“What can I get you?” she barely glanced his way as she asked, busy wiping the counter that stretched from one end of the diner almost to the opposite, stopping just a few feet from the anonymous glass door framed in dull steel that led to the street.
“Coffee to start,” he said, and watched her for a moment. Brown hair with some kind of gilt streak through it, gathered in a neutral colored net at the nape of her neck. Smooth skin, even her hands, the nails clean if a little long; they curved gracefully over her fingertips, unpainted. She wore no rings, he noted automatically.
He shifted his bulk (gotta lose this gut, he thought) onto the stool and looked the rest of the place and its inhabitants over, like the cop he would always be.
He knew his city, but he couldn’t remember if the food here was good or not. It had all the characteristics of his favorite greasy spoons…not quite as clean as the health inspector would prefer (probably slipped the schmo a buck or two to look the other way, those guys were all on the take), which made the food that much better. Clean a griddle too enthusiastically, in his humble opinion, the food started tasting like metal.
Continue Reading Chef’s Special »
Maria was exhausted. The store had been busy this Saturday with marathon runners and cyclists from today’s race. Even with four Kodak picture machines, there was a line since early this morning. Family members wanted pictures of their loved one at the 26-mile mark, a few blocks away.
Maria was doing much better than she anticipated. Only sixteen, she was a mother, a partner, and now had survived six months at the camera store. She got the job two months before the baby came and Mr. Ramirez gave her time off when Nicky Jr. was born.
Her Spanish was improving. Nicky worked with her every minute that they were together. Mr. Ramirez and his wife coached her as well, and many of the customers spoke only Spanish.
Things were hard at home now with the baby, but the young couple was surviving. Nicky worked second shift as a mechanic in one of the city’s remaining factories. He was so lucky to get that job right out of high school. The factory was close enough to his parent’s house, where the little family shared a basement apartment, that he could ride his bike to work.
Continue Reading Saturday Afternoon in Kansas City »
Dearest Sirs and Madams:
I bring you fast news of this single, endless moment we share. The man himself—the Self-Contained One, the Unobjectifiable Object, the Unprovoked Entity—came among us of his own free will when we desired him most voraciously. The hunger inside us called to him, though he did not believe in hunger or its tyrannies, and he fed us the balm of his mind wrapped in the caress of his voice.
Eight questions he allowed; eight questions that would rise spontaneously from a single chosen mouth, each with its own perfect place in the eternal order. On this day of love he showered love upon us, asked us to shower love upon each other and become clean. Become the ones who scrubbed the world clean with the words trapped against our tongues.
He entered the hall. The silence descended, distended, apprehended. And the questions flew from my mouth, though from no mind I had ever known before.
Continue Reading Eight Questions for Master Hasbah »
MEMORANDUM
To: ALL STAFF – SOYLENT CORPORATION
From: MARKETING
Re: Public Image
Good Morning Everyone,
By now you’ve most likely heard the allegations circulating in the press. What started with a few rumours is now a waking PR nightmare. But we are dealing with the problem and wanted to assure you that everything is under control.
The first question that many of you must have is whether the rumours are true. In a word, yes. Corporate and Legal are coming straight out with it: we have been recycling human bodies and turning them into high protein supplements.
Continue Reading A Message from the Solyent Corporation »
The new “Jobs” report just came out.
Leon worked for the same Minnesota-based company for 25 years. Last year he was “Reduced in Force.” Leon, who has two disabled children, took a job at a local university making half what he used to make. His benefits cost twice as much. His wife, who has a college degree in education, gave up her career when the disabled twins were born. While the children no longer need the day-to-day care she provided, the likelihood of her finding a teaching job is grim.
Melanie was the CFO of a non-profit that specializes in adoptions. As the economy tanked and the rules regarding adoption tightened, Melanie’s analysis of her company showed that getting rid of her position and outsourcing was the answer. She did herself in. Out of desperation, she took a job in finance with an industry she knew nothing about. From day one, it was a bad fit and she was fired nine months later. She borrowed money to get her master’s and now has a teaching job at a career college, making half of what she used to make.
Robert works for a non-profit whose endowment tanked during the economic meltdown and hasn’t come back yet.
Continue Reading Today’s New Jobs Report »
Every night at dusk Victor left his air-conditioned trailer on Bird of Paradise Lane to hold court in his blue and green woven lawn chair. He carried his pen knife and a small block of wood. He carved crosses, birds, dolphins, and manatees out of blocks of random wood he picked up here and there. Many of the neighborhood children had an item that Victor created from his throne on the concrete slab in front of his little home.
