Fiction

BEFORE THEY KILL HIM, HE WANTS SOME CHICKEN. The entire conversation, thirty-minutes of hell with her mother, boils down to this. Charlotte is on the treadmill when the first call comes in; she ignores it. She is a quarter of the way to 20k and this run, about two hours of her day, is the…

THE OSTRICH DIED ON A COLD, CLEAR EVENING in late November. It died in the barn, sometime before dinner. My youngest nephew made the important announcement from the doorway of the kitchen, with all the solemnity of a small town crier. “Dead!” He flapped a wet woollen mitten off his left hand. It slid across…

HE MET HER AT THE BUTCHER’S SHOP where she lined up behind him alongside the counter, waiting to pay. “That’s definitely a new one,” she said. “Buying pastry at the meat store?” Cradling his blueberry Danish, Joel wondered if he was being ridiculed. When he turned around, her glossy lips curved into a warm smile.…

I WENT TO THE PIANIST’S DEBUT at Franklin Hall, the most prestigious hall in this town. He had recently moved to town, I read in the paper, as an artist-in-residency at the university’s music department which, while small, had a good reputation. Dressed in a tux with an open collar, he strode onto the stage…

I’M SLIDING THE SCALE INTO MY BACKPACK and Kelly is looking at the bag of coke in her hand like it’s a crystal ball when I say, I guess there’s a snowstorm on the forecast, which isn’t remotely funny. I don’t even know why I said it. Kelly peeks at me over the baggie and…

WE’RE AT A NEAR-EMPTY WINE BAR at Fifty-Second and Tenth. She takes off her hat when she sees me. Her hair’s gotten longer, and the static electricity makes her stray strands fly in wild directions. When I ask how she’s doing, she says, “Beware the Ides of March,” which comes across as rehearsed and very…

THE WAX HAND ON FIONA’S DESK lies palm up across articles she’s ripped from magazines, leaflets for family days out, and to-do lists without everything ticked off. I’ve noticed that when the pile gets precariously untidy, Fiona bins the papers, and a new pile gradually grows. The fingers are slightly parted and cupped like they’re…

TOMMY COBBLEDICK GOT A PELLET GUN for his tenth birthday. Danny Robertson got a pellet gun for his tenth birthday. And Patrick Thorpe – whose father owned the biggest pig farm in the county and was elected every four years to a township council seat on those grounds alone – got an honest to god…

I FIRST ENCOUNTERED THE STICKY STUFF in a grocery store parking lot. I was just about to get in my car when I saw what I thought was a rather sizable chip in my windshield. That was a real problem because my car is old and foreign and, though it’s not a particularly desirable car…

THE BOY HAD GOTTEN UP to look out the window five times in as many minutes when his father told him to sit still, he was making him nervous. So the boy, all knees and elbows and anxious energy, sat on his hands in a worn recliner and tried to think patient thoughts while he…