In 1979, when I was for two years an instructor at the University of New Hampshire, I had a student—a bright, anxious, but always attentive student—named Charles Fortunesky. He was taller than most of the others, and seemed to enjoy a comic...
he day Yolande ran away from home, never to return— never to return to Bellefleur Manor—was also the day of Germaine’s first birthday. But was there any connection between the two events. . . .?
The young man had just missed his previously-ticketed flight from LAX, but the ticket agent, a middle-aged woman with hair dyed a brilliant auburn color, managed to get him booked on the very next flight to Charlotte. The ticket agent wore...
One otherwise unremarkable July day, Nikifor Alexandrovich Rosanov, the highest ranking janitor of Lenin’s Mausoleum and hence of the entire Russian Republic, quit his job. Though he quit voluntarily, he told everyone he was laid off. As a...
It can seem ironic only in retrospect that the plans for my wedding lasted as long as the marriage itself—14 months. The night before the ceremony in August 1995, I did not know the fate of the second 14 months, but I knew the dread and...
He remembers the heat, the first summer in Norfolk, the summer of ‘69. He remembers the way it felt as it radiated from the steel decks, rising so fast that it pulled the breath out of his lungs. He remembers bringing it home on his uniform...
