I hated my job at the bowling alley more than usual that day. The Maximum Lilac deodorizer had run dry. I was too busy renting out shoes to slap an out-of-order sign on Mission Impossible, which left me with a list of token refunds a mile long. My period was nine days late. Some adults nearby were talking about the war in Ukraine while their children tried to bowl with two hands. “Five bucks a gallon,” this bald dad guy said, then slugged beer. “And it’s not even our situation.” They were as … [Read more...] about A Random Strike
Goodwill
Let’s say you work in a candy factory cleaning the chocolate vats, and the job is dull, but you’re like, It’s necessary so the kids can be safe. Except then you read an article about how your boss’s boss basically puts cocaine in the chocolate bars that makes kids go insane with lust and craving for more of their product. — So you quit and get a loan to go to school and work for an NGO that builds solar drinking wells, and yeah it’s dull and mostly filing forms—no use for a brain, or that … [Read more...] about Goodwill
What the Tide Returns
She counts the children as they come through the door—one, two, and three—to reassure herself that they are hers. She can’t say just how happy she is to see them; she’s missed them all summer long. She hardly recognizes them; they’re browner than ever before, and somehow warmer to the touch. She hugs them and her hands come away coated with fine grains of sand. Both boys come back taller and sporting fresh haircuts. The girl is fuller around the hips and her hair is braided in a different … [Read more...] about What the Tide Returns
Balikbayan
Two of my uncles hoisted the balikbayan box out of the truck bed. I heard the package hit the ground even though I was ten meters away, sitting on the porch, where I always sat. My seven younger cousins played with marbles in the shade, but when my uncles waved them over, they raced across the driveway to swarm the gift like moths around a fire. My aunts and uncles tore the tape away and removed a dozen toys, each wrapped in colorful cardboard and pristine plastic, jammed between hand-me-down … [Read more...] about Balikbayan
Rockaway
In May, Amy called to say she was squatting in the caretaker’s quarters of the Rockaway Motel. She needed her car; she wanted to sell it. When I pulled her old Volvo wagon into the dusky parking lot, I could see it had once been a nice getaway: empty pool in the middle of a courtyard surrounded by a clutch of cabins. Thick stands of pitch pine protected the motel from the sea. The caretaker’s quarters were cavernous and shadowy, a paneled welcome desk near the door. I shouldn’t have been … [Read more...] about Rockaway
The Chimp
Down slid the chimp. Not quite like a fireman, more hand-over-hand because the pole inside the four-foot-wide acrylic cylinder running floor-to-ceiling in the middle of my apartment had branches. Surely, shit piled on the floor below – the chimp was good at tearing off his diaper – but the beauty of it was I couldn't see it or smell it, and the rent was great because the chimp's owner kept the top and bottom apartments of the triplex. You'll never meet your neighbor, said the realtor, but his … [Read more...] about The Chimp