Kate tells him that she wants a beer to bear her name so she might meet the lips of a thousand young men. Lev is still tasting the residue of his new, citrus-flavored toothpaste. This stuff must leave more decay than my cereal, he replies, and looks at her sweetly. Hi baby, she says; Hi baby, he says and moves closer. Lev steals her nose with a pinch of two fingers. This...
So it’s four hours to the border, then another three down to Ensenada, and freedom by sunrise. Right now, we’re just heading out of San Diego, and Eleanor is a head and a pink felt blanket in the passenger seat. She is asleep and the roadside foliage is nothing but a mess of moving shadows. The Mustang rattles in unison with the highway. It is steel and old...
Not only was Jose the youngest in the history of the village to have gone to America, he was also the first to come back. There was Miguel, of course, who had studied in Manila before he opened the only dentist’s office within forty kilometers, but America was a different story altogether. Jose had sent letters, describing and explaining, and they were passed around...
Dear Roberto, I think you knew this was coming. Don’t act like you haven’t let me know things aren’t going well. Even now as I typed that sentence, I had to backtrack twice because the t’s don’t come out right. And when I ask a “z” from you? God, I miss the days when I would sit pushing your “r” button because it felt nice to press it over and over r...
Rain comes slowly to Waverly. Days pass without sunlight while puddles grow and swallow the streets. Boats can’t leave the harbor, so the downtown diners fill with fishermen staring out the portside windows at the rows of moored ships. About three years ago, the Cistern Café’s roof caved in during a particularly fierce nor’easter. Jonah Heller, my neighbor now of...
Emily comes on a cloudless day, and her heart clenches on the stale-air plane with the vastness of it, and only a little panic. Flying above the ocean can only compare with swimming far down below it, and she has only ever been level with the sea. I come on the same day, but I’ve got a different view. I have already gone scuba diving; my heart will never seize the same...
When you don't have a cat--no, when all you have to play with is a hammer, you name it. The first thing my brother Luis did after the handyman gave him the hammer was call our mother into our bedroom for "a special service announcement." I was in the kitchen with her. She was spraying a pan with Pam, frying grilled cheese for me. I was telling her about this new girl I...
Rose Milch had the most popular table at the lawn sale that day, but she cheated with a plate of homemade banana bread and word spread quickly about the free food in her corner of the field. With a frosted pink smile, she presided over a too-personal assortment of old nighties, picture frames with dead relatives still peering out from under dusty glass, dingy combs and...
Yesterday night, the night before Martin Luther King Day, I made a list of my black friends. Alex Carter wasn't on it because we had gotten into a fight over who owed who money for Yankees tickets. Peter White might have made it, only last September he got hit by a taxi on 86th and Lex, right outside the Petco. There was fish food everywhere. I wrote down Jimmy Suarez's...
When I was not yet thirty, I split with my first wife. We were both glad it happened, but we had just moved to Louisville and neither of us knew anyone we could stay with. I slept on the couch until she found a place, which ended up taking months. I think she took her time to punish me, but it wasn't especially painful. It was just uncomfortable. I avoided her as much as...
