Bullet in the Brain
by Tobias Wolff
Anders couldn’t get to the bank until just before it closed, so of course the line was endless and he got stuck behind two women whose loud, stupid conversation put him in a murderous temper. He was never in the best of tempers anyway, Anders – a book critic known for the weary, elegant savagery with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed.
The Color of Shadows
by Colm Tóibín April 13, 2009
Ali Hyland, one of the neighbors in Enniscorthy, phoned Paul in Dublin to say that his aunt Josie, his father’s sister, had been found that morning on the floor, having fallen out of bed in the house where she lived alone; they thought that she had been lying there most of the night. An ambulance had come, Ali said, and taken Josie to Wexford hospital, ten miles away.
When Paul contacted the hospital, the nurse in charge of the ward said that his aunt was stable. He explained that he was busy at work and wondered if he might postpone his visit until the weekend, and the nurse told him that his aunt was in no immediate danger and it would be fine if he came on Saturday. He left a number, in case they needed to reach him. Later, he was phoned by a social worker, who said that she did not think his aunt could return to living alone; nor could she stay in the hospital indefinitely. She gave him a list of residences for the elderly in the Enniscorthy area; she refused to recommend one over another.
When Paul phoned Ali Hyland on the Friday of that week, she seemed unsurprised that the social worker wanted his aunt in a nursing home.
THE GOD OF DARK LAUGHTER
BY MICHAEL CHABON APRIL 9, 2001
Thirteen days after the Entwhistle-Ealing Bros. circus left Ashtown, beating a long retreat toward its winter headquarters in Peru, Indiana, two boys out hunting squirrels in the woods along Portwine Road stumbled on a body that was dressed in a mad suit of purple and orange velour. They found it at the end of a muddy strip of gravel that began, five miles to the west, as Yuggogheny County Road 22A. Another half mile farther to the east and it would have been left to my colleagues over in Fayette County to puzzle out the question of who had shot the man and skinned his head from chin to crown and clavicle to clavicle, taking ears, eyelids, lips, and scalp in a single grisly flap, like the cupped husk of a peeled orange. My name is Edward D. Satterlee, and for the last twelve years I have faithfully served Yuggogheny County as its district attorney, in cases that have all too often run to the outrageous and bizarre. I make the following report in no confidence that it, or I, will be believed, and beg the reader to consider this, at least in part, my letter of resignation.
＊velour a velvetlike fabric of rayon, wool, or any of several other natural or synthetic fibers, used for clothing and upholstery.
＊clavicle [解剖]鎖骨
The Other Day After the Rain
By Johan Moya Ramis
November 1, 2011
I.
Once again, the erection. The body’s first signal, heaving me back into reality every time I awake.
A Visit to Grandmother
by William Melvin Kelley
Chig knew something was wrong the instant his father kissed her. He had always known his father to be the warmest of men, a man so kind that when people ventured timidly into his office, it took only a few words from him to make them relax, and even laugh. Doctor Charles Dunford cared about people.
But when he had bent to kiss the old lady’s face, something new and almost ugly had come into his eyes: fear, uncertainty, sadness, and perhaps even hatred.
Ten days before in New York, Chig’s father had decided suddenly he wanted to go to Nashville to attend his college class reunion, twenty years out. Both Chig’s brother and sister, Peter and Connie, were packing for camp and besides they were too young for such and affair. But Chig was seventeen, had nothing to do that summer, and his father asked if he would like to go along. His father had given him additional reasons: “All my running buddies got their diplomas and were snapped up by them crafty young gals, and had kids within a year- now all those kids, some of them gals, are your age.”
The Shared Patio
by Miranda July
He is in love with me but he doesn't know it. It still counts even though it happened when he was unconscious. It counts doubly because the conscious mind often makes mistakes, falls for the wrong person. But down there in the well, where there is no light and only thousand-year-old water, a man has no reason to make mistakes. God says do it and you do it. Love her, and it is so. He is my neighbor. He is Korean. His name is Vincent Chang. He doesn't do hapkido. When you say the wordKorean some people automatically think of Jackie Chan's South Korean hapkido instructor, Grandmaster Jin Pal Kim; I think of Vincent.
What is the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to you? Did it involve a car? Was it on a boat? Did an animal do it? If you answered yes to any of these questions then I am not surprised. Cars crash, boats sink, and animals are just scary. Why not do yourself a favor and stay away from these things.
