Sunflowers

The soft-spoken literature professor smiled knowingly.
“I overcame that problem,” he said. “I found a psychiatrist in Nashville – where I live and work – who specializes in creative types. He put me on ten milligrams of amphetamines once a day.”
“It worked?”
“Almost immediately. It didn’t bring back the manic episodes – I mean, who would want [...]

In Which the Narrator Dismisses Durrell

Nate settled onto the stool next to mine. He plopped his cell phone and a battered paperback of “Justine” down on the dark brown marble bar top. I examined the book cover with a disapproving glare.
“What? You don’t like Durrell?”
“Never read him. Have no intention of reading him.”
Nate ordered a Sierra Nevada from the bartender.
“How’s [...]

Baseball

I have not been dry lately, despite my doctor’s advice in February to do so, but I do have to depend on the generosity of my bar mates at Vesuvio in order to bend a pint of ale or an Old Crow and 7 in a bucket glass. I’m afraid I’m turning into that classic [...]

Bones

“You know a lot about the law, don’t you?”
“A little more than the next guy on some things, yeah.”
“Okay,” Cal says excitedly, “we’ve got a problem out at the work site.”
Cal was a licensed contractor and the latest work site was a 70-year old single family dwelling in South San Francisco. Cal was to repair [...]

Connie’s Motor Home

The minute I light up my cigarette, the cell phone rings. It’s mom.
“How are you?” she says.
“Not good, as usual.”
“When do you work again?”
“Friday night is my door man job.”
“Do you have enough money for you two to make it until then?”
“It’s two days. I have forty bucks. We’ll get by.”
“Did you get the money [...]

Father’s Day

So,” I said to mom during our next phone call, “if I was born in mid-March of 1959, that means you conceived sometime around June of 1958, right?”
“Right. See, now, I had appendicitis when I was pregnant with you. That was when we lived in San Jose.”
“Who is we?”
“Jake. I married him.”
This was news to [...]