"It's the heart that makes the heat."

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Pillow Talk

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  The phone rang four times before I could grope the handset out of the cradle. Groggy and hoarse, a muffled “Lo?” was as much as I could offer, my head still on the pillow. “Is Kitty there?” I heard the door of a phone booth screech a few inches and thud shut. I needed to hear his voice again. Immediately. “Who did you want?”  “Kitty. I don’t know her last name. We met at the Hi-Lo the other night.”  “Hmmm. The Hi-Lo, huh? She gave you my number?”   “914-232-5646?” He was off by one. Close. So close. The acoustics of the phone booth were intimate. His voice was like melted butter and dark syrup swirled together. Salty, sweet, smoothly overwhelming.  “No. No kitty here. Just me.” I yawned. If I could purr, I would have.  “So, what number is this?”  “And why would I give you my number if you weren’t looking for me in the first place? I snuggled deeper into the warmth of my nest. “Hmmn?”  “Solid point, but can I have some slack 'cause I’m glad I got...
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for keep's sake

 Four fifths. Don't even try to say that twice. Four fifths of writing is seeing the movie you've been living, but from the point of view of the other players, not yours. And if you haven't been paying acute attention to the details, you're screwed. Unless you're a Creative.  So, if you are inclined to make silk purses from sows ears, you gather up your details, and recall the small moments. Action! The late afternoon light, the sounds of food frying, the cigarette smoke in the air, the parakeet squawking in a cage on top of the avocado refrigerator festooned with magnets. Little plastic alphabet letters that came, went and came back again.  She gets up and shuffles the cut up potatoes around in the not hot enough Wesson on the gas stove. A sous chef at seven, I peeled and sliced those.  Rosie sits, digging through her purse for something and coming up with something else. In front of her, a cup of instant coffee with non-dairy creamer and four teaspoons of sugar. T...
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the soluntion of violence

 He might have sensed Anna standing behind him because he leaned over and reached for the weapon on the floor. More a sword than a knife, it was two feet long, a third of that, the leather-wrapped handle. The double-edged blade was glazed with blood. It looked heavy, cumbersome, and crude. She watched a fat drop of Maryann’s blood fall from his hand to splash brightly on the pale rag rug above the tip of the blade, like the dot of an “i”. His bloodstained hand was floating down to the knife when her hand slipped into the shadow of his and took it the way the gulls at the beach steal a sandwich even as you lift it to your mouth. His hand closed on nothing, and she heard a sub-aural grunt as he looked down to where the knife had been. Anna placed one knee on the bed and gripped the weapon like a Louisville slugger. Left-handed, like the great Ted Williams, she swung for the fences, her fluid follow-through ending in a bone-jarring stop as the tip of the blade bit deep into the plaste...
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