fiction writer
Short Story
“None of those pieces for so-called virtuosos are worth playing. Over-stimulated emotions. Even where they want to lead you is a simulacrum of the real thing.” Then she added, “We’ll eat first. As soon as we get up to the street we’ll look for that Hungarian restaurant.”
Short Story
Freddy, I think you too came to enjoy the teasing hindrance of winter clothing. You reminded me of a euglossine bee adroitly finding its way through a labyrinth of floral parts as you (we!) revelled in the eager divesting of boots, hats, gloves, overcoats, my lamb’s wool sweater, your suit jacket, your shirt, my woollen dress, your socks, your trousers, my tights, my slip, that light cotton undershirt of mine you found so endearing …
Short Story
The child went by a nickname, something unpleasant. The only time he’d talked to the boy, he’d called himself by a nickname. Chinche. El Chinche, the bedbug. “That’s not a name,” Mister Ramage had said, curtly. “What do the teachers call you at school?” The boy had been reluctant to tell him. Hardly more than a child, he’d been sitting in a neighbour’s kitchen late at night, perched on a bar stool that faced the terrace, watching the handful of guests who hadn’t gone home. “What are you doing here at this hour?” Mister Ramage had wanted to know.
Short Story
Edwin said that he was only catching a cold. He said he could feel his pulse slowing by stages, then it galloped. I looked around at how bare the house was. It wasn’t what I’d expected. No rugs on the floor, no footstools or tablecloths or cut-glass ashtrays. He said he’d found a cockroach in the teakettle that morning.
Short Story
The new bookkeeper peered into the forest on the passenger side of the truck and said nothing. When the driver had approached her at a beachside cantina and asked, doubtfully, if she were the contadora for the new hotel, she’d given him her brightest smile. “I’ve been waiting here forever!” she’d said thrillingly, without a hint of annoyance. The driver had responded with a slight nod of the head, introduced himself with a string of surnames, and addressed her as maestra. The bookkeeper was from north of the border, a year out of college, and dismayed by his formality.
Short Story
I was sitting at a corner table with a cold Victoria in front of me, reading a translation of Gongora’s Polifemo that I’d picked up in the used-books shop, when a bearded old guy who looked like Saint Frances in jeans and thick sandals took a seat nearby. After a long silence he said, “Well, if that’s not Upton’s translation” with a tone of voice of such gravelly delight that I couldn’t help but look up.
A Novel
Natsumi took it all in stride. She was unabashed, for instance, by the kid who stood up and shouted across three crowded rows of tables, “You’re poison to me!” She had the eyes of a night-crawler, a habitué of cabarets, an after-hours aficionado of the clubs in Roppongi where they played cante jondo: eyes that were chronically pouched, at her twenty-five years of age, from a lack of sleep.
A Novel-in-process
From a tender age, Guppy, I wanted to be an anchorite. I yearned for silence. But love for you disordered my mind. I fled to where the world is most crowded and dedicated myself to making money. Amidst a Banking Crisis, I came here where the real estate market had crashed and fortune smiled on me. I bought a convent, albeit an extremely small one, empty of nuns. A stone fountain gurgles in the courtyard. I cultivate tropical plants in pots. Songbirds sing. A Siamese cat basks in the sunlight. At night I lock all of the doors that give onto the patio, nine in all. I keep the shutters on the street side closed, night and day. I find the noise of vehicular traffic less and less appealing.