Fair is Fair
"Father?"
The old man sitting on the bench was eating pistachio nuts and carefully placing the shells in a ball cap to his left. He looked Jack's way.
"Ah! Jack. Not any more. Not in long time."
The First Call
The ringing of the phone reverberated throughout the office. You can tell who’s calling by the ring, whether it’s a good call or one which foretells disaster. The phone knows. Its voice sends you a message. You have to be smart enough, open enough, to understand its language.
Carpe
His dad used to tell him (when the man was sober) that life gave you three choices: fail and wallow in it, coast and be unfulfilled, or swing for the fences and maybe—MAYBE—do something notable.
Dad seemed to be OK with the first.
Swing for the fences. Seize the day.
Loony
He awoke in a panic with a piss boner bursting through his boxers. He sprung from his bed, legs crossed, praying to God to help him make it in time.
Short Spring, Or: Leaving Los Angeles
When I returned home later my roommate informed me of something going on the following weekend in WeHo that sounded quite obviously like an orgy.
Smooth
Eddie played short. He had what the scouts called the quick twitch. It made him a natural. He could pick anything behind the bag, go deep in the hole, jump turn and throw mid-air to first, in a freakin’ blur. On a pop fly, he’d go out hard, back to the infield, make the grab over the shoulder–no problem.
The Donation
“Thank you, sir,” Dr. Carton replied. “No one likes to be held hostage, but the size of your donation and the good it will do for the University, faculty and students is just too overwhelming.”
Night Out, 2025
Is it Friday? A day hazing over fast into the good long while of night. Both are so happy to have had themselves. To have been connected.
This was an age after the rooftop days were over. Removed and exposed from the vantage of twenty-or-more stories.
Sixty Bucks a Week
The phone on the wall rang. The long, knotted cord dragged on the floor as she listened carefully to the distant voice. He had collapsed. She stared out the window where he’d usually park, the space empty. It was 95°, but it wasn’t the heat. Not a heart attack, a stroke, or a seizure.
Hell in a Handbasket
Before she was Jane Hadley, the rock ’n’ roll singer/songwriter—the Goddess of Rock, bigger than Taylor, Adele, and Beyoncé combined, she was Jane Hadley, the folk ’n’ roll singer/songwriter who never sold more than a thousand albums and a few hundred t-shirts. Before she had a #1 album flying off the shelves and being downloaded to the Cloud by millions, and an entire merchandising department, she was just a girl who played in a few bands: the Stargazers, Rosie’s Dream Catcher, Jane and the Jaded Cowboys.
He Served
The guy had a silver chain that dangled from his left front pocket to his right, perfectly outlining his brief-less testicles. He looked at The Buff, smiled, and yanked out a pocket watch the size of a hockey puck from his faded Levis and said, “ten… p.m., fat boy.” His droopy white walrus mustache did a lousy job of concealing his shit-eating grin.
Three Graces At Beggar's Monument
A cigarette appeared in Cy’s mouth like a jump cut.
“I’m like Peter Pan and ya’ll are my misfit toys.” He scratched his gut over the smoothed down 4x t-shirt.
“The lost boys.” Jetta corrected him thru her own cigarette. “This is what we do when we come back from running away.”
She sat and bolted one from the freshly opened bottle.
Tilly’s
I could see him as he talked. The mouth surrounded by the scraggly beard, moving at a thousand miles an hour. Him walking and talking at the same time since he never sat for too long in any one place. Medium height, medium build, and large hands with fingers, which had been broken years ago. The hands hid the story of a man feared by many when he was much younger.
A Troubling Hare
I have a lot of problems. Let me restate that. A lot of problems have me. Having a problem is an illusion. It implies I have control over that problem. I don’t. The problem has control over me.
The Social Worker
I got a call. I needed to go to a home. A redneck case. Trailer trash in an apartment. Truancy issue with a 6th grader, as if showing up to school was going to change his future.
The Sax
Call Thru The Metal
And the tendril is the spark is the stem creeping a creep ominous and slow from the poisonous spotted orchid named malice. The tendril of disease sprawled to clutch at the softest tissue of the closest one.
Lewis and Fredo
I got it. It was now my move. Should I succumb to his demand? It was a dark, wind whipped subzero ominous god-forsaken Chicago blizzard.
Microsoft Teams is the Devil’s Tool
“This is no way to pray. This is no way to send our loved one off to the Great Beyond. To Heaven? I don’t know. I’m not sure anymore. I’m not even sure I was ever so sure at all.”
Typical Fr. Harrington. Always starting his sermons with a sense of existential dread and confusion. Topped off with a sprinkle of self-doubt. He’s the Woody Allen of Catholicism. He even had a questionable relationship with an ingénue at his old parish in Portland, Maine. That’s how he ended up here. In my church.
The Storytellers
It was a long signal and we were silent for a beat. Just enough time for my gaze to drift for no reason at all, over the door down to the blacktop where a female praying mantis lay crushed and paved over.
Monte imagined approaching the counter.
“Hello, I hear Morgan Freeman narrating my life.”