I imagine I’m like most writers. I write often and discard much of what I write. I’ve done that for many years.
Still, I have retained a portfolio of work: four novel manuscripts and over fifty short stories. I will submit these pieces for publication over the next few years. Here is a list of my works of fiction.
Misery Mountain
It’s 2007, and two men with secret obsessions cross paths in the Misery Mountain coal town of Ashby Woods, West Virginia, where a deadly battle rages between a natural gas company and America’s largest coal producer. The coal company wants to build two new coal plants, and LUCIEN DOBBS, a disgraced Iraq War veteran, has been hired by the company’s owner to use any means necessary to get the plants approved. MICHAEL ARAGON, a frustrated investigative reporter, is there to document the escalating energy war and in the process make life miserable for LANE HACKETT, the gas company’s chairman.
But each man’s obsession is why he’s really in Ashby Woods. Dobbs wants to fulfill his destiny by performing an act of such significance that his name will forever occupy a place alongside those men history cannot forget. For Michael, it’s reclaiming MARYANN MARSHALL, the woman he can’t let go. She is now the girlfriend of Hackett, who is running an investment scam that funnels profits to an evangelist-turned-presidential-candidate. Michael is determined to expose Hackett’s crime, and then reclaim Maryann.
About Misery Mountain
The idea for this novel came to me during a time in which the company I was representing was engaged in a battle with a powerful coal company in West Virginia. I’ve used the issues surrounding global warming and climate change as the background for the story that focuses on four people: an aspiring news reporter, the woman he still loves (she’s left him), the CEO of a natural gas company, and a disgraced war veteran-turned coal miner who takes matters into his own hands.
A Fragment from the story
The day that Lucien Dobbs went bananas over some poor guy sleeping on the street in Fallujah was back in 2004. The sun had just come up but, of course, it was already hotter’n hell, and their hard-wired lieutenant had just announced the day’s orders: apprehend any insurgent looking even halfway suspicious, perform an initial interrogation and, if there was any doubt whatsoever, send his sorry ass to Abu Ghraib for a thorough going-over.”
Dobbs decided to get his ratio in early. Satisfy the boss. Get the man off his back. His buddy, DeSean Shaw, laughed. Ole badass Dobbs at it again. But DeSean didn’t have a better idea, so he watched Dobbs grab the first guy he saw. The dude was asleep on the side of a street. It wasn’t the man’s fault that he was sleeping in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Dobbs figured the schmuck needed to pay for his bad luck all the same, so he shoved him toward a dark room in one of the abandoned buildings. The entire place reeked of rotting flesh and God knows what else. When Dobbs told Rafi, the squad’s interpreter, to order him inside, he had to yell to be heard above the explosions and gunfire on the street outside.
The man froze and spat out a string of protests that Rafi translated. ‘He says he’s not going in,’ Rafi said, ‘he says you’re just going to kill him. He doesn’t know what he’s done wrong. Says he worked at his father’s butcher shop all night and was just getting a little rest.’
Dobbs grabbed him by the arm and pulled him inside the room, shoving him into a dark corner and pointing his flashlight’s beam at his face. The poor guy’s body shook, and he gasped like a sputtering engine. They patted him down. No weapons. But they found a photograph of an attractive woman wearing a black hijab. Probably the man’s wife, they figured.
Dobbs told Rafi to order him to name all the men he was with on the street the day before. The man cried and shouted his response. ‘He says he wasn’t in Fallujah yesterday,’ Rafi said. ‘Says he was out-country, gathering goats.’ About that time an explosion rocked the room and there was a strong odor of gunpowder. The man screamed something else. ‘He says he has proof and will show you,’ Rafi told them.
Dobbs and DeSean considered the story but neither one believed it. Then Dobbs said they were overthinking it. He unholstered his pistol, swung it in front of the man’s face, placed the end of the barrel against his cheek, and said to Rafi, “Tell him to give me the names, or I’m gonna make his pretty little wife a widow.”
