third class

R was worried and harried. He had to take the train to Delhi to see about a debt incurred by his late brother. He had got to Lahore station early and fought his way in to get an upper bunk. Just as the train was rolling into motion a man was pulled in. He gave the porter twelve annas. He stood with his face looking in at R’s bunk.

“Hey why don’t you sit down?” R asked.

“I would like to but there is no room,” the man said.

“You should make room,” said R, but the man refused. R argued with the man off and on for a few hours. Having that face inches from him was very annoying. The man was very apologetic but continually maintained that he could not sit down because there was no room.

Finally R asked his name. “Mohandas Gandhi.” Ashamed, R made room for him on his bunk.

lunch

A couple have been dating for a couple months and decide to take a weekend trip together to a large city. On their first day walking downtown she invites a homeless man to lunch with them. Or rather, she offers to buy him lunch. The guy can’t help but view it as inviting him to lunch with them. Afterward he argues with her about it. He can’t figure out a way to argue it that doesn’t make him look like a creep.

diary

A girl’s favorite neighbor moved away to join the diplomatic corps and she suffered abandonment anxiety. Her other neighbors took pity on her and gave her a doll made from the mummified remains of a dog. She keeps her diary in its hollow insides. She loses the doll on a family drive. A young boy finds it and turns it into the police, where a detective reads the diary. It sets him thinking.

drifting eye

Kunstlerroman of a young woman who comes from Albania to study at an art school in Cincinnati. Her first year is spent in some dissolution with soft drugs and pop culture. She has an epiphany while walking a downtown street scratching her cheek of how lost she must look. She refocuses on he work, focusing on portraiture. One of her teachers challenges her depict her country’s history in a local model’s eye.

purring

Every time I hear my cat purr it triggers something in my chest, and I enter into one of my coughing fits that covers my handkerchiefs with blood. I will have to give it away.

ooliths

A fisherman living by himself had a method of cooking using round stones of varying sizes. He would heat these first and then add a certain quantity to water in order to boil or heat it, or underneath a pot or pan in order to cook.

A runaway youth who came to stay with him for a while taught him that the speed of cooking also matters.

“You can’t have been living out here that long if you haven’t discovered that. That’s one of the basics of cooking.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m just dumb.”

“I don’t think so. I think you haven’t been here much longer than me.”

epistemology of love

Ann sat down to write a note to her neighbor.

I feel like I’m a jar of water, and someone – God? – has lightly dipped an ink-filled brush on my surface. But that’s all it took, the ink has permeated me. I’m no longer clear; I am shot through with dye.

Given this fact that I’m in love with you, I am faced with an epistemological problem: is that the only mode on which I can know or acknowledge anything about you? I don’t think so. I think intellectually I can step outside that, but emotionally it is ompossible for me not to color every fact with a significance of endearment, jealousy and resentment.

And this is illustrated by my discovery that you order adult videos through the mail. Don’t worry, I’m not going through your mail (much as I’d like to). Your mail was delivered to ne by mistake. The packaging was very discreet, but some googling of the company name and address wasn’t hard.

Ann paused in her writing. This was a note she was not going to send. She knew that going in. This was written for herself. She put it away until she could gather her thoughts further. And she had to get dinner ready for her daughter who would be home soon.

Her daughter finds the note and gives it to the neighbor.

hamster

Kendall’s schoolmate Max organizes a ceremony honoring him and inviting him into a club which Kendall has wanted to join. However it is a ploy to steal Kendall’s dachsund-like genetically modified hamster. This is a problem for Kendall since one of it’s modifications is to produce Ganite which controls Kendall’s hypercalcemia. That’s why Kendall feeds it little pellets of Gallium, which is what initially fascinated Max.

hunter

The family had neighbors at the bottom of a steep hill. The boy and girl would play at hunting, maneovring in a switchback down the small cliff. Then they would look at the neighbor’s brick house, from the bushes at the edge of its lawn. It had a covered open space between the house and the garage, from the roof of which they sometimes saw deer carcasses hanging. In this space was a large pot suspended over a cooking fire, at which one day they met an old woman. She did not speak their language but smiled at them and motioned for them to help chop vegetables to go into the stew she was making. When her middle-aged son came home they ate dinner together. He took them home and got their parents’ agreement to take them hunting with him the next week. He gathered them early on the appointed day and they set out. While hunting the man is victim of an accident – the boy accidentally shoots him in the leg. At first they run in cowardice, but talk each other into going back to help him. He does not begrudge them their fright and talks them through making a splint and cane with him. The boy helps him hobble back while the girl goes ahead to warn his old mother.

infield

The doctor walked out onto the infield. “James, why don’t you come inside?”
“No. I’m outdoorsy.”
“Yes, you are probably the outdoorsiest person here.”
“I recognize your approbation as mere blandishment.”
The doctor drew his brows down in a consternated scowl. “OK.” Then, “Where did you bury your medicine?”
“I didn’t bury it. I traded it.”