The short fiction of j hardy carroll
He knows the old man is waiting for him downstairs, on this, the first shameful day of his retreat. It’s not hard to guess what he will say. The recriminations, the guilt. You dreamed about Harvard since you were in third grade. And the worst of all, What the hell happened? He thinks about this as…
He walks through the oh-so-familiar entryway, taking his usual pleasure in seeing the name on the side of the building. His name, his father’s name. He imagines how this will go, his last day. The slideshow of company history, anecdotes. There will be smiles and maybe tears. Above all, respect. Of course it isn’t like…
The palm trunk against the boy’s back, the fronds above rattling in the wind as he watches the surf hiss across the sand, retreat, return. He thinks again of the legend. A bench in Bagdad, two men sitting side by side, one old, one as young as himself. The boy is a porter, dressed in…
A porcelain vase, once shattered, will never be whole again. Mother must have said that a hundred times. Of course mother had other sayings, too. If there’s any doubt, there’s no doubt. Happy people never wonder if they are happy. All true, she thinks. She closes the laptop. Now she can’t see the emails. She…
The night before D-Day, Ilya says a prayer
There’s one in every Jersey town. More than one, probably. Named the same. Fat Tony’s. Greasy Joe’s. Vince’s. They all look the same, with the grease-slick linoleum floor that was never new, faded posters of barely-remembered movies, maybe a Pong or Pac-Man machine, maybe out of order. The smell of cheese, of vinegar, of frying…