Click + to read Fragments
In this first book of the Jordan Foxx Novel Series, Jordan Foxx and Olivia “Ollie” Doucette seem to have an indestructible marriage. But they must survive the ultimate challenge to their relationship when their opposing public positions become entangled with their private lives. As a conservative district attorney, Jordan supports the death penalty in a case he is presenting to a jury. Ollie, a liberal activist, opposes capital punishment because, in her words, “Only God should decide who lives or dies.” Then everything changes when Ollie learns that she is pregnant.
Naples Nights is the second book in the Jordan Foxx Novel Series. Jordan is stunned by the deaths of his wife, Ollie, and his close friend David Killingsworth. On a trip to Naples, Florida, he and David’s wife, Taylee, share their grief and help each other cope with their loss. But questions emerge over the circumstances surrounding David’s death, and the entire Naples community starts to point fingers.
In the third and final book in the Jordan Foxx Novel Series, Jordan is confronted by images of Ollie and David, who have been deceased for several years. A therapist assures him that he’s experiencing nothing more than predictable hallucinations. But when the images continue and become even more frequent, Jordan must come to grips with the possibility that his “dreams” are more fact than fiction.
A woman who promoted liberal causes in her younger days is transformed into an archconservative in her later years. Her transformation shocks those who thought they knew her.
“Freddie Twice,” a young mayor who envisions himself as the ultimate supporter of an integrated community, must face the reality of losing the support of his followers when he can’t do enough to satisfy their goals, in this work of political satire.
Click + to read Fragments
Convinced that he’s under investigation by the FBI, a man suffers through progressive stages of paranoia.
About Surviving an FBI Investigation (Thirty Stages of Paranoia)
In a 50-year career as a legislator, investment banker, and lobbyist, I’ve had my share of encounters with local, state, and federal law enforcement investigators. While I’ve managed to stay out of the direct line of fire, I’ve had friends and associates who’ve suffered under the stress of being investigated for one alleged transgression or another.
There is nothing enjoyable in an FBI investigation. Put another way, it will flat out ruin your day. Or days. Or weeks. Or months. Or years.
And along with the stress comes the inevitable paranoia. Can I talk on the phone? What are those clicking sounds I hear? Who’s wearing a wire? Are my computers compromised? What about my in-home devices such as Alexa, are they recording everything I’m saying? Is my car being tracked? Is that man in my backyard really a utility company serviceman? Is there anyone I can trust?
Each question produces a new stage of paranoia that builds on the previous stage until you are convinced that the entire world is conspiring to bring about your destruction.
Surviving an FBI Investigation tries to capture the ugliness of an investigation and turn it into a humorous story. I’ve made liberal use of non sequiturs to help show the random thought process of someone feeling the strain of the investigation. More than one Lorrie Moore story—she’s one of my favorite authors—provided inspiration for this short story.
A Fragment from the story
Stage 1. Your Life: Taking Stock
You have a great life. You have a loving wife, a loyal dog, a good job, and a comfortable house. You go to church every Sunday, pay your bills on time, and try to be a good citizen. You have no real enemies and, although you’ve never had an overabundance of friends, you have a few you can always count on. What’s more, you have a best friend, someone who cares about you, someone you can tell your troubles to. Yes, life is good.
Stage 2. The Movie
Your wife, Oleanna, is having drinks with a friend, so you surf through 700 TV channels before settling on a crime movie. Good Fellas. The FBI gets their man. The bad guys go to jail. It’s a feel-good movie. You’re happy.
Stage 3. Reflections on the Movie
You can’t get Good Fellas out of your head. You dream of being an FBI agent. You stream the 1960’s TV show—The FBI—on Netflix. Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. becomes your personal hero.
A candidate for a major corporation’s chairmanship fights to protect his reputation before confronting the truth about himself.
About Shame
Shame falls into what I call my “You Stories” category, meaning it is written in second person. I like writing in second person (though not too often) because I get to lecture my protagonist.
The story, a response to the national MeToo Movement, was specifically inspired by the Senate confirmation hearings concerning Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the United States Supreme Court. I’ve removed my story from the government setting and placed it in the corporate world.
