Fiction

Luck of the Draw Old Robert Harris walked into the Lucky Dollar convenience store on Main Street to buy his weekly lottery ticket. To be accurate, he didn’t so much walk into the store as hobble. He was 83 years old, and he needed a cane to get around, w...

Move as a Fish Swimming   Standing in the entrance of my Hanoi apartment, the students handed me a spray of flowers as wide as the doorway and as long at their bodies. “For you, professor Quinn,” said the one who always wore a different pai...

*Cinnamon Toast (novel excerpt)   ‘It’s not the end of the world.’ That’s what people will tell you. That’s what people will tell you when they want to say, ‘Your problems are stupid, your reaction to them is laughable, and I would like ...

Pink   Yet another Acela Express train pulls into the Upstate New York station. It empties and pulls out again. All of the disembarked passengers scurry away, like skittish mice, disappearing down the long tunneled corridors to their various...

The Territory   The light on the answering machine’s blinking again, and I know it’s a call from my father. He’s kept after me because we’ve been sloppy with our message: Hi, it’s Claire, [then Brad says], and Brad, and [our sons say toget...

Face Day   A different elevator goes down there, clanging and metallic, room enough for a small crowd. The lockers start to smell, within the week, of formaldehyde staining the white coats. Soon Agnes has trouble recalling what it was like,...