Category: Fiction

And I was picky, believe me. I interviewed a dozen home health aides, at least. Half of them could barely speak English, and one had the nerve to ask if her son could come to my house after school. I was like, lady, I don’t know even know you, let alone your son.

But Sunita was polite. Professional. I didn’t have to listen to any sob story about her starving family. I still don’t know much about her personal life; I don’t even know which island she comes from. Which is how it should be. Boundaries.

Elliot screwed up his face, his eyes disappearing into deep, fleshy crevices. “Wasn’t your dissertation on something to do with Eliot, too? Eliot and class, Eliot and race, something like that?” he asked.

“Gender politics in nineteenth-century novels,” I said, laying out my words carefully, cards in a high stakes game. “So yeah, Eliot was in there.” I had submitted my Eliot chapter with my job application. Hadn’t he read it before he hired me?

"Besides me, can you name one other person whose life has worked out well enough to even speak about?"

Ezra paused, "No, I can't."

Lincoln never intended to get into finance, let alone abandon his acting career in L.A. But then he needed to help pay his mother's bills, keep the roof of his childhood home over her head. The days of standing in casting lines were over.