I wondered during the Senate hearings and its aftermath about Kavanaugh’s real thoughts about the allegations that had been made against him. The protagonist in my story fights off the charges and is selected as the new Chairman and CEO of a Fortune 500 company. But when he is alone at home that night, he begins to unwind (with the help of a little liquor) and to think back on the incident that had caused him to fight to save his reputation.
I have no way of knowing whether Brett Kavanaugh was guilty of the charges brought against him, but my character is guilty of the charge of rape. Now he must face his guilt by himself, when no amount of public relations can clear the truth from his mind. In the end, he has the new job but must live with his shame forever.
A Fragment from the story
You are one lucky man. This you know.
The nightmare ran its course and you survived. The board awarded you its highest honor. The press conference came off without a hitch. Hands were shaken, toasts offered. Now it’s official. You, Alex Baughman, are the new Chairman and CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
But the price you paid! One personal attack after another over the past sixty days. Your reputation damaged. It’s been an experience you wouldn’t wish on even your worst enemy.
The onslaught began just as the board was set to confirm you as the company’s new leader. That was when Cleta Shannon, a fifty-five-year-old widow, stepped forward with a story that brought the process to a grinding halt. She told a newspaper reporter about an assault she claimed occurred some twenty-five years before. And you were identified as the one who assaulted her. Her story of rape appeared below a bold headline on the newspaper’s front page. It became the lead on radio and television newscasts. Social media had a field day with it. Your friends and associates were shocked by the allegation. It seemed so out of character, they all agreed. At the same time, it had to be checked out; in this day and age, it just had to be.
The accuser said the rape occurred when she was in her early twenties. She had remained silent back then, she insisted, because she didn’t have any proof, and besides, the system of justice at that time was skewed in favor of men, she explained. I had been violated once; I had no desire to be publicly violated again during a trial.
Your family was rocked by the charge and subsequent publicity. Some friends shunned you, and your grandchildren endured taunts at school. At the same time, you had plenty of defenders. Those who best know you rejected the charge out of hand—it was simply not believable, they said—and they wondered why the woman would want to soil your reputation without one shred of evidence to back her up. Still, the story created an intense public relations problem for the company’s board of directors. They needed to show that they were taking the charge seriously. But they weren’t going to be browbeaten by a woman who might simply be frustrated with her own life’s circumstances, a woman who might be trying to take advantage of the movement to expose powerful men who commit sexual harassment.
You dug in. You didn’t cower like other men in your situation have done. Instead, you hired your own PR specialist and a team of attorneys to fight the allegation. Your reputation was on the line, and you vowed to defend your good name. The drama continued for thirty days. Then a second allegation surfaced.
It came from one of your old college classmates, a woman now in her mid-fifties, though she looks older. With her attorney at her side, she stood before a gaggle of reporters and TV cameras and described your inappropriate behavior at a fraternity party during her freshman year. She fought back tears as she recalled how you pressured her to join you in a night of binge drinking. Then, when she says she had practically passed out from the liquor, you backed her into a corner of a downstairs room of your fraternity house and started groping her.
Did he force you to have sexual relations? a reporter asked.
I have no doubt that he would have, the woman said in a shaking voice. But one of my friends walked in and broke things up.
So what did he actually do? another asked.
He pushed me into the corner and leaned into me. It was obvious that he was aroused. Her voice broke and she tried to compose herself. I’ve never forgotten the feeling of helplessness, she said. When I heard Ms. Shannon’s story and saw how brave she was by coming forward…well, I just couldn’t stay silent any longer.
But her story quickly disintegrated. The date she provided for the incident was when you were on an out-of-state field trip with ten other students. And the woman who had been identified as having broken up the assault said that her only memory of such an incident involved another male student, not you. She didn’t recall seeing you that night at all. To top things off, one former classmate, a woman who had been friends with the accuser way back when, said the accuser had made a habit of charging men with improper behavior. That was just her, the classmate said. Always the victim. Always wanting to get attention by claiming that she had been treated badly.
