There were forty-nine white roses in the arrangement nearest to me. I counted them twice. Someone at the florist wasn’t paying attention. The front-row chairs were upholstered in dark red velvet, which was thinning at the edges. I rolled…
i. Many things about the new wife I had married worried me. Presently, I feared that marriage had turned her timid. She sat at the edge of the bed with her hands folded in her lap. Her glasses were…
The day felt sticky, the low, black sky weighed down with the scent of monsoons. With puddles beneath their feet and shut umbrellas in hands, they shuffled into the building in their damp dhotis and saris, an elevator heaving…
It’s Inventory Week at Baumgartner Plumbing Supply. Their parents are gone and, for five nights, won’t be home until morning. At nearly sixteen, Heidi has been told she is no longer a child and is therefore old enough to…
Every month or so, a new one would show up in the lingerie department, having flown in by accident through the huge sliding glass doors in Housewares. Celine liked to keep an eye on them, willing them toward the exits…
Rumors swirled around Mari like a second shadow. Rumors that her mother had abandoned her at a gas station, left her strapped in a booster seat in the back of the car with the keys in the ignition. That…
Apa was my running coach. He told me, Get legs high in the air—tink of leaping caribou, tink of the high kick, tink of the spirit dancers floating off to the sky. I ran with all my might, lacking…
I’ve been collecting snores from the first night we slept together. No sex yet, just sleeping—passed out on a friend’s couch after a night of wildness, back when we were wild, back when we ordered tequila shots with lime…
“A day of fun,” my father had said, but that Sunday only involved walking from one place downtown that was closed to another. He bought white sheets for my bed at the only store open. This wasn’t long after…
The boy stood no chance, really. They were five against his one, young men like him no older than twenty-three. He first sensed that something was wrong when one of the boys locked the heavy entrance door, leaned against…
