P.K.’s assistant, the guy famous in the office for banging secretaries against the wall of the powder room in the office’s main corridor, a guy named Nate Binswanger, told me to get over it. What exactly “it” meant to him, I wouldn’t know, but it pertained to my sulky attitude, he said, following the death
The dog was dead. It just didn’t know it yet. Pete ‘The Meat’ Truelove knew it. The vet knew it. When the results of the blood test had appeared on her monitor screen, she’d softly chewed her bottom lip. She would say something soon. He could sense the hard word coming. Crouched on the floor
The house was a piece of shit, but it was the best I could afford. I remembered hearing something about “curb appeal” on the Home and Garden Channel. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I knew this wreck didn’t have it. I knew it was going to be an insurmountable amount of work
We don’t talk—I mean, sit down and have a conversation—during the day. There isn’t time. We have three kids under the age of five, we both work, and spare time revolves around booster chairs, baby food, and car seats. There’s always something else, something more immediate, tugging at our attention. Our communication as a couple,
The steam from the two mugs of coffee adds to the condensation on the already misty window. I wipe my coat sleeve across the pane, exposing a small portal to the outside world. The rain sounds like tiny footsteps against the glass, the intensity ebbing a little as the wind drops. Two women trudge along
Dr Beamish, Since yours is the name on the paperwork I was given I am assuming that it is to you that I should address this document. Not with any great enthusiasm, I must confess, but Dr Hansted insisted that a commitment to keeping a journal was an essential prerequisite for acceptance onto this trial.
Jimmy Toussaint was a man of opposites. I knew him as a fraud and as a Santeria Wizard, as a friend and as a betrayer. In the end, he might have claimed the same in relation to me. We met outside the Hotel Ontario near the Zocalo in Mexico City and formed a cult of
Bastards all. Self-righteous, narcissistic, self-pitying, craven, cringing, oleaginous, vile, dribbling, deluded bastards. They all think they should win; they all think they deserve to win. And here they are. And here I am. We’re sitting on a platform; we’re waiting to read. They will read from the ghastly excretions that they have forced before the
When I wake to find my left ear missing, Mother tells me not to worry. “I’ll sew you a new one,” she mimes, hands imitating a needle and thread. I shrug. I don’t mind losing another ear. All I need is a good eye and a steady hand to hold my paintbrush. I’ve survived three
Some people are open books, easy to read with their pages displayed for everyone to see; others are closed books, hiding behind thick, heavy covers, protecting them from scrutiny. She was neither. She was a canvas, a cloth filled with a myriad of images and colours, like a Picasso or a Dali. Only the most
