Sommy notices his legs first, hairy and stumpy, the part not covered by his tan-colored shorts. He’s standing by the airport’s exit, watching a woman on tiptoes, a piece of cardboard held above her head. His name is Bayo, Sommy’s new...
After a wretched, wakeful night, my hot head buzzing with annoyance, I sat squirming in my study waiting for Ollie to arrive. At nine he put his head in, smiling with his usual greeting, “How are we doing, Andy?”
It is strange, looking back, to think how different things could have been. Years ago, the company I work for undertook a number of joint ventures in China. We didn’t understand the place well, but the industry was in transition, and it was...
My boyfriend doesn’t really drink but he loves bars. He likes talking to strangers (he’s a sales executive) and he likes talking to strangers at bars; I hate talking to strangers but I like listening, and I like listening to him do it, how...
They started making their annual sojourn to Big Sur the same year they met at Chevron, not pumping gas, but getting buttoned up every morning to put their chemical-engineering degrees to good use at the refinery in Richmond, the one that...
When I left Anhui for Shanghai, at the innocent age of seventeen, the recruiter told me that the theme of the hotel where I was going to work was “rustic farm life.”
One December 24, Superstorm Mindy came in from the Atlantic and walloped America. Nowhere got it worse than New York City. That Christmas Eve day, Louise Wexler had planned to ride public transit all the way from her apartment in...
Holland spent Wednesday building a privacy fence for a tiresome academic couple in Barton Hills. Pressure-treated posts, horizontal cedar boards, stained and sealed, it was his third that week.
