Name the goat. This is the most valuable information given by the inmates. If you name it, you cannot eat it. You will care for it. You will see it has a soul. The goat will become like your child. And then they will set you free.
It wasn’t until snorkeling in the Pacific that Louisa began to understand her marriage: the sympathy in their mutual misunderstanding, or the inexorable distance between them, or maybe, only, the magnificence of needlefish.
The esteemed American novelist, Greg Ivanovski, arrived via the New Canaan branch on a Wednesday morning. By lunchtime, the rumble of loafers and wedge heels had the walnut paneling of the dining hall chattering and the Louis IX chandeliers rocking on their chains. Where had this swarm been only moments ago? Huddled in sleep behind the lancet arches? The cafeteria staff jostled the thrumming scholars into manageable lines, but finally had to impose the fire safety limit, with one particularly tragic result—Irish playwright Niall Glenn was forced to stand swaying from foot to foot in the outer hall for twelve full minutes before being allowed inside.
Greg Ivanovski did not attend the lunch.
At best, a short story can only approach perfection, never attain it. A novella has to be perfect. A novel has to be a sprawling mess. I am thinking of these things as I walk around my neighborhood in Bombay. The streets are wet from the first monsoon showers, which abated only half an hour back. Growling autorickshaws find their way through puddles, sometimes splashing water, and I hop and skip to avoid being at the receiving end. But this is a futile exercise, so I tell myself to just walk, unmindful of how dirty I get. I am walking because…because after twenty months of separation she has invited me to visit her.
Beth Wolpert was bragging about her son James’s old high school accomplishments again. Sitting at the VFW, waiting for another Natural Ice, she went on about how he won senior class president, how handsome he was and how many girls she used to catch him with when he thought she was working. “Once,” she started, “he had three girls in the basement, two blonds and a brunette—no shit—all of ‘em naked as the day they was born!” she laughed.
Here’s where we are right now: at two empty rolls of cigarettes, one roll stashed with a three-to-one of ganja to tobacco, a separate portion of unadulterated ganja that will fill all of the third joint (exclusively for her), and some spared seeds gathered inside the sheets of the hotel’s menu card. She is checking emails on her work phone. She is huffing and puffing at an MSNBC expert who is predicting another market crash. The joints she is preparing do not have the slickness she once prided herself in, but she is trying.
Miss Lejewski, our fifth grade teacher, had lopsided tits and a spitting problem. Even if we tilted our heads, her left breast dipped two inches lower than her right. Because of the spitting, none of us willingly sat in the front row except Benny Lanny. He was going to be president someday—everyone said so until he lost his arm—and by fifth grade he already understood the importance of pleasing authority figures.
Gerald used a razor to sever the cellophane wrapping around Megan’s body. He rolled her out of the box, then plucked the instructional manual from between her rubber lips. He stuffed the papers into his pocket, dragged her by the ankles to the living room, and deposited her on the floor.