You are currently browsing stories tagged with “Flora & Fauna.”
It’s all taken on a certain familiarity. I unlock the door, turn on the light, drop my bag at the foot of the bed, and move towards the kitchen. With a flick of the light, there is the scurry of roaches and waterbugs across the tile and under the counter. Like clockwork, I begin to yell obscenities, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, [...]
I took the subway uptown to stop by my old boss’s townhouse. Drop by any time, she’d said. Just ring the bell. We were on good terms. I had quit that job to take something downtown. The new job paid a little bit more, but it hadn’t worked out. Now I was back working as a waitress. My old boss [...]
Madison Square Park confirms New York as civilized city. The park is a cultured green in Manhattan's punishing grid: the Flatiron Building to its southwest, Broadway to the west, the century-old architecture, the clock tower to the east, buildings that house Credit Suisse First Boston and some of the globe's most powerful corporations, America's wealth, New York's wealth, and the [...]
The middle of May holds much promise for the North Fork surfcaster, or fly fisherman. By that time the striped bass have moved up into the shallow flats and bays around Orient and the water has warmed enough so that the bass have begun to feed with a good deal of purpose. In mid-May the bay waters are clear and [...]
I never shared my life with any pets – unless you count a legion of uninvited cockroaches. Until I got married, that is, and my wife brought a black cat home from the gym. “This cat has been rescued, my instructor was offering him up,” she said. “Cat’s poop inside,” I said. “You’ll love him.” “What’ll we call him?” “Felix,” [...]
In Park Slope, Brooklyn, on a week-day afternoon a woman was trying to sell her iguana for twenty-five dollars. She was giving it up for a more traditional pet, like a cat who didn’t need to be constantly put out in the sun to digest its meal but could do so underneath the bed. "It tastes even better than chicken," [...]
There was once, just a few weeks ago, a tree outside of my bedroom window. I am not even sure what kind it was – maybe Oak, maybe Maple. (In New York you don’t really bother to know the names of trees, birds, and flowers, and it issomething you feel guilty about.) I liked this tree. It’s not that I [...]
We took the train to the very top of Manhattan, exiting the subway into a neighborhood of large boulevards and boarded-up storefronts. Black sedans cruised by and occasionally stopped to ask us if we needed a taxi. At 9:30 on a Sunday morning, it was already steamy. This was only our fifth Sunday in the city. My fiancé and I [...]
They say she’s holed up like a squirrel, nuts to last the winter, glimpses of green bath- robe when she shuffles down the hill to her mailbox to collect more rejection. People start laying bets, perhaps she has a corpse hidden like, what’s her name, was it Emily? Maybe she’s taken a bad spell, some female kind of thing. No, [...]
