Neither a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, an appointment as the first woman chair of the psychology department at City University, or a failed marriage had prepared Alicia Spencer for the vestry of the Downtown Church of Our Savior. Stymied by the conservatism...
Pastor Will Brighton felt the click of his alarm clock, a soft plastic snap in the stillness, and reached up to twist the switch, stopping the gabble of morning DJs from waking his wife Maria. Saturday hadn’t dawned yet; the cold January day outside...
It was her hands. They were the strangest thing about Carolyn. Her hands were large and rough looking, reddened with hard work, and not feminine at all. The knuckles were large and the nails were squared and trimmed short. In every sense of the word,...
Zitidos stared into the bright flames of the camel-dung fire, smothered in a weariness neither dark nor cold could penetrate. Out of habit, she pulled the tired, old shawl tightly around her shoulders. Almost threadbare, there was very little of it left...
"Ana," he breathed into the back of her neck, one hand busy on her, one on himself. Ana leaned back into him for a moment, rolling her head onto his shoulder, quietly voicing her exhalation as the stubble on his cheeks rubbed against her ear. She was briefly...
It was the kind of parking space your rearrange your day around. West 79th Street, off the park, just three doors down from Margaritte's apartment. I craned my head left and right as I parallel parked and rethought my plans. "Philly: trees!" I had anticipated...
Deborah is the first to appear in my apartment. She shows up on my futon, back straight, hands folded in her lap, silently watching me rush about my morning routine. Her brown eyes overflow with tears, small drops trickling down her weathered cheeks to plunk...
Sonny MacAdam was an old man and, as such, he considered the indulgence of maudlin sentiment his God-given right. It was the main reason he came to this desolate place, long after the other scholars and xenobiologists and anyone else with reason to be interested...
Easter, 2010. Memories float through the air; hopes and fears twirl into the sky, fluid like smoke. No one knows exactly what is happening, except that when Somalia exploded, and the Heat spread across the world, water wasn't the only thing we lost. Our...
We rolled out the proverbial red carpet for our new arrival, but he wasn't in the mood to thank us. Really, I couldn’t blame him. A zoo in the eastern United States might have had all the comforts and securities nature did not, but it was no comparison...
