Cayla didn’t want her boyfriend telling anyone about their mistake. Not ever. She didn’t even want to believe their mistake was real. That’s why she was up again peeing on sticks while the entire world was sleep. Her pee dripped from her body to the stick. Squeezing the stick tight, she prayed it would prove the others wrong. Hope, horror,…
1 – Philip Pearlstein, Whose Realist Nudes Revived Portraiture, Dies at 98 The other day, I found the New York Times obituary for Philip Pearlstein in a folder with the extremely unhelpful file name “Miscellaneous.” It was jammed in next to an article titled “Five Easy Exercises to Strengthen Your Abs.” Why I put it there, I don’t know. In…
Interviewed by Breen Nolan Schoen Astrid Dahl, the protagonist of Anna Dorn’s third novel, Perfume & Pain, tries to be good, but her bad behavior keeps getting in the way. Recently canceled for saying something offensive at a book reading, Dahl suffers from writer’s block and is in search of inspiration through any means necessary—including toxic relationships with the wrong…
“How about you put the phone away while we eat?” I tell Beck. My words float up, accidental question mark dangling. “Ma, it’s for school,” Beck says without looking up from under his basketball hoodie. “Besides,” he waves his hand at the empty place-setting in front of me, “are you even eating?” The three of us sit at a round…
Her name was Facetia, or so she told me anyway. I met her on Interstate 10. She was hitchhiking, maybe stranded, and I was bored and curious, on my way to New Orleans from a city across the swamp. I had picked up hitchhikers before. So it wasn’t just because she was a young woman and reasonably attractive. But those…
The stately burr oak stood deeply rooted in the center of our backyard, high up on the hillside. It shaded the patio from the midday summer sun and provided the perfect hideout for backyard games. I took its steady, reassuring presence for granted for the thirty years we lived under its canopy. When the tree’s bark started to peel, the…
חָרִיף Haifa, 1989 Philippe drizzles a greenish, garlicy hot sauce on his falafel. Between the torrid temperature and cayenne pepper paste, he is on fire. Watching him bite into the fried cumin-infused balls causes me to salivate. The thought of his thick, fleshy lips on mine creates inner heat. “Délicieux,” he says in his mother tongue. Beads of perspiration form…
The guest-room wallpaper has a muted shine like expensive gift wrapping. The bed—which has been pushed to the back wall—is covered with bulging white pillows and a hand-hooked cotton coverlet. It is a feminine room, nicely appointed with dried flowers in pottery vases, vague and colorful prints on the wall, psychology books on a low shelf. Everything is as it…
It wasn’t until the bachelorette partiers were on their third round of Never Have I Ever that Violet, sitting under the Cactus Cove’s pulsating array of strobe lights, looked around and realized she couldn’t find any hot guys anywhere. “Lemme see here,” said the bride-to-be Olivia, her eyes droopy. She’d already had a couple shots and some passion fruit rum…
I stood at the threshold of my daughter Eliza’s studio apartment, staring at a nude statue with enormous breasts and a giraffe-like neck that held open the apartment door. I tried not to study the statue, turning instead towards my daughter’s side of the room: a painting on the wall with zigzagging gray lines that wasn’t Eliza’s style, dresser…