I’m having a flashback. A blinding California sun hangs like an exploding navel orange in the boundless sky, making me squint in the sweltering summer glare of celebrity. I think I see a zebra. This afternoon in 2005 I’m a guest at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch near Los Olivos, about 125 miles northwest of Los […]
Rusty received the letter Saturday afternoon, read the hand-printed message on smudged white copy paper folded three times, went back to bed and lay awake staring at the ceiling until 6 a.m. Sunday morning. When he got up for early Mass the scrawled words still flashed in his head. “Remember me in Vietnam? You rape […]
“You’ll scare the kids, Lester.” “Good.” Five-year-old Lucy, whom both parents spoiled, bolted into the room giggling and wailing at the top of her little lungs as she sang her Halloween melody. “Trick or treat. Smell my feet. Give me something good to eat.” “Oh, my God, she’s so cute,” Nora said. Lester put down […]
Each first and last name etched in black on each plastic tombstone lit by purple lights on Stewart Pinsky’s Halloween display in his front yard represented a real person who lived on his block. “Not funny, Stewart,” Vera said. “I think it’s hilarious,” he said. “Take them down,” his wife said. “Not on your life,” […]
A deluge of fourth-grade tears rolled with the ease of boulders cascading down a mudslide stricken slope – powerful, even deadly, if you knew what was to come. Even the kids in class who refused to cry, and they’re always a few of them, sat frozen in their seats either vowing revenge or simply panic-stricken […]
