Lisa Glatt, "The Study of Lightning Injury"

Mack can't get over the time Cooper confessed being in love with his wife and then they were both struck by lightning.

(from The Apple's Bruise)

An interesting story about coping, or trauma, things like that. The description above might make this sound like some sort of farce, but the story's rooted pretty much in the real, or a realistic version of the real. And, like real life, there's no solution, or conclusion, and it made me a little disappointed. But that's not fair and I know it.
The story also freaked me out a little because it contained brief plot elements, or hints at elements, that figure into something I wrote a couple years ago but only showed a couple people.

David Eggers, "Where Were We"

Two guys set out on a worldwide trip to give away money.

(from The New Yorker, Aug. 12, 2002)

Pretty early on I found the plot familiar. I sensed that I'd read or heard about it, that Eggers himself read a bit of something like it aloud at the TLA a couple years ago. A light horror, like a damp breeze, wafted over me. I wasn't reading a short story, but an excerpt from a novel. Though it doesn't label it at such anywhere within the pages of this old New Yorker I found sitting in a milkcrate on my bedroom floor — an issue I first took an interest in because of an enormous article on They Might Be Giants — "Where Were We" is either an excerpt, or a detail, or an encapsulation, or whatever, of Eggers' by now well-known novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity.
Anyway.
This was a good short story. There was a conscious decision, it seems, to swerve away from the maudlin, to duck parabolic, to evade any semblance of a moral. Will and Hand are on a mission but besides that are neither defined nor empowered by purpose. Whew. The last thing we need in a story about a couple of white guys traveling around giving money to the browner peoples of the earth is some holy depth. A crash-course journey like this will be plenty life-changing without getting all heavy-handed about particular life lessons. These guys are, not idiots, but they're not great thinkers or doers. They're regulars, as least as I see them. They are peripheral henchmen mourning the loss of Jack, the actual protagonist in their life. This story is earnest and fun, good attributes for an adventure story.
I didn't find the actual story online anywhere. Here's a Q&A with Eggers about it.

Ludmila Ulitskaya, "The Orlov-Sokolovs"

The rise and fall of the perfect couple.

(from The New Yorker, April 18, 2005)

It's the ’60s in Russia, and a hot ex-gymnast hooks up with a hot ex-boxer. They are alike in so many ways, from their family situations to their worldviews to their goals. And both are — in their own minds and in that of the parabolic narrator who dissects them with warm, scientific language — defined more by their actions than their thoughts. From the beginning, they are set aside from the real world, fated to be together, but it's only romantic in one sense.
I wish to insert for you, some pretty passages. Here's the first couple lines:

At first glance, they didn’t make much of an impression.
Both seemed rather small, they weren’t particularly striking,
and they were so taken with each other that they had no
time for the rest of the world. A second glance, however,
told you that they were kingpins, and after that it was
impossible to recall the impression they had made at first.

Here's another I like:

They didn’t know how lucky they were. They had everything
they could wish for—powerful athletic bodies, quick
reactions, rigorous brains, and the self-confidence of
winners who have never suffered so much as a scratch.
They had retired from their sports just as they were
approaching their limits, one step ahead of inevitable defeat.

Read the whole thing here.

This story took me places and made me care about characters who are always a little chilly, but always kinda sorta endearing. Why'd their love fall apart, besides the fact that that happens all the time? Who can say? Who? Maybe it's for the best. Happens all the time. Maybe Jack and Brenda met up, got married, and settled down in the country. Maybe Diane and Eddie share a loft together in the city. None forgot their first loves, or the songs that were sung about them, but life doesn't stay lyrical for long. Ooh yeah life goes on. Bottle of red bottle of white. They'll need a crane.

Helen Simpson, "Millennium Blues"

Good old fin de siecle paranoia laid bare and played for fear and comedy. I mean, there's a character named Cassandra — why won't anybody heed her ambiguous predictions of doom?

(from Getting A Life)

Boy when you lay it allout like that, how the hell did we survive Y2K? Besides being a sharp and clever sorta-story, "Millenium Blues" was a nostalgia trip. You may figure the current trend of American paranoia began with 9/11, but if you think about it, it was the turn of the century that first had us stockpiling canned beets and backing up our files.
"There will be a tidal wave of computer crashes. It'll be the El Niño of I.T."
Good stuff.

