The neighbors two doors down are aliens. From space. We pretend not to know. They arrive at our door with bottle-green skin, their eyebrows small flitting tentacles, and their child, the individual we’ve always presumed to be their child, gripping their impossibly smooth three-fingered hands. The wife, we think, carries the trick-or-treat bag. “We buried our landing craft in the hills southwest of town,” the husband tells us. “Ha ha. This is only a joke I make. Trick and treat.” “It is not …
We met at the gentlemen’s club near Times Square with a dark, damp interior that imitated the color and heaviness of a black forest cake. I moved in a slow pull around the golden mini stage pole next to the V.I.P. lounge. I was there for the view of the man who had the entire section roped off. He sat, body like a soup dumpling, with dancers all around him, but his eyes were focused on me. As I stepped off the stage, he motioned for me, flicking the other girls off like gorged mosquitos. My …
It did not bother Claire so much when the dying pigeon lay still, in the middle of the sidewalk, panting, wide‑open eyes darting here and there. She could reckon with it then, keep its agony in place. There was something close to dignity about the bird—as though it could be believed that it had come to a place of acceptance of its fate. That it was doing its utmost to die a dignified, stoic death. Two other women, random pedestrians, had stopped alongside Claire to stare down at the injured …
In an alternate universe this would be it for me. Poof, that fork in the road, that wholly unknowable life. Tough stuff. I live fantasy lives, star in unwritten screenplays: me as struggling actor, me as barista hottie, me as media sensation turned dynamic media sensation now with a rap career. A different kind of victim of the girlhood- to-hysteria pipeline. But there are always those real choices, those stone setters— the ones that change you and not the daydream. An oxygen mask that …
One of the more unfortunate things I inherited from my ex was the desire for homeownership. In the early heady weeks of the relationship, as we stayed up all night in inexhaustible confession, he described at length his yearning for a home after he had split from his family, how he had traveled far and wide to find the house of his dreams, how much personal charm it had taken to nail the negotiation. What was more, it was set in a prime location in an up-and-coming city that would guarantee a …
Dad’s beat-up white Renault sat at the far end of our little cul-de-sac, one front wheel up on the pavement and the rear end stuck out miles from the curb. Back from work early meant he’d already have a glass of whiskey in one hand, remote control in the other, staring at some quiz show on the telly. Instead, I found him in the lounge—perhaps already two-sheets to the wind—on his hands and knees, pulling irritably at a knot of flashing Christmas tree lights Mum had bought in the sales last …