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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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Water baby

 Anna Bea and Tam had been secretly teaching each other to read and write since the little girl could sit up and hold a crayon. Tam never learned and was reluctant to subject herself to scorn, so she made do as many unlettered adults did. Each morning when chores were done, Tam would take off her apron and smack her broad palms together and say to Bea, “Time for school!” something she had no firsthand experience with. The two-year-old laboriously stacked three county phone books on the kitchen chair, climbed to her perch and waited with her grubby little fists clutching air while Tam got out the pad of lined newsprint and the cigar box full of pencils and crayons. Tam warned her, “Now don’t be letting other people know about our business here,” as the two of them drew copies of the bold letters from the front page of yesterday’s newspaper. The truth was that Bea had figured out reading and writing on her own while she sat on an apple box in a booth at the airport bar with...
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