Robert McCarthy, "In Gavin Slough"

Two old friends reunite when one drives his car off the road and onto the muddy, disgusting property of the other.

(from Zoetrope All-Story, Spring 2005)

What this story mostly has going for it is setting. The murky, muddy, mosquito-riffic slough is described in great detail and furious persistence. We know it to be frequented by runaway dogs, enormous fish and numerous other slimy things all of which are lined up to make one thing clear: You do not want to ever go there. Yet Ed Brain lives there, thanks to unhappy accidents and dipping standards. A lot of the language, even when it's feverishly working to inspire disgust, is quite beautiful:
"...Higgy's gulps were like coins in a wishing well."
"...a foam that released an odor of things dying and being born."
"On these nights Ed Brain breathed the dank rot of Gavin Slough and tasted the tang on the air between his corrugated iron walls and felt only one thing with any clarity: that he had fallen headlong into the deepest, darkest ditch he could ever have imagined."
Overall: The plot was okay, the dialogue wasn't bad, the pace was too slow at times. Mostly clever, sickeningly sensual. Definitely a worthwhile read.

Here's where you can read the beginning of the story.

Dana Johnson, "Hot Pepper"

Talking back to mean ol' Uncle Smiley will only get you thrown out the house, and it won't stop the jump rope for too long.

(from Break Any Woman Down)

Cleverly told and charming in its observations, this story feels like one of those remember-the-time bits of nostalgia the way a child likes to tell them. Short on facts, heavy on description and scattershot in detail. A good read. Not an uplifting adventure, but most short stories aren't. I can read that Steve Almond story everyday. A web site like that has even less appeal.


* * *

I didn't read a short story yesterday because my poor laptop — homebase for I Read A Short Story Today, battle-scarred, trackpad-busted, broken-speakered, shift key-missing, memory-tapped, warranty-expired, battery-soft, debt-causing, sometimes-crashing, heavy-as-hell, dissected, rebuilt, bulky, dirty, scratched up and worn down outlet for everything I've wanted to write in the last three years — finally gave up the ghost. Or became a zombie. Whatever you call it when the screen conks out.
I'm thinking of selling t-shirts, an idea I always liked, to make some money to buy a replacement. Green. Pale green? This on the front: I read a short story today. No dot com. Nothing on the back. Just words. If I could keep the price around $10 or $12, would anybody buy one? I need a plan.

Steve Almond, "Geek Player, Love Slayer"

She's so confused she's falling for the hot, fratty tech guy.

(from My Life In Heavy Metal)

Amazing. Just. Amazing. Yesterday I read some pretentious, needy Burroughs bullshit so thick and empty I actually considered giving up reading for awhile. I mean, this whole story-a-day thing was just a whim anyway, right? Then this story. The writing was truthful and cinematic, the pace was somehow contemplative and swift, and the world looked sorta sensible for a second there. Not because Almond gives a damn about creating a linear, organized, understandable reality, but because he told a kind of truth about people. Does that make sense? It spoke to me.
Let's talk about chick lit just for a second. I don't believe I've ever read any — are there chick lit short stories? — but from what I gather, this story qualifies. The smart, witty female narrator admits human weakness while maintaining friendships, working a cool job, making shrewd social commentary and looking almost-hopelessly for love. I know Steve Almond is a man and all.
I've read some Almond before. I was inclined to pick up this book again because I I've been checking out the Jonathan Safran Foer Literary Review Snowball Fight for a week or so now, and I thought Almond's explanation of his negative review (look how weird that snowball fight has gotten) was decisive without disregarding Foer's dignity or reducing him, and I was reminded of how much I enjoy the humanity with which Almond treats his characters. And suddenly, after Burroughs left me frustrated and speechless, I was in the mood for something not so much kind as real. You can read that Almond piece here.
Boy did I ramble. But. I feel no obligation to make sense on my own web site.

William Burroughs, "Vaudeville Voices"

No idea.

(from The Moderns)

Whatever.

Shalom Auslander, "Heimish Knows All"

The dog is disgusted by young Shlomo's newfound interest in pleasuring himself.

(from Beware of God)

Although Auslander's still kinda smug and stand-uppy, he uses repetition less like a crutch and more like a comforting literary device in this one. Also, he's just tons funnier and more humane toward his characters. Still, I never felt like I was reading anything more than a book of silly stories and quips, informed by some rather interesting vignettes of Jewish perspective. Perhaps the tiny-ness of the book (4x6 inches, I think) lends itself to my disregarding this as a humorous trifle.

