Live From the Strip

“When you ain’t got no money, you gotta get an attitude.”

The writers below got plenty of the latter. Maybe some of the former. We won’t claim to know. We just know you better like their stories, or else…

– On this warm summer night, the usual breeze off the Atlantic is snuffed to a fetid calm. The boy gets up, takes a cold beer from the cooler. He hands her one, helps himself and goes back to his spot in the circle. After a while, she grows antsy, bored of their talk of striped bass caught at dawn, the small crop of clams in the mud flats, and the low yield of lobsters in the pots off Mussel Cove. With a week’s worth of tips in her pocket, she feels too good to be bored. — Lauren Inness Norton in Storyscape

– My wife Kitty would be among the women and I among the men. She worked with one of the brothers, I don’t remember which. I always got them mixed up, their names at least, though as men they were as different as a hot dog from a hamburger. One of them was older but had all his hair, and it was the younger one who had gone bald. One of them laughed like a horse, though I couldn’t tell you which, while the other kept quiet and lived in the shadow of his brother. — Paul Kavanagh in BULL

– On the night of the Gardner Middle School Christmas dance, Jack slow dances naked by himself in front of a full-length mirror in his bedroom, his eyes closed, his hands steadied on the invisible waist of Catherine Morris. “I’ll Make Love to You” by Boyz II Men blasts from a black and gold Magnavox boom-box on the waterbed. Next to the boom-box he’s laid out his clothes: maroon sweater, white turtleneck, pleated khakis, brown braided belt and his dead father’s gold necklace. He slow dances from the mirror to the bed, dressing one item of clothing at a time. His movements are not graceful; he is still getting his bearings in his own body. — Ryan Millbern in The Catalonian Review

– Our tears mingled together, my arms wet with them. Scales popped from my skin, and gills rose out of my neck. I looked at Mom. She was a green, scaly swamp monster, too. We looked so similar this way—we were equally capable of freaking the heck out of the neighbors—but inside us were differences that I’d never understand. We must have both realized that at once, because we hugged each other harder. — Michele Tallarita in YARN

– First they were friends, then they were lovers, then they were never friends anymore. When they weren’t friends anymore, they married and had a child, whom neither of them liked. The child was dark at birth and had a spangled eye. The woman’s mother was sure the child would come to no good. — Christina Murphy in Bluestem Magazine