I clean the White House. On the skeleton-crew weeks—those when they have to shut off the government until they can agree on how they’re going to spend your money—I can only get maybe half of it done. I trade off between doing all the vacuuming, mopping, and glass cleaning throughout the whole house and getting […]
The explosion shatters the night. The room shudders; windowpanes rattle like the chains of the damned. Another mortar attack in East Asia. The echo of screams, the gut-punch blast of a grenade rips Stanley from the depths of sleep. Another day of horrors. His eyes snap open, pupils dilated in the darkness, senses sharpened to […]
It’s the first Tuesday of September, so here I am at your doorstep with this month’s supplies—mostly food and books, as usual. When you open the door, it’s like I’m looking at an old photo, you and the hallway tinged a sentimental amber by the redshift of the decades between us. “Thanks for bringing all […]
How old was she? Some thought late sixties. Others said more than seventy-five. She lived on the old street since the war ended. Her row house was not among the few with two stories that were on the street corners. It was a simple house, a single story with two largish rooms off the small […]