by Julie Wilson
Another man boards and stands over him. His skin is baby smooth, tanned. He wears a pressed shirt under a high-collared, half-zipped, Jacquard pullover. His tweed cap is jaunty and cocked to one side. He considers his reflection, bumping the elbow of the man in the buckskin jacket who yells, “Hey, Buddy! I don’t got all the room in the world!”
The dapper man kneels down to eye level and speaks in a low voice. “Hey, brother. I didn’t mean to get in your space. We good, friend?”
The man in the buckskin jacket presses his knees to-gether and shelters his stash, turning his weight toward the woman reading beside him. “Yeah, man,” he mumbles back. “We’re good. I just don’t got all the room in the world.”
READER
Caucasian female, late 40s, with short brown hair, wearing black coat, dark violet scarf, and black leather gloves.
Payback
Margaret Atwood
(House of Anansi Press, 2008)
p 42
Intrusion
He was thirteen years old, stretched out on the carpet in the basement, watching television before bed. The windows were propped open, screens in place to deter the neighbour’s curious dog from poking in her head. The sound of feet passing by didn’t startle him. All outside noises had become one — ball hockey, wrestling cats, a car radio. The gate was locked. If someone was in the backyard, it would mean they’d scaled the fence.
That was the night he learned to believe in monsters.
READER
East African male, mid-30s, wearing brown leather jacket, white dress shirt, purple bow tie, and tweed cap.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Max Brooks
(Three Rivers Press, 2007)
about halfway in
Simmer
She stands in front of the pot, stirring through the bubbles, the room lit only by the dim yellow stove light. Steam rises in her face. She rests her hand on the stovetop and finds it warm to the touch. It calms her. She turns down the burner heat and lets the stew simmer, scratching her ankle with the heel of her piggy slipper. She draws in a deep breath and exhales loudly, plunging her hands into the pockets of her fleece housecoat. The stew settles into a steady roil, peppers, onions, and carrots turning up over thick chunks of cubed beef. She pulls the Bisquick from the cupboard, ripping open the top, giggling as the dry mix puffs up in her face.
She doesn’t feel like cleaning tonight.
There is so much food to share. It’s a shame he won’t be here to taste it.
Oh, but if she doesn’t clean tonight she’ll dread the coming day.
She puts the lid on the stew and turns the heat right down, heading into the bathroom with gloves and garbage bags, the tub filled with stripped bones.
READER
Caucasian female, late 40s, wearing puffy jacket with hood and powder-blue hand-knitted cap. Her book is covered in a bright green fabric jacket, patterned with gift boxes and red stars.
Misery
Stephen King
(Signet, 2010)
p 107
Cursive
She’s sitting in her wicker chair in the sunroom, looking at the ravine outside her window, wondering if the rabbits have been digging in her garden. She pads her thumb over the cheese tray, picking up the last of the Melba toast, leaving nothing to waste, and finishes her port. She thinks about the children. Quiet down now, she imagines. Eyes front for the national anthem. She bumped into one the other day, married and with such good posture. Remarkable. Did she know she’d been her favourite teacher, the woman had asked. Can you imagine? After all this time. A favourite? Still, she’d struggled to recall, settling on a memory that could have been any number of students. There were so many, after all, and not one sick day. But, yes, she’d responded. Thank you. Of course, she remembered her. Such a bright child. A happy child. And she’d grown into a beautiful woman. Just like her daughter, she’d have to imagine.
READER
Caucasian male, mid-50s, wearing burgundy t-shirt, grey shorts, and sandals.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
J.K. Rowling
(Raincoast, 2007)
p 186
Winter Wonderland
The sight of the baby squirrel frozen inches beneath the iced-over surface under the cottage’s drain pipe was enough to scare her. She chipped around it, her pants pocket full of seeds, an offering to the grouse she’d come to call Pet. The squirrel’s eyes were haunting, loose and broken, like those of an old porcelain doll.
When the grouse flew up in her face, she instinctively swung the spade, batting the bird to the base of the nearest birch. It hissed and spread its wings when she tried to get closer, striking at her wrist when she palmed a pile of seed at its feet.
She felt her finger twitch against the spade. Resting it against a neighbouring tree, she backed toward the cottage to resist temptation. She didn’t trust nature. But she’d give the grouse five minutes to get out of there.
READER
East Indian female, mid-20s, wearing skinny jeans, jean jacket with hoodie, and light scarf.
Mean Boy
Lynn Coady
(Anchor Canada, 2006)
p 20
Indiana Summers
In the eighth grade, she became best friends with a boy whose father owned the carpet store in town. They had three cars. One was an orange Corvette that sat on blocks in the garage until his sixteenth birthday. His family owned a big house with a huge lot, close to the canal.
The summer after grade eight, she learned how to crack a whip like Indiana Jones and pump up an air gun to shoot the necks off discarded vodka bottles.
