Only Lydia Knows
Why? I’ll tell you. Because my wife ain’t a wife anymore, my fiancé dumped me, and my kids have their own lives.
Fat Louie the Butcher
Fat Louie the butcher had thick arms. Short and covered with hair. A bloody apron draped over his barrel chest.
Nothing You Can Do About It
I met her eight years ago at Holy Cross Hospital where I worked in West Englewood. A poor people’s hospital on Chicago’s south side.
Stevie
My son Paul was starting to come through. His cocky smugness began to vanish. The good kid I knew that was deep down inside him was starting to peek out from behind his veneer of twelve-year-old arrogance.
Natural Causes — Part III
The visitor’s eyebrows arched at the sound of his name and he entered the room. He took Mary’s hand from C, then turned his head upwards exhaling blue smoke to the ceiling. And with great fanfare Massimo kissed her hand, precisely on the wedding ring she still wore.
Natural Causes — Part II
On the ninth month after Joe had died of natural causes, Mary was in St. Francis reciting her novena for the dead, quiet like, lips moving, nothing coming out, holding her rosary. A shadow crossed her sightline to Jesus. She looked up, lips still moving, thumbing the beads.
"God bless you."
Natural Causes
The smell of the salamis, capicola, and prosciutto hanging low from the ceiling of Stefano’s was distracting, but that’s where they played. I was never part of the game, but the guys let me watch.
Gorski and The Goat
On a urine-stained olive green cot in the back room of Rosalda’s Cantina in Ciudad Juarez, I came to. Blacked out. Again. A smell I couldn’t quite put a finger on. Rank breath, a muffled gurgle and what felt like whiskers. I hope not our hostess, or worse, one of her chicas.
The Ace
The door slammed. A photograph of the woman smiling surrounded by sons forcing theirs, fell to the floor. Glass shattered.
“He’ll be fine.”
“I’m not the guy.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
“He should.”
Vengeance or Justice / You Decide
A busted nose, missing teeth, a fractured eye socket, and a broken jaw. My face looked like ground chuck.
Ronnie was short tempered. Me too. But different. I went off on guys. Ronnie went off on anybody. And on New Year’s Eve 1972 he went off on his girlfriend Marie, in the bathroom of my house.
...that empathy is a limited and local resource. Expanding one’s desire to empathize with an increasing number of people spreads it thin like too little butter on too much bread.