From his vantage point, Victor watched three generations of children grow and move on, and sometimes come back with families of their own.
Victor injured his back in a Kentucky coal mine in 1963 and left Prestonsburg for the Sunshine State. He bought an old Silver Stream trailer from the classifieds in the Tampa Tribune and with his younger brothers Jack and Lew anchored it to a rental spot at Twin Lakes Trailer Lodge. Victor moved to Twin Lakes the day Kennedy was shot.
On that terrible November day, Victor and his brothers anchored the trailer and added gray metal skirting around the bottom.
Continue Reading Friendly to the People »
My Dear, Mad Julian: I think it’s any kind of justice but poetic that you’ve replaced the Chilean miners as flavor of the month in the media. We wanted the miners to survive so we could feel good about ourselves, and we want you to be punished so we can feel good about ourselves. So we can feel safe again, knowing that you won’t sniff out our private scandals once you get bored with airing the dirty laundry of superpowers.
My Dear, Mad Julian: It’s impossible to ignore the fact that your face, in nearly any light shone upon it, looks devious. I hear some people are born devious, while others have deviousness thrust upon them. Still others, I’ve read in the Mahabharata and the Mabinogion (and other fine books beginning with M), thrust themselves into deviousness of their own volition.
My Dear, Mad Julian: I fear that many nations will change their laws to muzzle you, which will make you a martyr. There, I said it first. What you’ll be a martyr to, I don’t know. “The truth” is too simple of an answer.
Continue Reading Octet for Julian Assange »
I’m very pleased that you have accepted my invitation to one of my now-famous dinner parties. Did I ever expect that what started as an impromptu Chinese take-out evening among a few friends would turn into one of the most celebrated series of dinner parties in collective recent memory? Honestly, yes I did. Because I know what makes a good dinner party. And believe me, it’s not organic pheasant or spiced kale chips. It’s not even celebrity dinner guests or loot bags. The success of any dinner party turns on one thing: rules. And if you want to be invited back, you will respect them.
If I tell you to bring something, I cannot be more serious when I say you should bring that thing. When I tell you to bring a salad, Grizzly Bear Jesus help you if you show up with a potato side dish. I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, he just wants us to bring a side dish. We have all these potatoes lying around because we’re Ukrainian peasants who can barely read, much less follow the simplest fucking directions. Let’s just make Dauphinoise Potatoes instead (insert various retard noises here).” Let’s just forget the hideous glycemic index on potatoes for a moment and focus on your utter disrespect for my request. Are you trying to hurt me? Do you want to see this dinner party fail? Are you my enemy?
Continue Reading Dinner at My Place »
1. The Party
Dennis didn’t care if Susan saw him eating the cake; the clown had given it to him, and Dennis had been raised to do what clowns say.
2. Busted
No one at her office had ever suspected that Rachel’s breasts were stolen.
3. One Less Thing
He stared at the ad announcing the sale of the trampoline, thinking that he should have paid the extra ten dollars for bold font.
4. Maybe Tomorrow
As she stepped offstage, it made Diane feel better that the men in the audience weren’t yelling her real name, because “Diane” was her grandmother’s name, and her grandmother didn’t even know a vagina could do that.
Continue Reading Seven One Sentence Stories »
The American West—a tonic for troubled souls even though nobody knows what the phrase means anymore, since the West of legend has been ritually slaughtered a thousand times and casually hacked to pieces a million more by developers, miners, drillers for oil shale, academics studying its demise, and natives who needed a quick buck. Since we’re mostly suburbs of each other that could be anywhere in America, and since we don’t seem to care that the region’s identity is being displaced yet again. Hell, the displacement of regional identity is the West’s middle name!
The American West—light enough brush fires here and watch Wall Street go up in smoke. Because what we have here in the West is empty space, plenty of it. Enough to make America feel like a spacious country even though we’re standing so close together that we can smell each other’s armpits. If this empty space were burned, would America feel so spacious anymore?
The American West—just saying it makes ya want to whip yer ten gallon hat off yer sweaty brow, whap yer horsie on the ass, and yell “Yee haw!” Don’t it? Going off to where the hell ya don’t know, but you’s going somewheres, and it’s better than the somewheres ya came from. So the where of it don’t really matter because the West is eager to receive ya and reshape ya, remodel ya into something vast and mythic.
Continue Reading Octet of Love and Consternation… »
