Day 15 of quarantine, Toilet paper supply is stable, but tensions are high. I spent Friday night cooking vinegar braised chicken and roasted beats when I began to feel that throb of restlessness. It’s coming, I thought. I drowned it in the last bottle of wine I had stashed away, unnerved by the fact that […]

The office is tiny. In between a Baskin-Robins and a dry cleaner. I sit at a desk littered with loose papers and brochures in front of a large monitor with an array of open tabs. A red WAWA coffee cup sits next to the keyboard. Behind me is Tammie, at sixty-two she’s just returned to […]

It’s a stressful time. The weeks after the new year. I think it’s part due to the sudden jolt, the sputter that occurs from turning back on after weeks of being on pause. I imagine it’s why everyone’s sick right now. Everyone’s coughing up the rust, readjusting to life again. It’s true I added more […]

When Shirley Temple started out in acting, she recalls how if any of the child actors misbehaved the studio executives would put them in a dark closet with nothing to sit on but a block of ice. According to Temple, while the punishment was harsh, it instilled in her a lesson she never forgot. That […]

It was noon-ish. We were eating at the bar in Greenpoint. I hadn’t seen Jess in at least sixteen months. The last time we were together she said she was going to get a master’s degree in Anthropology. She’d lamented that she’d have to ask her parents for money. I always loved Jess for this. […]

It was raining. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. She said the tube always gets crowded when it rains. She usually loved the rain. Gray days made her calm. Today, however, she felt the clouds in her throat. It had been a few months since she took the job at that marketing company. For the […]

It was summer and I’d just moved to New York. I found a room in the West Village I could sublet for a month. It was out of my price range and moving again after one month was impractical but after seeing it I couldn’t leave. I was scared and alone and this apartment felt […]

She said she was moving to Paris. She’d tried New York and nothing was happening. If she didn’t go now, she never would. I told her I thought that was the right choice. I could see her wearing berets, sitting in cafes and singing under a haze of smoke and blue lights. I didn’t tell […]