Fiction
Night Island
That was what they should have called it, thought Isabella, as she trudged behind Billy along the beach, phosphorescent plankton throwing off light in response to each footstep. Night for the color of the sand. Night for the hours they were awake there. Halfway to the mangroves, their flashlights, covered in red contact paper, caught …
Karachi Raj
“Aiy, Seema, open the door! What, thieves will come and rob you, so you have to hide?” Hafiz’s nineteen-year-old sister, the unacknowledged pride of the Basti, was hiding out. Late afternoon, when her parents and brother were at work, was a precious time to study. She loved solitude. But neighbors had other ideas. Mithi bai …
Árida Zona
Too tall. That’s what the teacher with the green eyes, the one from the boy’s side, says. She’s too tall to play Mary. Joseph is only just a little thing. She could be a shepherd or the innkeeper’s wife, but the teacher says no. She is too big for the sheep costumes, and they can’t …
Wrong Number
The phone rings, and it’s a woman with her backbone up because she knows—don’t think she doesn’t—that I was with her man last night. Better keep myself distant from him, she warns, better stay away from her Buzzard, or else she’ll be forced to put the hurt on me, swear to God, just see if …
Angel in the House
My wife is becoming an angel, or some kind of spiritual being, I’m not sure exactly what. The other day I moved to touch her and my hand went right through her—right where her shoulder used to be—and scooped out a light-speckled cloud of her into the air that took a moment to reform. She …
THE CANARY KEEPER
In a neat house on the outskirts of Market Town lived a small-time actor, a man whose legendary ability to cry on cue had deserted him. Newspaper reviews from long ago called him ‘‘The Fountain.’’ Nowadays he was dried up, his tear ducts clogged with despair. If the footlights grew dim in the presence of …
Last of the Cowboy Poets
‘‘You ever written any . . . poetry?’’ Doyle Porterhouse asked. The word ‘‘poetry’’ came out sounding like ‘‘poy-tree.’’ Porterhouse’s head was cocked, his bushy eyebrows all askew; it was as if he were a shy girl asking Lenny Halperin to the prom. ‘‘Of course. You bet I have,’’ Lenny said. That was a …
Minotaurs on Holiday
Florentina had grown up in Buenos Aires but had come here, to the world’s bottom, the southernmost city in the world, at the beckoning of a man who ran stables and owned a horse named Picasso. Don Julio took tourists and huasos for week-long treks on horseback and came back dead silent and in need …
Anxious
My eleven-year-old niece calls me once a week, on average, to ask if she can come live with me if her parents and older brother are killed. We don’t live in a war zone, or even a big city; the nearest thing to us anyone would recognize on a map is Sioux Falls, and that’s …