Jacee worked at the Waffle House on I-95 in Haswick, Georgia going on five years. She’d started the day after graduating high school when her mother told her to get a job or “move on.”
Rest Stop
Feras Terrae
As if to remind you that, regardless of what they say, you yourself are an island. Nothing but the grass grows there.
The Backlands
Sonny, face deadpan, flings his ballpoint across the reflective marble of the conference table. It flies with unintended precision, hitting his older sister Maya in the center of her chest like a dart. A tentative smile twitches across her face, because he’s fifty-six and he’s never been good at anger, never had reason to be. The pen was the best he could manage.
Death Sure Changes a Person
The first time I saw Lucille after she died, she told me, “You better find someone new, Harlan, or you’ll be lonely.”
Unacceptable Conventions
Before she died, Dr. Candice Mittleton, an employee of Friendly Morgues Inc., the body storage facility that is associated, somewhat loosely, with Upper Valley Hospital, was habituated to addressing me as someone many years her junior. She acted in that manner despite the fact that I was her boss and despite the fact that I was decades older. Even when a mutual colleague, Seth Huffington, publicly protested that behavior, Dr. Mittleton responded to his remonstration with laughter.
The Invisibility of Wealth
Sylvain, a man of thirty, sat at the table drinking coffee. He scrutinized the tables surrounding him on the patio, moving his focus methodically from one to the other. Several tables away, two men sitting across from one another were handed menus. One took a glance at his before he placed it down on the table and excused himself. The other continued perusing his.