Yvette told Lora about the job at the symphony’s end-of-season party at the lake. There were burgers and beers, and the sun was bright, catching sharp flashes off the water. But nothing could stop the day from feeling like a funeral: Twelve cellists cut down to eight, eight bassists to six, four bassoonists to two. …
Merk Greco most of the year was a one-man operation. As Mercury’s Extermination he drove his cranberry Ford F-250 up and down St. Louis, scheduling termite jobs north and south (not west where the snobs lived, not east where it was Illinois). But when the weather got hot, the calendar full, he’d recruit an assistant …
For six hours a day, he watched the couple spin. At first, he despised them. It was emptiness for emptiness’s sake. A piece that exemplified all the worst impulses of contemporary art, the things that made people snicker and roll their eyes while they passed through the museum. Now, after so many hours alone with …
Listen to Brandon read “The Route”: The Route As Nasim waited at the café for Marlin, he avoided thoughts of consequence. He’d come here straight from the cardiologist. Today she’d said the words “blood pressure” with new gravitas, her voice low and urgent. Now he reviewed the menu’s salads. House, Greek, Caesar, Cobb. On his …
“Tom fell from the sky,” Cecilia says when someone asks how they met. “At our age, when so much was settled, imagine that,” she adds. Both of them long divorced, their lives filled with visits and weekly phone calls with children and grandchildren, with daily, weekly, monthly routines. The refrigerators at both their houses papered …
Today, Cheryl is five: The number is startling, a near impossibility. Last night, roosting in her nest of unraveled mittens, in the stone alcove under the metro’s vaulted ceiling, Cheryl had considered her age with pride. Five! Most urban-dwelling pigeons didn’t live past the tender age of two. Both her parents had died when she …
Associate Editor Kate Jayroe: Dorf’s patient scrutiny surrounding cause and effect commingles so wonderfully with the iterative formal moves of this flash fiction. Dynamic and profound, “Conditional” cultivates a deep and singular feeling of care. Listen to Dorf read their micro: Conditional If after a bad night I need someone to blame, there are so many candidates. Streetlights. …
Amelia did not like to return to a dark house. She did not like the blank windows, or how the empty hall amplified her key fitting the lock, the turn and then fall of the tumbler, or how loudly the light thrummed in the fixture above after she found the switch. She did not like …
The woman who came to pick up the heroin was deaf. Later Glen realized he’d known that from the minute he saw her. There must have been some little clue, a certain darting of the eyes or clench-jawed expression, something he recognized from all the years with his brother, Donald. But there would never be …
Mrs. Ho always had a hard time getting to the Guang Ming Shan temple on her own. From Bedok, where she lived, there was a change of trains at City Hall, going from green line to red. Alighting from the train at Bishan and pushing through the crowd, she often had trouble finding her way …