By Marguerite Del Giudice American Fiction: Volume 13 October 28, 2014 When I lived on Loveland, I used to let that stupid fat thing next door put all her garbage and ashes on the side of my house. Rachel. For one thing they had coal heat and I had oil, and she would...
By W.C. Heinz From The Professional 1958 Eddie had come back off the road with the others and had his breakfast, and I had left him lying on his bed and reading the morning papers and listening to the radio while Jay sat at the table writing postcards. After three...
By Elmore Leonard From Unknown Man No. 89 1977 Chapter One A friend of Ryan’s said to him one time, “Yeah, but at least you don’t take any shit from anybody.” Ryan said to his friend, “I don’t know, the way things’ve been going, maybe it’s about time I started taking...
By Bernard Malamud From The Natural 1952 Roy trailed the anonymous crowd out of Northwest Station and clung to the shadowy part of the wall till he had the courage to call a cab. “Do you go to the Stevens Hotel?” he asked, and the driver without a word shot off before...
By Charles Simic From Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell 1992 Preface I have a dream in which Joseph Cornell and I pass each other on the street. This is not beyond the realm of possibility. I walked the same New York neighborhoods that he did between 1958...
By Pete Dexter From Spooner 2009 Later that year Spooner began his career in organized baseball. The coach of the baseball team was Evelyn Tinker, who in addition to being held almost blameless in the Lemonkatz boy’s injury was now rumored to be collecting sixty bucks...
By W.C. Heinz Collier’s July 15, 1950 I checked into a hotel called the Olympia, which is right on the main street and the only hotel in the town. After lunch I was hanging around the lobby, and I got to talking to the guy at the desk. I asked him if this wasn’t the...
