The two men nodded and shook hands.
“Please sit. What do I call you?”
“Dymphna.”
“I’m Terry.”
“Pleased to finally meet you.”
Terry wondered about the grin, “…Has everything been done to your satisfaction?”
Dymphna looked around the empty office and nodded.
”Hello, sir.”
”Yea?”
”Uhm. I’m here to see Pam.”
“My daughter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You the kid?”
“Uhm…”
“I mean the kid she’s been sneaking off with. The … No, let me think. The Williams boy, right?”
Chester McNaughton Connaughton, aptly named for both sides of the family, landowner in the new world, squeezer of pennies and nickels at the very corpulence of coin, embarrassed at times by his own good fortune where his roots had once been controlled and ordained by potatoes and turnips or the lack thereof, gazed over the latest acquisition of a two-acre parcel abutting his prime abode and wondered how he could best utilize it. Mere coinage, he had early assessed, would apply the jimmy bar under Carlton Smithers and separate him from the land in their town of Saxon, not far from Boston. Carlton was old, alone, susceptible. It would be a piece of cake. It was, subsequently and as he had forecast, a swift steal, and papers and proper process moved the property under the shield of his name.
Marie first noticed the butterfly outside her window while writing in her diary.
She’d just written, This room is like my own cocoon these days, though I wish it weren’t, when she happened to turn her head to see the butterfly perched on a bough of the oak tree just beyond the sill. She briefly returned her attention to the opened book before her, but then set her pen on the crease of the pages and stared from the window again.
It wasn’t all about the mushy stuff. The cards, the roses, the poetry, meant nothing if you weren’t sincere. He knew many people whose love was only for show. Did he buy her flowers every week? Not at all. Did he profess his undying love for her in front of all their family and friends? Probably never. Holding hands and other public shows of affection was something that he never did, but no matter. He knew that this wasn’t what it was all about. He was being thoughtful. Even if it seemed stupid to other people, it meant something.
Sunday used to be the day LS maintained radio-silence. Well not any longer baby. We sexed up Sunday weeks ago. Anything goes on a Sunday. Well almost. Witness In Conversation with…and Editor Picks and now something outrageously entitled A Writing Piece.
A Writing Piece indeed!
Imagine how long we sat around in blue-sky think-tank style working parties debating the ins and outs of various off-the-wall titles before arriving at that humdinger.
Sunday – A Writing Piece – Tobias Haglund.
But first, Story of the Week. No. A different first before that.
The week that was, began incredibly, yet again, on Monday.
There was an old woman and a nurse in a room. The old woman sat in a chair holding a cane. There was a tray in front of her with a plate nearly full. The nurse bent over and wiped her face with a napkin. The nurse believed when old women talked about their lives it’s a sign they’re about to die. Miss Macintosh started doing that, and it was making the nurse anxious.
“How about you eat some of your peas?” coaxed the nurse.
Glen sat in the corner booth of the Hollywood Diner and stared out one of the windows that separated the gray and red walls. He was delighted with the cool autumn day. It was one of those dark and gray days he loved being in the city despite the light drizzle that had been falling most of the morning. He held a cup of coffee to his lips and took pleasure in the richness and the warmth. On the cigarette-burned, graffiti-scarred table next to a half-eaten pastrami on rye his drawing pad was opened and waiting.
In [Academia] the only homage they pay to virtue is hypocrisy.
–– Lord Byron
Full Professor Seymour Wilkes had planned to vote against the tenure of assistant professor Bixby in any case. While he admitted to himself that she was amply qualified for the distinction based on her excellent record of publications and teaching evaluations, he simply didn’t like her––mainly he disapproved of her appearance. To him, her short skirts and modestly tattooed forearm were the deal breakers. She just doesn’t look respectable. Looks too much like some of our students, and she acts like she prefers their company to ours.
Continue reading “Senior Faculty Act on Roselle Bixby’s Tenure by Michael C. Keith”
Old Jefferson John Williams never really done nothin’ to deserve his story told, but Doc Elroy and the Preacher prodded me to write a little piece on him. I, myself, never done nothin’ to deserve to write about nobody, but Doc helped me with spelling and smoothed out some of the grammar a bit, without changing much of the words. Anyhow, what I wrote was printed up in some out-of-town paper and I have a copy of it. I still don’t understand why I was asked to write about Jeff John, or why it was printed. But I don’t care, ‘cause what I did was right.
literally stories 