None of us took her charges seriously, the classmate said. I don’t mean to say that he’s not guilty of a few things, but I certainly never saw him act inappropriately. In fact, we all thought Alex was just a spoiled rich kid. A boring spoiled rich kid. I’m not trying to say he’s a saint, but I’m not going to stand by and let someone destroy his reputation. I mean he’s got a wife and family, for God’s sake. There are women out there who have really been abused. My concern is for them, not for some insecure person who’s taking advantage of the anti-male environment that exists today.
The second accuser dropped from sight after that, her entire story seeming to confirm a vendetta against you. In the end, the original accuser also lost credibility when dates and times of her story proved inconsistent.
So today, after receiving the results of the investigation that found no real evidence of wrongdoing, the Board gave their final approval, naming you as their new Chairman and CEO. A brief press conference and celebratory reception followed, where you received pats on the back from friends, board members, and the employees of the company. Then, after acknowledging the last congratulation, you retreated with your family to the quiet sanctuary of your home.
While pursuing a dangerous drug pusher, Deputy Sheriff Keshawn Jackson crosses paths with one tough Georgia country girl.
About A Country Girl Can Survive
Here’s another story inspired by a song. In this instance it’s Hank Williams, Jr.’s “A Country Boy Can Survive.” I stole the title, replaced Boy with Girl, and wrote the story.
The first draft of the story had my protagonist and narrator as a Caucasian and the villain an African American. Then I made a change, and my protagonist became the African American, the villain the Caucasian. I find it less a stereotype now and a better story as a result.
Margaret French, a pretty young woman, is the story’s focus. The battle between the protagonist and the villain revolves around her.
The whole idea of the story, as I believe is also the point of Hank’s song, is that country people get underestimated far too often. Margaret French might be a country girl but she’s no dummy. She’s tough and street smart. And, as I hope the story successfully reveals, she ends up doing just fine for herself.
A Fragment from the story
“Margaret French?” I asked her. “You all alone in that house trailer?”
She held the glass door ajar with the toe of her foot and smirked. “It’s called a manufactured home. Only a moron would still call it a house trailer?”
I backed off the porch and onto the gravel path, looking up at her as she leaned against the door jamb. I hooked my thumbs inside the front pockets of my jeans and admired the outline of her body through her t-shirt and skin-tight shorts. Her wet blonde hair lapped over her shoulders. Just stepped out of the shower, I figured. She was one hell of a specimen, what with her wide green eyes, tanned skin, and smooth face. What was she—twenty, twenty-one? That would make her fifteen years or so younger than me. I poked a finger under the front of my palm-leaf cowboy hat and tilted its brim up, to get a better view.
“Didn’t mean to offend you,” I said, getting back to why I was there.
She nodded. “You got a name?”
I scraped the toe of my boot through loose gravel. “Keshawn Jackson.” The boiling sun stung my skin, and a line of sweat ran down the front of my neck and under my open-collared shirt. In spite of the heat, I’d worn a blue jacket to hide my sidearm.
She giggled. “Keshawn. You black dudes have all the good names.”
I ignored it. “Tell me, does Dobie ever come over here to your…manufactured home?”
The corners of her mouth eased up. “Ain’t none of your business now, is it?” She stepped out onto the porch and put a hand up to block the sun, buying time while she decided how to play it.
“It’s Dobie I’m looking for. He wouldn’t happen to be inside, would he?”
She wrinkled her nose real sexy-like, took a step forward, and placed her hands inside her back pockets, thrusting her chest out. “Dobie who?”
The inside of my arm nudged the holster, and I wondered if I should show her the badge. Probably not…it might make her say she wanted an attorney or something stupid like that.
“Dobie Freeman.” I put my hand on the iron railing beside the porch.
She was checking me out. Ten years as Deputy Sheriff of Fulton County had taught me how to read people, and I knew she was debating whether she should continue to talk or just blow me off and retreat inside. But she didn’t turn away and that was a good sign. I got a whiff of lavender shampoo when she stepped down from the porch and came up close. I put her at five-eight, which would make her a good six inches shorter than me, short enough that I could stare down and see the dark brown roots near her scalp.
