Ghost Parachute

It might sound weird that the MIT guy makes me think of Herbie’s. I’m watching the video of him explaining how the way electrons move proves beyond doubt the existence of parallel universes. It’s hard to follow what he’s saying, but, shit, the guy’s a professor at MIT so he must be right. I close […]

Sometimes when my skin starts to itch or feel too tight, I’ll slip it off, hang it in the closet, and go for a walk. There’s nothing quite like the feel of a summer breeze running its long fingers up and down your spine. It tickles the arteries and butterfly kisses your spleen. One time […]

I know the boys in Carhartt Brown. I’ve met them all: the mechanic, the wind-burned teenager shoveling snow, the old man walking into Hardees, father, brother, cousin. These are no Gucci boys, no Givenchy.  These boys haunt aisles of hardware stores looking for a very precise nut, the exact right screw. “Rod coupling nut,” they […]

They wake up to the neighborhood on fire. Their bedroom wall is a face of windows. The wife thought that all that glass would be cheery. This was back when cheery was an option, a word she could say without feeling ironic. Later, it will come out that the fire started in Stone’s garage. Too […]

After getting our teeth cleaned, we were allowed one—just one—glow-shrimp from Dr. Dunkleosteus’s prize box, but we’d pretend the Novocain swole our jaws till they gaped. Then we’d swim past that box and slurp a mouthful, the whole thing if we could, and dart out of the office keeping our teeth wide and our lips […]

“Aren’t you excited?” my mother said. I was a week from turning nine, a month into fourth grade, a long time to wait for a brother or sister. My friends, if they had brothers or sisters, were a year or two older or younger. I’d never play with this kid. When it was my age […]