Works in Progress
from "Courting the Pope," The Pope Stories (Bordighera Press, 2011)
The Pope stood up, removed his house robe,
threw it on a green leather fainting couch, and walked over to a full-length
triptych mirror, where he stood in his boxer shorts and ankle-height black
socks, flexing his pale, pendant pectorals, and turning sideways now and then
to study the contour of his beanbag paunch. The truth was obvious: He had let
himself go to pot. So many years he had worked tirelessly behind the scenes,
laying the groundwork for this job, that he had foregone sessions in the
Vatican gymnasium in favor of closed-door confabulations with his former Grace
and mentor. He had emerged from those years with not only an uncanny knack for
public proclamation and action, but also, in spite of his freakishly efficient
metabolism, a flabby midsection and toneless thighs. Without doubt he still cut
a dashing figure in vestments, but he had lost the subtle swagger arising from
a positive self-image, the pith of élan any good Pope needs to bestow credible
benedictions. He could now, on occasion, appear to lack ummph.
from Speculator (a novel in progress)
A
sunlit thicket of reddish half-afro. A plastic baby doll, face down in the
garden by the blue delphiniums. Near the storage shed, a red tricycle. The yard
was large enough for the little girl to pretend she was racing an imaginary
playmate, a lost brother she called Alex. The yard was small enough to contain
her imagination. Fantasies kept secret behind box hedge walls, a trompe l’oeil
of endless green.
Her
eyes followed the little girl across the yard. The girl chose the baby doll,
rescuing it from burial by early summer mud, taking its cold pink hand in hers,
and wiping off the dirt coating its shiny tummy with her new crinoline dress.
Straight-faced as a preacher’s.
“Baby,
baby, baby,” the little girl shrieked, suddenly smiling, and threw the doll
straight up in the air, so at the end of an arc, its head met the ground in
silent trauma.
When
a child came from nowhere, how could you know what went through its mind?
The
child watched her from across the yard, and opened her mouth to yell something
that might demand the attention she so obviously craved.
