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All in Fiction
“It’s like the menu was created for those of us born with skeletal and jaw problems. Clam chowder, broiled cod, boiled carrots—foods that deliver without crunch. I notice they’ve added occasion meals available year-round, like Thanksgiving turkey with gravy, yellow birthday cake with chocolate frosting, and corned beef St. Patrick’s Day stew.”
“Enter Max. Max was strong, with a sleek neck and green eyes, and an impossibly tiny waist—you know the type: unsurprised to find the world at his feet. Aaron met him in New Jersey, coming back from his twice-annual visit to his sister’s in Cherry Hill, and within twenty minutes he’d asked Max to come home—to live.”
“His face was haggard, scattered with gray stubble and damp with sweat. In the air between them was the musky odor of bourbon. “I am weary with my moaning,” he moaned. “All night I make my bed swim.” He looked at her, and even as she looked away, Kate was sure his gaze was lingering on her breasts.”
“Arlene never married Lars because some things are better left unsaid. He asked until the time for asking was over. She didn’t want anyone else, but she didn’t want him on her couch after 7:30 at night.”
“I nod but I really don’t feel so good. I am cold through and through and when I look out the car window at the snow I see trees move when they do not. I am experiencing Death all around me and I cannot move.”
“We take turns, but Alison is a cat. She has a gray jumpsuit that she keeps for this purpose. In the video that we reenact, I am sitting on the couch with a glass of water watching a show. Alison is surreptitious and likes to take her time relaxing into her approach. When she is in her jumpsuit I know that she is not Alison, or even Alison playing the role of a cat. She is a cat.”
“When friends come over, I tell them the house shakes because it’s on a fault line. I don’t tell them the house is upset. I don’t tell them the trees tap the windows at night and the wind only blows at dinner time and the floor tilts upstairs, so Sis and I have to lean against the wall to get to our rooms. I don’t tell them Mom and Dad walk with their hands out like acrobats to get to their room.”
“‘Well, if you want someone to run in the primary, I’m your man!’ he exclaimed. ‘A man with no proper sense of himself—a man with nothing inside, who could therefore be all things to all people. Ahahahaha.’ He was moved to laughter by his own eloquence, by what he felt to be the truth and the transformative power of what he was saying, to the one person who could get it.”
"I changed the channels. The news was on over and over. They were talking about that goddamned arsonist again. Someone had been setting crack houses on fire over in the black part of town. They had set another one just now. This made eight."
“This isn’t some soft, sad Subway sandwich. The bread has integrity and the filling is the consistency of the most robust tuna salad Susie has ever seen, rich from the ratio of mayo but counterbalanced by the crunch of blitzed banana peppers. It tastes like a late night snack and lazy lunch all wrapped into one.”
“With O.J. there was an abyss of recklessness I was willing to dive into, a waxing appetite for danger I was unsure I could swallow.”
“She is either the trickster god of the desert or a divine messenger. Neither option is welcome, especially now.”
“In the spring of 2020, when the lockdown began, Liz still owned the ax that broke down her childhood front door…”
“Even if it’s just a small piece of me, it’s good practice for the trillions of years yet to pass in which I will not exist.”
“The balloon continued to expand until it was big enough for me to crawl inside and curl up like an embryo in a green rubber womb.”
“She watched him trot to the bathroom naked and thought of how strange his body looked. His four hairy legs were twice the size of her arms.”
“She wonders what curse this is, to swing from life to life, grief to grief, with no control.”
“He said he made the cranes in order to make a wish, though he didn’t tell you what it was, only that it didn’t come true.”
