Fiction of the Day
The House with the Mezzanine
By Dan Bevacqua
I was supposed to middle-man these people into a situation of potential annoyance—if not harassment? Me? The poor kid from Jersey?
I was supposed to middle-man these people into a situation of potential annoyance—if not harassment? Me? The poor kid from Jersey?
A cat had been taught to play the piano and this animal, sitting on a stool, played and played the whole existent piano repertory, and in addition five compositions of its own dedicated to several dogs.
Otherwise, the cat was possessed of a perfect stupidity, and during concert intermissions he would compose new pieces with a drive that left everyone flabbergasted.
My mother died—I think of terminal sexual climax—on November 5, 1971, while watching goo-goo eyed King Kong finger Fay Wray in his king-sized palm, and I inherited $200,000. King Kong was rolling his watery eyes around, trying to focus on that little white fetus in his left hand, lowering his submarine-sized, black, greasy right index finger toward screaming Fay, Mom was squirming in her seat, the people behind me were yelling “Down in front” because I’m so tall and always had to sit down front with Mom, who was eating hot, buttered popcorn and drinking Diet Pepsi.
Hey you guys wake up, we’ve started all over again, but this time it’s going to be serious, the real story, no more evasions, procrastinations, and you won’t believe this, it begins in the future
no I’m not kidding, well the near future, can’t stray too far from the present, and besides there is a certain logic to keep in mind, a certain urgency too
Who knows what goes on in their heads? said Jocasta. They were well into the second carafe of wine. Not me, I’ve stopped even trying. It used to be women that were so mysterious, remember? Well, not any more, now it’s men.
I am tortured by a strange nostalgia, there are images in my mind from the first World War, of English soldiers, little fellows under their saucer helmets marching down village streets, with French children
My mother and I had decided that Bobo, with his lack of imagination, his logical, literal mind, would be best off operating and removing parts of other people—not a psychiatrist like his dad but a doctor nevertheless.
I wrote a novel for Sarah and sent it to her. She wrote back, “For me? How sweet. Nobody has ever done anything or presented me with anything near to what you’ve just given me. I’ll treasure it always.
Now she’s escaping me. She’s losing me again in this sea of legs so tightly packed that they join together, in this jumble of rags and compressed bodies, over puddles of piss, of shit, of mud, between bare
Recently I was researching an article for a woman’s magazine, whose considerate editor had already entitled it—Con-Men: Their Games And Their NAMES—aiming, with the final emphasis for a bit of the
Now it is another day. Rain is speaking gently to the terrace. I speak gently, sometimes, to myself. How soft the light is, mingled with the wet. We had one shortened summer month together, Lou and I … my god