Vincent has a girlfriend named Helena. She is Greek with blond hair. It's dyed. I was going to be polite and not mention that it's dyed, but I really don't think she cares if anyone knows. In fact, I think she is going for the dyed look, with the roots showing. What if she and I were close friends. What if I borrowed her clothes and she said, That looks better on you, you should keep it. What if she called me in tears, and I had to come over and soothe her in the kitchen, and Vincent tried to come into the kitchen and we said, Stay out, this is girl talk! I saw something like that happen on TV; these two women were talking about some stolen underwear and a man came in and they said, Stay out, this is girl talk! One reason Helena and I would never be close friends is that I am about half as tall as she. People tend to stick to their own size group because it's easier on the neck. Unless they are romantically involved, in which case the size difference is sexy. It means: I am willing to go the distance for you.
flying saucers rock 'n' roll
by patti smith
"In this life there is no pleasure greater
than coming back to life again
The Pugilist at Rest
Thom Jones
Hey Baby got caught writing a letter to his girl when he was supposed to be taking notes on the specs of the M-14 rifle. We were sitting in a stifling hot Quonset hut during the first weeks of boot camp, August 1966, at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. Sergeant Wright snatched the letter out of Hey Baby’s hand, and later that night in the squad bay he read the letter to the Marine recruits of Platoon 263, his voice laden with sarcasm. “Hey, Baby!” he began, and then as he went into the body of the letter he worked himself into a state of outrage and disgust. It was a letter to Rosie Rottencrotch, he said at the end, and what really mattered, what was really at issue and what was of utter importance was not Rosie Rottencrotch and her steaming-hot panties but rather the muzzle velocity of the M-14 rifle.
Hey Baby paid for the letter by doing a hundred squat thrusts on the concrete floor of the squad bay, but the main prize he won that night was that he became forever known as Hey Baby to the recruits of Platoon 263 – in addition to being a shitbird, a faggot, a turd, a maggot, and other standard appellations. To top it off, shortly after the incident, Hey Baby got a Dear John from his girl back in Chicago, of whom Sergeant Wright, myself, and seventy-eight other Marine recruits had come to know just a little.
Hey Baby was not in the Marine Corps for very long. The reason for this was that he started in on my buddy, Jorgeson. Jorgeson was my main man, and Hey Baby started calling him Jorgepussy and began harassing him and pushing him around. He was down on Jorgeson because whenever we were taught some sort of combat maneuver or tactic, Jorgeson would say, under his breath, “You could get killed if you try that.” Or, “you ass is had if you do that.” You got the feeling that Jorgeson didn’t think loving the American flag and defending democratic ideals in Southeast Asia were all that important. He told me that what he really wanted to do was have an artist’s loft in the SoHo district of New York City, wear a beret, eat liver-sausage sandwiches made with stale baguettes, drink Tokay wine, smoke dope, paint pictures, and listen to the wailing sorrowful songs of that French singer Edith Piaf, otherwise known as “The Little Sparrow.”
Long Walk To Forever
by Kurt Vonnegut
They had grown up next door to each other, on the fringe of a city, near fields and woods and orchards, within sight of a lovely bell tower that belonged to a school for the blind.
Now they were twenty, had not seen each other for nearly a year. There had always been playful, comfortable warmth between them, but never any talk of love.
His name was Newt. Her name was Catharine. In the early afternoon, Newt knocked on Catharine’s front door.
Midnight in Dostoevsky
by Don DeLillo
We were two sombre boys hunched in our coats, grim winter settling in. The college was at the edge of a small town way upstate, barely a town, maybe a hamlet, we said, or just a whistle stop, and we took walks all the time, getting out, going nowhere, low skies and bare trees, hardly a soul to be seen. This was how we spoke of the local people: they were souls, they were transient spirits, a face in the window of a passing car, runny with reflected light, or a long street with a shovel jutting from a snowbank, no one in sight.
We were walking parallel to the tracks when an old freight train approached and we stopped and watched. It seemed the kind of history that passes mostly unobserved, a diesel engine and a hundred boxcars rolling over remote country, and we shared an unspoken moment of respect, Todd and I, for times past, frontiers gone, and then walked on, talking about nothing much but making something of it. We heard the whistle sound as the train disappeared into late afternoon.
This was the day we saw the man in the hooded coat. We argued about the coat—loden coat, anorak, parka. It was our routine; we were ever ready to find a matter to contest. This was why the man had been born, to end up in this town wearing that coat. He was well ahead of us and walking slowly, hands clasped behind his back, a smallish figure turning now to enter a residential street and fade from view.
