Alice went to college not far from where she grew up. The summer before she started her third year, her father announced that he had a heart problem and would have an operation at the hospital near the university. "That means you have to come visit!"...
"I'm sorry." -Letter 50 There are two things I will not do. I will not pry, and I will not tell a secret. It's hard enough to find a little privacy in this world, and if someone trusts me, well, that means something. I owe someone the decency to...
Let's talk about my days as a ballerina. Dennis Schubert, five-foot-two, lost and pimpled, stuck in a pair of battered flat shoes that my mother found in her closet. I had begun to suspect that life was more of a tumble down the stairs than the...
The day of the funeral was a beautiful day. Sun shining, birds singing, the whole works. Not exactly the type of day you expect when you have to throw the lifeless body of someone you know into the ground forever. But this is life, not a novel.
Philip drove to the local hardware store and bought a truckload of recycled wood: smooth, solid wood that would endure the rain and snow. He piled it on the ground next to the old oak tree in the backyard, and waited for Henry and Anne to discover the...
Dull seconds markZ
They say it started with a rumor. And so it did. In the pungent city of Dhaka, as sugarcane sellers peddle down the street between Lexuses and rickshaws, the rumor cartwheels, car to car, mouth to mouth, ear to ear. Gibraan Rahman, the Managing...
Bill carefully slid the cloth back and forth four times. Four slow wipes with a clean, white rag. Four wipes a night, five nights a week, 50 weeks a year for 30 years. Bill pressed the 8-track firmly back into its slot and clicked the player on and...
Mrs. Kroplick, as everyone agreed, must not have realized that she was dying. For if she had, she would certainly have planned the funeral arrangements herself. She would have instructed her daughter Nisa to buy either the gasketed, protective, sealer...
They both seem out of place. In the middle of a depressed coal mining town in Appalachia, in the center of a spacious room, the man with a soft Brooklyn accent does not fit in. Neither does the school he is sitting in -- a homey, spacious two-story...
This is where she finds herself. On a corner, under a lamp, night, drizzling, waiting, Paris; the Hediard patisserie and a Burberry store closed behind her. She looks at her watch and messages Kirk on his cellular phone -- got here, where are you --...
