Clamming

The Catechumen - First Place, Wallace Prize for Fiction

Clever Title - Third Place, Wallace Prize for Fiction

Gustav and Leon met at Falafel King. Gustav was a closet smoker, Leon a nude model. They came to tolerate these alter egos, each secretly embarrassed by the other’s debauchery. They’d discovered, in line, that besides sharing a taste for baba ganoush, they both held the opinion that everyone at Jaundice College was a Marxist. Had they been gay, their lives would have been set, for they were truly perfect for one another. Gustav led seminars on Neorealist Cinema and biked; Leon lectured on Russian Literature and chased women.

The Laundress

Sometimes there’s a body next to you, but you’re still sleeping alone. Sometimes you lose your voice before a gig, and sometimes your license before a flight. But all you should worry about on vacation is what to watch on TV.

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 is Saturday.

A student and a gardener are overcome by the urgency of young love. Their passion takes them to the road, where they find out what they can, and what they cannot, escape.

Kyle threw his basketball in the air; on its way down it killed Mrs. Bryant stone dead. It was a clean wholesome April day, and she’d been watering her rosebushes, until the ball descended like the hand of God and slapped her straight into the hereafter.

When a visit to Manila turns into a nightmare in a dentist’s chair, a Filipino student learns you can’t go home again.

Dear John letters are a tricky business. A girl searches for the right words to end a two-year relationship.

First rule for New Englanders facing death, insanity and infidelity: don’t let that fierce nor’easter ruin your day.

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.

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...

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...

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...

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.

When Logo Slogan wakes up in the morning, he thinks the same first thought each time, which is not, contrary to popular belief, that he hates his name. He is, however, tired of explaining how he came by it and refuses to say any more than that yes, it...

"Please don't sit on the cannons," said the hunchback. "There's a sign." Then his face turned the color of the geraniums outside the library doors. Sandy felt sorry for him, and got down from her cannon. It was the middle of the summer. In cities...

If Peggy and Becca turn up, a dozen kabobs are bound to rematerialize as pulpy orange puke. Ever since I roared out of town in my dad's company car with a walletful of pilfered twenties, nothing's changed but the look of things. Jackson's park is...