved into the kitchen, and a moment later he heard the refrigerator door [...]
Meggie wasn’t always a ghost. I first knew her as a frequenter of my local coffee shop and I often saw her chatting away to her girlfriends, of whom she seemed to have an endless supply, all of them just like her – in their early twenties, fashionably dressed and pretty in that unsurprising way [...]
Upon returning a book late, the librarian explains to me, “To forget a book is forgivable, but to forget the words is a travesty.” It is overdue because I didn’t finish reading it within three weeks. Seems like a good excuse. Of course when I hand her the book a month late, I still haven’t [...]
ONE DOLLAR AND EIGHTY-SEVEN CENTS. THAT WAS ALL. AND SIXTY CENTS of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. [...]
I shall never forget the experience of landing my first real job and fending for myself as I crossed a significant boundary. An old clunker was packed down and conveyed my essential belongings to an apartment I had found while browsing the rental section of a local newspaper of my recently established hometown. The decision [...]
The rain was pouring down in thick sheets his whole drive home. Geoff hated driving in the rain, especially in his little Mercedes. He never could get used to driving such a little car. I won’t be able to keep it, he suddenly realized. They’re going to take it back. He’ll have to start driving [...]
He’d make inappropriate comments about teenage girls. He liked that she was so tiny she shopped in the junior department. She caught him once looking at porn on the internet — young women dressed up like Catholic school girls.
These were the things she knew.
So yes, there were clues; but how could she have known the [...]
Alice O’Brien woke up Thanksgiving morning and could barely move. Arthritis began in her fingers when she turned 65 and now, ten years later, it had crept into her shoulders and feet.
She pulled herself to the side of the bed, swung her feet to the floor and flexed her toes. Gradually the pain eased. She [...]