But I also read:
"Holocaust Tips For Kids"
Not really a short story in the conventionally accepted way, but quite effective at stirring up emotion. It's a scary, heartwarming, scary again series of facts written down by a kid worried about being ready for a new holocaust, should one happen. You think, aw poor kid, he's too young to know better. But seeds of uncertainty are planted throughout thanks to encyclopedia/trivia-style passages as to who didn't help and who didn't believe there was a problem during the Holocaust, and anti-Semitism throughout the years. Makes you think of the current state of affairs in this country, where huge groups of people are actually opposed to the separation of church and state. Maybe we are still so stupid, as a civilization, that something this horrible can happen again. Does that make sense? So, this was not a plot-driven character-driven story, but it was by far the most effective Auslander piece I've come across so far. When he turns it on (and turns off the schtick), he can be pretty impressive.

I Moved A Web Site Today

Hi.
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Patrick Rapa
I Read A Short Story Today

Douglas Adams, "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe"

Zaphod Beeblebrox is hired to help locate a supposedly uncrashable ship at the bottom of an ocean.

(From The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide, 1989 edition)

Yeah, I Read A Short Story Today is playing it safe too. Although I haven't yet seen any commercials, and the only trailer I saw was decidedly low on footage, I know the Hitchhiker's Guide movie will be out soon and I'm starting to get this feeling it might be good. I was and am a fan of the books not just for the dorky wordplay and satirical sci-fi, but also for the heartless chaos. It wasn't the books which were heartless, mind you, it was life, the universe and everything else. Or maybe I just haven't ever gotten over what happened to Marvin.
Anyway, despite my inarguable geekdom, I never got around to reading this story tucked in at the end of my enormous four-book volume. I was saving it. For today, I suppose.
So. Given that it's so short, and that it stars the nearly unlikeable Zaphod, this wasn't the most remarkable entry in the "increasingly innacurately named triology." But it was funny, and scary, and made me miss the author all the more.
How's this for sci-fi?:

 Aorist rods were devices used in a now happily abandoned form of
energy production. When the hunt for new sources of energy had at one
point got particularly frantic, one bright young chap suddenly spotted
that one place which had never used up all its available energy was -
the past. And with the sudden rush of blood to the head that such
insights tend to induce, he invented a way of mining it that very same
night, and within a year huge tracts of the past were being drained of
all their energy and simply wasting away. Those who claimed that the
past should be left unspoilt were accused of indulging in an extremely
expensive form of sentimentality. 

The infinite web, where all Douglas Adams fans have surely ended up, of course has the story available for your reading pleasure. Here.

Steven Millhauser, "Balloon Flight, 1870"

Our narrator escapes the Prussians by hot air balloon, hoping to organize a counter-offensive away from Paris.

(from The Knife Thrower and Other Stories, on loan from Ryan Godfrey and Jessica Lowenthal)

It starts as booksmart historical fiction, but ends up dipping its toes in The Edgar Allan Poe Wading Pool of Psychological Torment. In a good way. And not without its humor. I found this interview wherein Millhauser, a Pulitzer Prize winner, compares this story to another thusly:

This contrast between realms of air and earth is carried into "Balloon Flight, 1870,"
where it's made even more explicit. My narrator begins his flight with a clear,
practical, indeed political objective, but he soon finds himself in unearthly regions
that threaten to break his bonds with human things. He returns to earth with a
feeling of gratitude and joy, like the boy in "Flying Carpets" before the final two
paragraphs of that story.

He also had this to say:

The historical details in "Balloon Flight, 1870" are taken from histories
of the Franco-Prussian War and the brilliantly detailed journal of
Edmond de Goncourt, but the thoughts and feelings of the narrator
are of course my invention. But even in stories that require no
research, stories that are, so to speak, entirely invented, many
details of setting are based on my memory of particular streets
and houses and rooms -- and because memory is itself a form of
history, these stories too may be said to have an historical basis.

Things that make you go ahem.
Anyway, this story is excellent. Although a final twist would have been a bit more satisfactory, I enjoyed the unpredictability of the slow action. And the imagery was top notch, too. Good call, Pulizter people.

