The dad is test driving a truck from a used car dealership in order to pick up a refrigerator he found on Craigslist. He tells the salesman, “I need to show it to my wife,” and takes the keys and revs the engine and he flashes the grin he saves special for when he’s fucking someone over.  The salesman smiles back and it’s the same kind of smile. Practiced. The muscles taut. A smile built for marathons.  They’re having themselves a little smile off through the truck’s open window, smiling and smiling, until the son climbs into the passenger seat

The barmaid at Flanagan’s saw George come in and headed to meet him at his regular table. “How was your day, George?” she asked. “It was good, thank you. How was yours, Tammy?” “Mine too. You remember me mentioning my son having his heart set on being a baseball player despite being small and not terribly athletic?” “Yes?” “He told me he was the only one in his class to solve an algebra problem.” “Good for him,” George said. “Then he said, I kinda like algebra. He said this as if he was embarrassed to admit it, like telling me

My cinematic education started pretty early. My mom introduced me to Humphrey Bogart films and my dad to the Marx Brothers and Elvira’s Movie Macabre all before I was a teenager. Later, I would attend Steve Byrd’s Basement School of Cinematic History (that consisted of a solid wall of VHS tapes from floor to ceiling and even laser discs) and John Schloman’s Arthouse Academy (that mostly involved traveling to the Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland). During this same time, a number of my friends and I regularly went to The Rocky Horror Picture Show and then started a New Year’s

1. About a week before the deer trouble starts, the mayor of Westerntown is sitting with his wife in a swinging loveseat on their patio, and their three kids, the two boys, who are four and six, and the girl, who’s almost two, are playing. The two boys are in the sandbox that’s in the middle of the yard, building sandcastles, and the girl is pushing a fire truck around on a blanket that’s been spread out on the ground next to where the mayor and his wife are sitting.  As the mayor and his wife relax and their kids

“How’s your night going?” the man asked.  Mary looked into his eyes—his deep brown eyes, beautiful by all objective standards—and knew they were the eyes of a liar. He didn’t mean “Having a good night?” or even “Having a horrible night?”; he meant, “Are you willing to tolerate my attention, and thus sustain my sexual fantasies about you, for the duration of this elevator ride?” “Amazing,” Mary answered. She wasn’t leading him on; she was setting him up.  He grinned, falling into her trap. “Oh? You on a winning streak?” “No, but my boyfriend is.” There it was, as if

Michael Seymour Blake is just some person with a nice butt in Queens, NY.