It was a beautiful baby blue that made the walls look like an icing covered birthday cake. Ella enjoyed making shapes with her brush, a beach scene with a starfish, then a palm tree on a desert island, before sweeping the scenes away with a big roller. With each stroke, she felt a little more
Consuelo has always regarded herself as a fortunate woman. Just look at my life, she’d say, if anyone asked her. She’s spent her seventy years living in the same corner of the same Spanish city. Let other people roam the world, she thinks, if she catches a travel documentary on television. Let other people rush
On December 22nd, her father’s birthday, Mila Sloane tightened her jacket around her neck as she climbed the steps to enter the annual Christmas banquet as her dad’s guest. With temperatures plunging into the teens during the night, a light film of frost had carpeted the small coastal town. Inside the beach-themed office of the
Alex loosened his belt two notches but the action failed to ease his discomfort. Undoing his trouser top button, he felt his stomach sag forwards. He hadn’t visited the gym in 6 months: It was one more reason for him to hate himself. Alex was sitting in the King’s Metro bar, supposedly one of Toronto’s
The dressing room was an overcrowded sauna swarming with the wriggling bodies of family, reporters, and old white people from the Boxing Commission. An unholy roar filled his ears, like listening to music underwater. None of it made sense, and through it all, Ronny Lipton had only one question; Why was he so goddamned cold?
They met through the second law of thermodynamics. Over time, with increasing entropy, eventually they fell in love. The way people meet if they’re really going to fall in love. That’s how it is in a small town. Joy was at the Merrimaker, a local place, a dive bar so dirty that its profile picture
What’s new? How is the world treating you? For the third morning in a row, Tim found the woman on a stool at the end of the counter, sipping coffee and apparently doing a crossword puzzle. From his table across the way, and since she was wearing the required mask, it was difficult to know
There was a time, every evening around sunset, when the world seemed like a good place to live in. The other twenty-three and a half hours were what they were, but Rhonda lived for the time when the sun slipped lazily towards the horizon, making the TV aerials on the nearby rooftops and the razor
“Don’t forget to polish the oji, Zak.” Elaine Flaherty looked up from her computer. “We don’t want to upset the Iroko man!” Elaine smiled and turned back to her thesis. Jerry was in the greenhouse. “OK, mum.” Zak sighed and wandered through the kitchen into the garden, plucking the can of cumaru oil and a
I sensed that our daughter Freya was about to send shockwaves around the house, even before she told us. Nothing new there. For the last three to four years she has thrived on provocation and confrontation, particularly with me. But on this occasion, as she joined us into the kitchen, she was unusually respectful in