Stuart Palmer, "Green Ice"

Can maiden schoolteacher Miss Hildegarde Withers help Inspector Oscar Piper find the jewel-stealing cop-killer?

(from Alfred Hitchcock's Daring Detectives, on loan from the RyanJessica Library)

Yeah, she can. Apparently these two teamed up to solve several mysteries over the years. And at the clever end of this caper, Inspector Piper delivers a crash course in cop-speak to the young sergeant whom one of the crooks had a crush on. I typed it up, so that you may study it and insert it into your everyday speech:
"You've been monkeying with a buzz saw, Romeo. This dame is the one who drove the getaway car, in blonde wig and glasses. Then she hopped out and came back to give us a wrong steer on the description of her boyfriend. Didn't you, honey chile?"
I don't read a lot of mysteries, but I know some people who are into them. Smart people.
It was actually fun guessing how the crime was perpetrated — admit it, you miss the interactive fiction of a good ol' choose-your-own-adventure — but the who was never in doubt. A story this short has little room for a wild goose chase. If it turned out to be some guy named Ray who turned himself in at the end but otherwise made no appearance in the story, I'd be pretty pissed.

This was a 1982 softcover edition of a 1962 compendium, which also features stories by Agatha Christie, Eller Queen and John Dickson Carr. Nothing by Hitchcock himself; he's more of a curator. Did you know how Alfred Hitchcock died? Interesting story, just heard this: Some guy named Ray killed him.

Hasanthika Sirisena, "The Call"

Dunstan must go to New York City to identify the body of his murdered niece.

(from Night Train, issue V)

This is one of those stories where human frailty is explored and discussed warmly. The difficult situations Dunstan finds himself in are a lot like the ones he puts himself in with his mistakes and weakness: out of his control. You might as well blame yourself for the things that are not your fault as much as the things that are. Nothing you can do about any of them now. A warm, kind story about a cold, harsh world. Sad and beautiful.

I had never heard of this author. Besides a mere 12 results, the oft-helpful Google asked me: Did you mean: "Hasanthi Sirisena" [?] Hmm, did I? I clicked on that. Your search - "Hasanthi Sirisena" - did not match any documents. Thanks, Google, you nut.

Rachel Sherman, "The Reaper"

A girl born with unhideable birthmarks on her face pins her fancy on her dirty-minded soldier-pen pal.

(from N+1, number 2)

Kind of a sad little story with no subplots but plenty of moments that leave you wondering and invested. Not much more to say, except it was well-written and left you rooting for and understanding the main character better than the other people in her life.

I had never heard of this magazine (web site here), but Lori Hill gave me a copy because, hey, it's got some fiction in it. Not too shabby. N+1 describes itself as "a twice-yearly print journal of politics, literature, and culture." Of course it is based in New York City, because very few people who write or publish also want to ride a bike to work. Man. Look at that big ugly generalization.

Robert Boswell, "Long Words"

Maybe if they move, they'll put off the break-up.

(from Night Train, Issue V)

Didn't do much for me. I mean. The disco stuff was fun. The pace was swift. Like yesterday's story, it's a story speckled with music trivia, and that is a good hook. And some of the snappy dialogue was endearing and entertaining. But the flat characters and familiar drama didn't hold my attention. This story, like its main character, tried to hold my attention with sudden sex. It worked for a little while. Ah well.

Lewis Shiner, "Perfidia"

While his dad is in the hospital, a fifty-something record collector sets off for Paris to find the source of a mysterious Glenn Miller recording.

(from Black Clock issue 2, Fall ’04, Winter ’05)

I had trouble early on trying to determine whether this was a short story or some kinda first-person investigative adventure piece. What made me suppose it was the latter?
1. The mostly straightforward non-fictiony tone. Tangents pop up in ways more common in articles, particularly ones where the readers need to be taught some basics to understand the technical stuff that follows.
2. The curious details. Like, the narrator names which programs he uses to edit music files on his computer. Generally, short story authors shoot for something a little more timeless than that. This story is set in the now, or the recent then.
3. It's very believable, or at least it is for many many pages.
4. I've never heard of Lewis Shiner. Maybe he does what this narrator does.
5. I don't know anything about Black Clock magazine. It doesn't tell you whether something is fiction, or fact, or fixed by a faction of fit fractions. Not a lot of front-of-the-book info. Mystery! Excitement!
6. Perhaps I wanted it to be real, because rediscovered musical gems and dusted off archives are limitlessly wondrous to me. Alan Lomax is Indiana Jones for music nerds.
But, after finishing "Perfidia," I have concluded that, yes, I did read a short story today. And a good one. Because of the unpolished, untamed writing, I was engrossed by the action. I felt like I was in the hands of a writer untainted by artsy short story conventions. That there was no arc, no predestination, no promise that loose ends would be double knotted. Anything could happen.