One afternoon, they’d come running out of the brush — Pow! Pow! Pow! — and only then saw the line of cars parked alongside the neighbouring cemetery. A row of heads above dark suits looked up. She lowered her gun, her friend snickering, his blackened big toe poking a hole through the tip of his Converse sneaker. Passing the open grave, she flinched, shooting herself in the ankle while paying her respects. The boy would swear she pulled the trigger on purpose.
READER
Caucasian female, mid-20s, blond hair pulled back in neat, freshly washed ponytail, wearing white leather jacket, purple scarf, and purple heels.
Three Day Road
Joseph Boyden
(Penguin Canada, 2008)
p 118
Pinhead
He stands in the doorway of a hair salon holding a bag from La Vie en Rose. He stares out into the street making strained eye contact with random pedestrians like a hostage in a bank robbery. They return his gaze as if to say, What’s keeping you? Whitney Houston’s Greatest Hits are in rotation with The Scissor Sisters, the Sliver soundtrack, Bette Midler, and Gino Vinnelli. Men in tight t-shirts, some of them with pierced nipples, he can see, tend to a salon full of women much like his latest wife, women in their early 30s straddling the line between casual youth and business casual. She’s calling to him. Would he come back and sit down already? Her hairdresser repeats the plea, emphasizing his sibilants just to make him uncomfortable. He’s older, true, but he’s not that guy. He really couldn’t care less who the hairdresser’s banging. It’s his wife’s head. When it’s wet, it just looks so small.
READER
Native Canadian female, mid-20s, wearing jean jacket with brown turtleneck sweater up over chin, taupe scarf, green cargo pants, and leather shoes with a thick tread.
Baby Proof
Emily Giffin
(St. Martins Press, 2006)
p 115
’86
Out of eleven-thousand applicants, a woman from Concord, New Hampshire would represent them all, the first teacher to be launched into space. At another school, another teacher calls the students over to the portable television cart. The broadcast is about to begin. The teacher gathers her young students closer, her arms folded tight over her chest as they wait for the countdown to begin. From the impossible to the remarkable and then — in a sin
gle deafeningly quiet moment — the unimaginable, it is done. A plume of smoke inflates across the sky like a parade balloon. The children squeal. Many of them think it looks like a caterpillar, its antennae reaching out, seeking. The teacher prays that once its folds plump up, its body extended in full, it will unveil something hopeful, a sign of life. Instead, it fades, a bright blue sky all that remains.
READER
Asian male, mid-20s, with neat black hair, wearing fogged glasses, black wharf jacket, and black corduroy cap.
Stiff
Mary Roach
(Norton, 2004)
p 114
Jelly
Her breath is still caught in her chest. She had to run from the streetcar to the office building to escape the rain, her hands too full of Tupperware treats to carry an umbrella. She stamps her feet on the soaked runner, a trickle of foundation tickling her upper lip. She’s not in a rush for the elevator, but looks up in time to see her colleague holding her purse in the door. Sure, there’s enough room, she says, signaling to “those women,” the ones who work a floor above them, who look at her, then each other, to clear a space. To make their point, they inch back against the walls of the elevator, and she knows that one day she’ll end up alone with them and they’ll tell her to take the stairs, it’s not like she couldn’t use the exercise. She lunges into a half-spirited jog, the candied smiles of her shortbread snowmen jostled out of place.
READER
Caucasian female, late 30s, wearing large knitted ski sweater and hat, large leather carryall in lap.
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
Richard P. Feynman
(Basic, 2005)
about halfway in
Red
A blizzard blows in the background.
“I’m in the street outside my house,” she yells into the phone, “holding a severed leg. I’m guessing a deer. It’s a clean cut, only slightly crude. A hunter, I’d say.”
“Grand of you to go out in this weather and get it,” I say, and settle in for the tale.
“Well, it was just sitting here in the snow. I didn’t want a child to come across it.” The sound of her blowing into her hands to warm them up. “What?”
“I said, what are you going to do with it?”
“I don’t know.” Long silence. “How does one dispose of a severed leg?”
“Maybe we should dispose of you.”
She enters her house. “Hold on.” She’s back on the line. “That’ll do. It’s in the backyard.”
“It’s . . . ?”
“Hold on.” It seems she’s hung up, but eventually picks up the phone. “ok. All done. I threw it over the fence.”
“‘Into your neighbour’s yard?!”
“No, no. The back fence.”
“What’s over the fence?”
“A park. Hold on!”
READER
Caucasian female, late 30s, with short greying hair, wearing long black coat, red scarf, and glass bauble ring with flower petal floating inside.
