
He reeked of sweat and wine and rotting fish, and so did everyone else who sat shivering and trapped in the gristled black of the beast. The man squatted alone in his tweed rags to prod the thick shallows with a sharpened pole. He waited, silver-haired and asthmatic with his hands shaking and coralled over…

Miriam and Dorothy are just getting to be best girlfriends again. They hadn’t spoken for a while over a silly disagreement about some money Dorothy had loaned her. Then Charlie, Miriam’s second husband, got drunk and shot himself.

To get to my job at the Quick ‘n Easy convenience store, I would cut behind the Catholic school, through the Chevy lot where my father used to work, and down the stretch of St. Mary’s Avenue that was squeezed between the old folks’ home and the cemetery.

Nathan Holic reads from American Fraternity Man, in which the narrator tries to clean up his Google footprint for a job interview.