Here's Lewis Shiner's web site.

Walking, wounded, I went to Barnes and Noble to treat myself to some literature, even though I probably own enough unread stories to propel this site into the new year. I bought
1. Black Clock #2, as you know. I now know that Black Clock is a literary magazine. Here's a press release for the issue I bought. Here's the site for the magazine itself.
2. Night Train, issue #5. I don't know much about it. It contains stories. Here's where we'll all find out more.
3. Literary Review, Dec. 2004/Jan. 2005. It contains no stories. But it looked different. It is. Parts are all monocles and pinkies out, but mostly it's smart and down-to-earth and British. Here's an article on their priceless Bad Sex Awards. It's ribald, but not dirty. It's possible, probable even, that a magazine this self-assured in its voice and purpose has no web site of its own. I couldn't find one, anyway.

Ryan Harty, "Why The Sky Turns Red When the Sun Goes Down"

A couple is divided on the issue of whether to leave their defective robot son as-is, or go for the upgrade.

(from Best American Short Stories, 2003)

I love sci-fi that reminds me of regular old real-people fiction. And I love artsy, real-people fiction with sci-fi machinations. I would like to read more of it.
I read this outside. The days in Philadelphia have been beautiful.




Last night was awful. But I was happy to share some horrible moments with really good people. My best friend and I have experienced a lot of disasters together. Good company in bad times can't be overrated. Yeah, maybe we're just bad, bad luck, but it's worth it.

Toni Cade Bambara, "The Lesson"

The educated lady takes the neighborhood kids to FAO Schwartz to show them how the other half buys toys.

(from More Stories We Tell: The Best Contemporary Short Stories By North American Women)

Told from the perspective of a child badass know-it-all due for a reality check, this story is entertaining in its snarky narration and dazzling in it details. The moral of the story is apparent from the begining, the drama comes from whether or not our too cool for school narrator will recognize it.
How's this for a first line?
Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right, this lady moved on our block with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup.

This story, which you can read here, was written in 1972. A wee Google search reveals a great deal of scholastic papers on and interpretations of "The Lesson," and examinations on the author, Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995). Here's one from a site advertising "free essays," and believe me the price is right.

Mary Yakuri Waters, "Mirror Studies"

An aging scientist with heart problems contemplates his own fragility and humanity's place in nature.

(from Best American Short Stories 2004)

I'm a sucker for science slipping into a story like a ninja through an airduct. I like recognizing that the science lesson has already happened, instead of as it's happening. Look at all the bodies, the stars sticking out of closet doors, the windows once closed now gaping in the night air — a ninja has been here.
"Mirror Studies" — with its myriad primatology lessons — is not covert in its metaphors. And why should it be? The notion of people being or not being like confused monkeys is not a new one, so why waste time trying to bury the concept?
With well-chosen words and a sharp eye for detail, Waters lays bare the weakness of science, the weakness of humanity, the silliness of civilization. At times, it's satire except it's only the context that makes it so. Nothing has been exaggerated or reduced to heighten the senses. It's a vivid reflection.

I read this story a mere four days after knocking the book into the toilet. I was shaving. My mind was already two hours north of here. My elbows were closer by, but not close enough. Down it went, no backboard. There was nothing but cold clear water and millions of swimming, possibly self-aware little microbes in the toilet at the time. I swiftly plucked the book out, wrapped it neatly in a bath towel and placed it on the living room radiator, which was on, because it's always on, because the lady on the first floor controls the heat. I open my windows a lot. I placed my iron — Still boxed. Why did I buy that? For this, maybe? — on top of the swaddled book. And waited. Today I am happy to report that the book is only slightly warped, its pages only a bit crispy. Now the microbes will have to face me on my turf. Bring it.

Mona Simpson, "Coins"

A Fillipino maid takes care of a white woman's kid in the U.S. to pay for her own children's educations back home.

