The Thespian

by Bruce J. Friedman

Originally published on February 18, 2009

“”Somebody offered me a part in a movie.”

“Why?” she asked, somehow managing to squeeze two syllables out of one word, in the manner of teen actresses in the sitcoms that Harry denied watching.

Harry was disappointed by the question. Wasn’t a daughter supposed to think her father could do anything? Every time Harry thought he had the hang of having a daughter, he was back at square one.”

Three Balconies: Stories and a Novella

reviewed by Charles Salzberg

Originally published on February 10, 2009

“Friedman has never really been interested in well-adjusted winners, but rather those on the way up or down, or even better, those going nowhere fast. The neurotic, the unhappy, the malcontent, the put-upon, the outsider, that’s patented Friedman territory, and we’re the better for it.”

Another Country

reviewed by Mark Mordue

Originally published on February 10, 2009

“A heady analyst of the world around him, [Rothwell is] overly fond of flashing his intelligence forward in the odd word certain to send you to a dictionary. His sense of other people’s voices also jars, as if everyone is gifted with the Queen’s English and a perfect philosophical riposte.”

O CARELESS LOVE

by R.M. Ryan

Originally published on February 10, 2009

It was 1962. I was 17. Jack Frazier and I decided we’d go to the Jefferson County Speedway where, we’d heard, we could get beer and loose girls. This was the year I carried a Trojan rubber in my wallet so long it formed itself into the leather and Terry Rafferty said I had the [...]

PMS AT 45

by Susan Rothbard

Originally published on February 10, 2009

An excuse for everything from murder to spontaneous weeping, it comes with circadian precision. In her younger days, she didn’t mind so much. Numbed by the reminder of what she could make, she felt ripe, poised on the edge of something big. But lately, the animal within shakes the bars, picks at the lock, tries [...]

A writer revived

by Dan Wakefield

Originally published on February 9, 2009

“The only time I saw Dick Yates without his jacket was a freezing winter night when I took a bag of groceries to his barren, one-room apartment on Commonwealth Avenue…The room was lit by the eerie blue flames of a gas stove and heated by an oven whose door was open. With his sallow face and gray beard, his arms folded over his chest, his thin, gangly body hunched against the cold, he seemed like a doomed character from Dostoevsky.”

Consent

by Carol Fletcher

Originally published on February 9, 2009

I go home. I go to see my other kids, because they need me, but really, because I need them. I take them to dentist appointments and birthday parties. On a play date, a mom confides to me that her son won’t stop hitting in nursery school. What should she do, she wonders. I’m stunned by the question. Why ask me? I can hardly keep my kid alive.

CINEMATICA

by Matthew Lippman

Originally published on February 5, 2009

Americans walk into movie theaters with their 4 year old sons, buy large popcorns, five dollar boxes of Whoopers, then find their seats and die. When they walk out two hours later they are still dead but get into Ford Explorers anyway and turn the key. The gas gauge reads full but they stop at [...]

Who Was The President Then?

by Derek Alger

Originally published on February 5, 2009

The guy handed me my plastic bag of purchases, and I don’t know why, but taking it in my left hand, I extended my right hand to shake his, only with my index finger pointing out toward him.

“President McKinley was assassinated in 1901,” I said, adding that a guy came up to him with a bandaged hand concealing a gun and when McKinley reached out to shake hands, he was shot twice.