Works
Mr. McFeely
Phil’s thoughts turned to killing Mr. McFeely. He was a wiry, anxious man, scrubbing dinner dishes on a hot Saturday night. He had just put his son Daniel to bed, in his unassuming tenth floor apartment. As Phil squeezed the kitchen sponge, he imagined the pomegranate soap bubbles popping around the white cellulose as blood frothing forth from the jagged peaks of Mr. McFeely’s freshly severed neck. Phil pictured him—head dangling nearly perpendicular to his body, spikes of bone and tendon protruding from the neck’s ruptured aperture. … Continue reading
The Blender
“Howie,” Marsha said, sipping green tea at the kitchen dinette table of their little bungalow in the village of Grubsky, “if you keep fiddling with that old thing, you’ll be late for your appointment.”
“Late? It’s just Hyman. Hyman’s Hair, he makes no appointments, Marsha. Just walk-ins. One Hyman, two pairs of scissors, just three dollars, because I mended his barber pole for free. This you know.”… Continue reading
Hooters
I’m spreading on a sticky wood bar stool, under hanging fluorescent lights, at my happy place, Hooters, listening to country music. It’s a muggy summer night, like a hundred-ten percent humidity, and the air-conditioners can’t keep up. I’m wearing shorts, both backs of my thighs plastered to the stool. I’ll admit it: I’ve got pasty thighs. Fat, hairy, white. Runs in the family. That, a Mr. Potato head, no neck, lot of sweat glands. It’s on account of the genes, just like my brothers (although they don’t seem to want to talk to me anymore. Their loss). … Continue reading
Avram's Miracle
Nearly shouting, to be heard over the cacophony in the vast building, Avram Kantor, the apprentice baker, reported, “There are two men to see you, Rabbi.”
Avram and the Rabbi stood in the middle of the largest matzah bakery in the world, the A. Rubinstein & Co. factory, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
“Two men,” said Rabbi Rubinstein, stroking his beard with one hand while holding up two fingers with the other. “Two men. You know these men?” … Continue reading
There is No Death in Finding Nemo
Phil opened his eyes to see glass just inches from his face. He looked left, then right. He rotated his eyeballs three hundred-sixty degrees. He saw glass in all directions. Although the glass was clear, he could see smudges, and the lip running along the top of the bowl. He felt disoriented. He looked down: … Continue reading
Nowhere Man
Ahead of me—far ahead—I saw my salvation: a blinking white neon light, its flashing rays stabbing into the darkness. M-O-T-E-L … M-O-T-E-L … M-O-T-E-L. I was driving to nowhere, from nowhere. From one mindless meeting to the next, selling something, I don’t rememberwhat. I had been driving all day and was lost. No GPS and no maps. Drenching rain poured down on my rental car, a gray Ford something-or-other, rain pouring so hard it washard to see down the road. All day, I’d seen nothing but cornfields. I wastired in my bones. Maybe it’s a Motel 6, I thought, and with their “we’ll leave the light on for you” slogan in my head, I pulled into the empty parking lot of the motel….Continue reading
Robust, woolly Howie Fine stood naked and peeing in the toilet of the en suite bathroom in his bungalow in the village of Grubsky. Howie didn’t know why he always loved the tinkling sound. There was something comforting, something so right about it. For those few, short, streaming moments, he could forget. Outside the bathroom window, little hailstones bounced off the frozen panes with a pleasing, persistent plink. Continue reading
Five Easy Pieces
Bobbie Bernstein rolled on her side to give Rayne a goodnight peck. She’d lost the baby a few days earlier, was still sore, and the rolling was a chore. White eyelet curtains fluttered as moist summer air drifted through the bedroom windows of their downtown apartment in the village of Grubsky. She reached over to switch off Rayne’s plump gourd bedside lamp, closed her eyes, then re-opened them in the living room of Ruben’s farmhouse. Ruben removed his reading glasses, placed the local newspaper, The Grubsky Pulse, on his lap, looked up at Bobbie. The sinking sun slanted yellow across snow piled halfway up outside thin old windows. Ruben’s fire crackled and hissed, while in his lap his black cat, Kugel, looked up momentarily at Bobbie, then resumed her imitation of a slumbering Bastet. Continue reading