(from The Best American Short Stories, 2003)

At first I found the lack of consistent punctuation and occasionally inverted words distracting — it's meant to bring to mind the speech patterns of someone for whom English is a second language — but I ended up finding the rhythm in it. And I liked the way this story mixed humor with warmth and the occasional sting of harsh reality.
Turns out the author will include this story in a larger piece called My Hollywood, or perhaps she already has. Sometimes when I find out that what I have just read is merely one lion from a much larger Voltron, I feel cheated, or tricked, or sleepy. Today I feel like saying, hey, do what you want to do. There are issues and hopes and plans not yet fulfilled at the end of "Coins." If you want to see all that come to fruition, that's fine by me. I won't read it. I only read short stories. Except when I'm tricked.
Recently, I have been pondering whether "plot" is necessary to make a short story worthwhile. "Coins" has a plot, of a sort. Not David Mamet/Dashiell Hammett twists and turns, but some events which mark the end of the story as a place different from the beginning. I wonder how much plot is necessary. Would anybody want to read a still life?
Hah, look at this: On something called the World Socialist Web Site, somebody named Sandy English wrote an article entitled “Best” short stories of 2003 could do better. Here's what the writer had to say about today's story: "A Philippine maid in LA has a generally hard time in Mona Simpson’s 'Coins'. Simpson’s story is little more than a smart workshop-piece, somewhat condescending." Ah, condescension. Whoever smelt it, dealt it.

N.M. Kelby, "Jubilation, Florida"

Two recipients of Bennington Foundation Leadership awards contemplate a fling on the accompanying retreat.

(from One Story, issue 54)

An entertaining story with a big, poetic, meaningless ending. Not that there should be a meaning. But sometimes there is, and this time there isn't. I didn't buy the characters as real people, but as funny little sketches, they served their purposes well. The guy who likes to quote poetry and suddenly, accidentally recites a line from "The Raven?" The woman who does the melodramatic thing at the end which if I say it will spoil it so I won't? These are not actual people. But their situation seems real and that's good enough.
You can read an interview with N.M. "Nicole" Kelby here, as is One Story's wont. Why I got another issue so soon after the last one I do not know, but you don't see me complaining. No you don't.

John Edgar Wideman, "Who Weeps When One Of Us Goes Down Blues"

Watching another old veteran go down with an injury causes our narrator contemplate the hidden truths of the game he plays.

(from Fiction, Vol. 19, Number 1)

More than anything else, this story instilled in me the belief that sports is not a tired idea, that there are still philosophies and aspects and characters and uncarved niches to be created within the genre, if sports fiction is even a genre. It's not all cliché yet. "Who Weeps..." delves a lot deeper than that, however, as the narrator, himself an aging baller, lets his mind wander to places it's been before, but maybe didn't linger this long. Everything sails, untethered by quotation marks and question marks, but never drifting recklessly.
And the language. I will now type for you a part of the story which has little to do with basketball, which only tangentially relates to the plot, just because:

I see fish swimming acorss a plowed field. A pale worm
sprouting wings and rising. Birdfish, fishbirds, leaping,
bodies arched like rainbows, their feathers or gills or hide
or shell, whatever you'd call their wrappings for which
there are no words, glisten, shimmer like metal, like wind,
like water, thousands of messages, thousands of tiny faces
climbing, row after row, from courtside to rafters,
tiers of eyes circling the arena.

I'd never read John Edgar Wideman before, but I'm certainly going to make up for it at some point. Here's a Salon interview with him in which the lower majority of his body is replaced by his first initial. A man becomes a J like that. I don't know why, but he does.

Damn. It is really raining outside.

John Updike, "The Walk With Elizanne"

A fiftieth high school reunion reunites two people who shared a first kiss all those years ago.

(from Best American Short Stories 2004)

A beautiful, breathtaking story. It's got something to say about milestones, how they happened, whether you remember them or not, how they aren't quite what you think they are at the time.
Some of the sentences are spectacularly winding, without losing you on the journey:

Had they kicked fallen leaves as they walked through town,
along the Alton Pike with its trolley tracks, into the
rectilinear streets of brick row houses, and then on to
Elmdale, the section where the streets curved, and the
houses stood alone on their lawns, the lawns weedless
and the houses half-timbered and slate-roofed and
expensive, to the house where Elizanne lived?

The story is small-town and nostalgic, but not clichéd in any distracting way. If you have a moment, go here and read it for yourself. Ah.