Lips
In late April, on a foggy Saturday morning in the small town of Mercy on the far north coast of California, Delilah, the only child of deceased movie star Margot Cunningham, sits on the sofa in the...
View ArticleDigging
Last Thursday, April 12, on Ziggurat Farm, two miles inland from the remote northern California coastal town of Mercy, the homeschoolers Vivienne, Alma, Henri, Larry, Arturo, and Irenia, ages eleven...
View ArticleThe Pond
Now that he is no longer an aspiring academic, Michael Darling, forty-three, tall and good-looking, is letting his curly brown hair grow long for the first time in twenty years. And Michael’s cute and...
View ArticleThe Brits Return
For their first breakfast since getting back from England to the northern California coastal town of Mercy after a two-year absence, Constance and Joseph Richardson dine in the Ziggurat Farm farmhouse...
View ArticleBeing Here On Earth
Henri is twelve, exactly twelve, as twelve as he can be. Five months ago he was four-foot-nine and now he’s five-foot-three. A beautiful muscular lad with curly brown hair, his mother German, his...
View Articlefawns
doe and fawn dormitory A circle of large redwoods stands on the northern edge of our two acres and is made into a dense thicket by several smaller trees growing in and around the circle—an ideal...
View ArticleSpirit Beings
On December 17 in his little house on the edge of Mercy, a small town on the far north coast of California, Nathan wakes in darkness just before dawn and gets up to pee and have a glass of water. He...
View ArticleFrisson
“Something extraordinary happened to me today,” says Delilah, twenty-six and strikingly beautiful with dark brown hair cut very short, housemate of Celia and Nathan for thirteen years now. “Of course...
View ArticleWho Is Your Audience?
Nathan is eighty-five, spry, in full command of his senses, and very much enjoying his less strenuous life after fifty years of pruning fruit trees for a living. He lives with his wife Celia,...
View ArticleThe Vineyard
On a very cold morning in November, on the outskirts of the small northern California coastal town of Mercy, a husky old man named Nathan and his eighteen-year-old accomplice Delilah, arrive in...
View ArticleArturo and Vivienne and Henri
Arturo is five, Henri is four, and Vivienne is three. Arturo and Vivienne are siblings by blood, Henri their brother because he’s always been one of the three as soon as there were three of them to be...
View ArticleThe Waiter Contemplates Fatherhood
Sandra Messer, sixty-seven, a native of Chicago, her short gray hair colored dirty blonde, is the legendary owner/chef of Le Scélérat in Berkeley, California. While shopping at Monterey Market on a...
View ArticleThe Waiter Considers Psychoanalysis
“Have you ever been attracted to psychoanalysis?” asks Hilda Rubenstein, nodding her thanks to Philip as he sets a goblet of white wine before her. “Are we speaking of undergoing psychoanalysis?” asks...
View ArticleFifteen
This story is a continuation of Almost Fifteen, which is the fifth story in the Nathan and Del series. Almost Fifteen and Fifteen may be enjoyed together without resort to the first four parts of the...
View ArticleAlmost Fifteen
This story springs from the previously posted Nathan and Del stories, and might also be titled Nathan and Del Part Five. Almost Fifteen may be enjoyed without resort to the first four parts of the...
View ArticleOur Run To Starved Rock
Todd and Dick 1969 The summer after my second year of college, 1969, as I was deciding whether to go back for another year of academe or take my chances in the outside world, my great pal Dick Mead...
View ArticleCecil B. My Father
The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. Cecil B. DeMille From the time I was a wee lad, and no doubt before I was born, my father...
View ArticleNathan and Del Part Three
On a brilliantly sunny day in March, Nathan and Margot sit on the deck of Nathan and Celia’s house waiting to be called to the dining table for a lunch of fish tacos and guacamole and horchata being...
View ArticleNathan and Del Part Two
Celia is still in her bathrobe as she sits at the dining table having a second cup of coffee while Nathan does the breakfast dishes, the morning cold and rainy. Sixty-five and soon to retire as a...
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