Her hands give me the first hint something’s wrong. As she pulls up to my drive-thru window, her knuckles are white where she grips the steering wheel. She offers a fistful of singles and coins, exact change for the meager order. “Thank you, ma’am,” I say, divvying the money into the till as I keep […]
I snap awake and focus on a sheet of paper taped above my bed. It reads “Get Going, Lily Sandoval.” In ten minutes I’m down the stairs dressed. Move like the person behind you is catching up. I’ve done that since I was eight, when my father and I jogged around the park. At twelve […]
I met him in a parking lot. He was unattended, headlights lifted up to the sky, wheels slowly turning, going nowhere. As I leaned over him to place my hands on his body, his hood ornament snared my cross, and his wheels stopped spinning. It was not raining, but his wipers drew slow half-circles on […]
A long time ago, I knew this guy named Agriellos Angriopoulis. Angry, for short. He lived on the top floor of a crummy old house at the east end of Chestnut Street. The only way to get to his apartment was to climb up the fire escape, into the bathroom window over the tub, but […]
Late one night, Alfonso crept to the manager’s cabin and stole a box of twelve prime cigars. He returned to the bunkhouse and sat on the edge of his stinking pallet, smoking these pungent cigars one after the other. Alfonso was an ancient cannery worker, disdained alike by his fellow canning union men and the […]
I dream about you and the train all the time. This is how it ends: There is the train and there is you and then there is only the train. 1. Sometimes we’re on board the train, together. (This is my favourite dream because I’m next to you.) You have the window seat and you’re […]
My Auntie Cheeks moved in with us when I was around the age memories start to stick. She brought with her no belongings and made no requests except one: “Put me there,” she said, pointing the yellow nail of her forefinger to underneath the kitchen sink. Fortunately for her, the sink was relatively large for […]
Señor Garcia, the viejo on the third floor, was fussing about how he had never done laundry before and didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even greet me with, “Qué buen día, mijo” as I tugged my laundry sack into the empty laundry room. I told him I just needed one second to put […]
Three weeks after the well ran dry, I fed a man to the hogs. The kitchen faucet drip had stopped. It had been a metronome companion, marking solitary kitchen chores, mending, morning coffee. I held the empty kettle, twisting both knobs. The tap spat, then nothing. I listened to a faint hiss where there should […]
The two most beautiful words in the English language are “crew cut”, but the bleached-blonde beautician doing my hair apparently doesn’t agree. I told her what I want, but there must be no ears under the poodle-like perm sitting on the top of her head. Although the hairdresser seems not to hear, she can see. […]
