hecavanagh

** spoiler alert ** Short vignettes about life in the city... I thought this might be a nice volume to take up to Subway so that I could polish off a few short items without becoming committed to a long novel during lunch. These stories of ordinary people doing ordinary things have a lot more heart (so far) than Selby's unremittingly grim "Last Exit to Brooklyn." The second story, "Hi Champ," has some Runyonesque charm but veers into some uncomfortable insights. The story's protagonist, Harry, is having a first date with Rita and wants to find a way to impress her. At Jack Dempsey's restaurant he summons the courage to ask the owner, the champ himself, for a favor, and instantly the gregarious pugilist knows right off what Harry wants (he's been this road before..) Sure, I could pretend to know you and call you by your name during your date tomorrow to impress your girl. When Dempsey greets Harry the next night by name, the intended effect occurs. Rita is impressed. After an incredible, perfect date, Harry begins to wrestle with issues perhaps best left alone, he wonders if the seemingly harmless lie he fabricates to impress his date is simply the first of many, and whether, thus, the whole relationship is built on a lie from the outset. They get along famously, and maybe they would have done so without the lie, but maybe they wouldn't. Was it the lie that she dug, or him? Without having alternate lives to compare the outcomes, how can one know? reading on... "A Penny for Your Thoughts." A married man harbors fantasies about a young girl he sees every day at the train station, but knows nothing will come of it. He loves his wife. Realizes that he knows the color of the girl's eyes but can't remember the color of his wife's... "Fortune Cookie." A salesman on a streak of bad luck and sensing his imminent dismissal gets on a winning path with a series of positive fortune cookies. But fear of breaking the cycle forces him to eat Chinese every day and he starts getting sick. He tries to find a way to get fortune cookies without eating Chinese all the time. But then the fortunes start being ambiguous or negative... The ritual becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy... reading on...

2023-05-31 07:42