Selected Stories
NEW YORK TIMES MODERN LOVE
“How I Earned My Wings Back”
GOT married a few months ago, but my husband — a proud Air Force pilot from a small town in Georgia — doesn’t know how we met. Rather, he doesn’t know the path that led me to him. By the time he was perched on one knee and presenting an engagement ring, I feared it was too late to tell the love of my life that we had been brought together not by fate but as a result of my nationwide crusade to find a pilot….
I was incredibly honored to be part of this anthology edited by Jason Y. Ng & Susan Blumberg-Kason. To be alongside such incredible writers, bringing characters to life in one of my favorite cities…just before it changed in more ways they’d we’d even imagined when writing these pieces.
HONG KONG NOIR, AKASHIC BOOKS
“You Deserve More”
At forty-one, I’m probably too old to be elbowing my way through the crowds moving up D’Aguilar Street toward the ex-pat bars and clubs of Lan Kwai Fong. I’m certainly too married to be sneaking around like this, and God knows I’m far too sweaty and jet lagged to make the impression I’d hope to.
Sweat rolls down my temples, pools between my breasts and at the back of my knees, yet I breathe in the humid air and car exhaust as if returning to this city can bring me back to life. I’d almost forgotten the world could be so vibrant and bright and alive. It’s been a long and bitter winter back home in Fairfax, Virginia. No leaves on the trees, no people on the streets, nothing but dirty snow covering the ground. Even at the best of times, the DC area is a dark and paranoid place, where everyone seems to work for the government and you’re never more than ten feet from someone wearing black sunglasses and a coiled-tube earpiece….
THE SMART SET
“Mother’s Ruin”
At the height of the 18th-century Gin Craze, London didn’t just have an alcohol problem. It had a woman problem. If you believe the reformers of the time, women were sloshed beyond reason, neglecting their husbands and children, keeping messy homes, pawning their household goods, even selling their bodies and spreading syphilis.
No fewer than eight Gin Acts would be put on the books before the tide would begin to ebb on the addictive spirit known as Ladies’ Delight and Mother’s Ruin.
Nearly three centuries later, London is in the midst of a new gin craze, and I’m a 40-something wife and mother who is soon to be so hammered on gin at 10 a.m. that I fear I’ll stagger right off the iron footbridge and into the Regent’s Canal….
POTOMAC REVIEW
“Early Departure”
I wind the plastic tubing of the oxygen mask around my hand and let it drop from above 5B. I tug it to demonstrate initiating the flow of oxygen then pull the mask over my nose and mouth, adjusting the straps as necessary. Any other day, I would hold the little yellow mask in front of my face to avoid germs. But this morning, they’re all watching me, unfolding safety cards instead of newspapers. No rustling, no conversations, just hundreds of eyes staring straight at me. Besides our purser Annabelle’s voice on the P.A., the only noise is the hum of the air conditioning and the tap tap of the wheels over cracks in the taxiway.
I take comfort in the demo’s ritual, keeping in sync with Siobhan in the right aisle and Khurram up ahead at row fourteen. At training, we’d practiced this dozens of times until we could all make our seatbelts click in unison.