The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls
(Scribner, 2006)
p 102
Visitor
The single mattress gives in the middle. He picks at a loose button through the fitted sheet and stares at the foot of the bed where his overnight bag sits unpacked. His grandmother’s shelves are stacked with travel books, birding guides, poetry, and an old copy of The Little Prince, which she’ll read to him before bed, as she does every time he comes to visit.
The bedroom window is open a crack. There are no shadows against the drapes but he can hear the branches moving in the breeze, footsteps in the leaves — quiet. Every time he comes to visit.
His heart in his chest, then his throat, now his ears. He remembers Grandma’s instructions and readies himself. Tonight, when his eyes shut, the figure will appear silent by his side. But he’ll be a big boy and tell that lady she’s not welcome in this house anymore. Only when he comes to visit.
READER
Caucasian male, late 20s, with short black hair, wearing black jeans, white dress shirt, and grey tweed coat, collar up.
Through Black Spruce
Joseph Boyden
(Penguin Canada, 2009)
p 295
FOR RENT: WHITE WEDDING.
Irlsgay
When she was ten years old, she sat cross-legged with her best friend inside the midday glow of a blue pup tent and convinced her to play a game, moving the first consonant of a name to its end and tacking on an ‘ay’ to encode a list of all the girls they’d let kiss them on the mouths, if they had to.
READER
Caucasian female, mid-20s, with long brown hair tucked into knitted cap.
The City of Words
Alberto Manguel
(House of Anansi Press, 2007)
p 126
A Room of His Own
They’ve been dating for over a year now, on and off, mostly off, especially if you count the six weeks she travelled abroad, which he does, and they agreed they shouldn’t be exclusive not knowing if, or when, they’d take the next step, the next step itself unclear, and even more so because he did stay exclusive, while she didn’t, which isn’t really even the reason he started to let himself think about this again, it’s his writing, and her backyard, which is large and tree-covered and has that little shed that she once suggested way-back-when he could turn into a studio, if they took the next step, but she was at a reading with her friends, and the beer was free, and he didn’t know her well enough yet to know if he should believe her, or if he even wanted to look far enough into a future in which he didn’t have another girlfriend, or was the guy who didn’t fool around in those six weeks, just the guy who wonders what kind of guy he is that he will miss that shed more than her now that he’s finally decided.
READER
Caucasian male, late 20s, with long dark hair, wearing plain white t-shirt, brown cargo shorts, and black pool sandals.
Micro Fiction: An Anthology of Really Short Stories
Edited by Jerome Stern
(Norton, 1996)
about halfway in
Sugar Bowls
Four years old, she sat on the edge of the freshly paved tarmac of the townhouse complex in which she lived, on the East Side of town, transferring her lunch, stalks of unwashed rhubarb, back and forth between two large stainless steel bowls, one containing water, the other filled with white sugar, while her brother burned ants through a magnifying glass with a quiet contemplation she’d only seen on their mother’s face when cutting coupons.
READER
Caucasian female, late 20s, with long blond hair, wearing brown hooded sweater, grey scarf, and black jeans.
The Time Machine
H.G. Wells
(Phoenix Pick, 2008)
p 97
Esther
His mother’s poodle is named after Esther, his great aunt who left the monastery in her 50s to study reproductive medicine.
READER
Caucasian male, mid-30s, with short black hair and stubble, wearing black jeans, black turtleneck, and grey pinstriped suit jacket.
The Origin of Species
Nino Ricci
(Doubleday, 2008)
p 1
If This Buick Could Talk
His uncle’s belongings sit unclaimed in his father’s basement: books, mostly, curling in the humidity, a suitcase, its satin pouch stuffed with loose papers, the typewriter it used to contain ribbonless and far away, sitting on the floor of a rusty Buick parked outside a Husky Truck Stop.
READER
South Asian male, late 30s, with curly, shoulder-length black hair, wearing grey dress jacket, black dress shirt, faded jeans, and black leather shoes.
The Book of Secrets
M.G. Vassanji
(McClelland & Stewart, 1994)
p 137
Grace
The minister was the first redhead the boy had ever seen na
ked, his body hair glowing in the morning sun, shocking the lake’s surface, afloat beside the boy’s mother, the first woman he’d ever seen naked and swimming with their minister.
READER
Caucasian male, early 50s, with long face, wavy, grey hair parted down the middle, “I Am Salman Rushdie” button pinned on North Face jacket, wearing red jeans and white sneakers.
The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008)
p 150
Creature Feature
The longest she’d ever spent in a car was at the drive-in watching a triple creature feature with her immobilized father who waited out a pinched nerve, a watery monster sliding across the screen, while a one-hundred-and-twenty-pound buck sat on ice under the tarp of their hitched trailer.
READER
Caucasian male, late 20s, very tall, wearing blue knit cap, light blue hoodie, and green jacket with red-and-white cross-stitching on the arms.
Into the Wild
Jon Krakauer
(Anchor, 1997)