“What’s your interest in Dobie?”
I leaned on the railing, removed my hat, and wiped my brow. “I need to talk to him, that’s all. Nothing for you to worry about.”
The smirk returned as her eyes followed my arm down to my thick ebony hand, then back up to my face. “You one of those brothers that likes to harass whitey?”
“I don’t give a damn about the man’s skin color.”
“Dobie ain’t exactly the kind of guy you’d wanna be messing with.”
Now it was my time to smirk. “I hear he likes to knock the ladies around. That’s why I’m looking for him. See if maybe he wants to try knocking me around a little.”
“You’re saying Dobie beats on women?”
I pulled my jacket open to reveal the gun and took the badge from my inside pocket, flipping it out, holding it at eye level.
“Deputy Sheriff. Big deal. Who’s the real sheriff?”
“An old fart who sits behind a desk all day. You wouldn’t know him.”
“He black too?”
I didn’t smile.
She hopped back up the steps to the porch and turned around. “You got Dobbie all wrong. He hasn’t touched any of the girls. He treats us all with respect.”
I put a foot on the second step and folded my arms across my chest. “Try telling that to the body we found last night in a dumpster three miles down the road.”
Her eyebrows arched. “You’re thinking Dobie did that?” A blush covered her face, and then her mouth grew tight. “Dobie wouldn’t kill anyone.”
She opened the glass door, and I figured the conversation was over, so I jumped up the stairs, took a card from my pocket, and handed it to her. “Call me if you ever need help.” Then I tapped the brim of my hat and gave a final nod.
After I’d gone back down the stairs, I turned in time to see her move inside the glass door and stare out at me. I noticed how her shirt had pulled out of her shorts enough to reveal a nice, tight stomach. My eyes scoped out her tan legs and bare feet. She knew what I was doing, but her expression said she’d seen that look before. There wasn’t anything unusual about it at all.
After enjoying a lucrative career as an escort for wealthy women, an aging gigolo figures out a way to enjoy his Friday nights.
About Call Me
I saw Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton star in the neo noir crime drama, American Gigolo, over forty years ago. The movie raised a question: What is the life of a gigolo once he’s aged and is no longer able to trade his good looks and sexual prowess for cash? I kicked an idea around in my head for years before putting it on paper in the early 2000s. Call Me is the result. The truth is I didn’t even think about the popular song that highlighted the movie’s soundtrack when I was writing the story. It could be that my subconscious provided the title.
The story is about an aging gigolo who’s approaching Social Security age. He can’t let go of the good times, especially the Friday nights that always started and finished in his luxurious New York apartment. But he has come to terms with a new reality. He can no longer lure women because of his looks.
His Friday nights are so special to him that he creates a weekly fantasy to fulfill his dreams of being the “forever gigolo.” He manufactures the evenings now. His past success has made him wealthy enough to do that. The evenings follow a script, and he chooses younger women who are more than willing to follow directions. As always, money is at the core of the fantasies. The only difference is that he is the one paying for the experience.
Whereas the women of long ago were always older than him—much older in most cases—now he is the older one. Whereas wealthy women of those earlier times always paid a handsome price for the honor of spending an evening with him; now the money they pay him has been given to them—by him—earlier in the evening, so they can go through the charade of buying his services.
The story’s protagonist lives in this fantasyland because…well, because he doesn’t want to live in any other world than the one he’s dominated for decades. And in that respect, he’s a bit like you and me. We all have fantasies.
During the heat of a re-election campaign, a state senator agrees to serve as a substitute teacher for a day, and the experience provides him with a chance to reveal his true character.
About Celebrity Teacher
In my career, I have been, among other things, a teacher, a legislator, and a lobbyist. My brief teaching experience gave me an insight into how taxing the role of teacher can be. My experience as a legislator and lobbyist gave me the chance to be around some interesting characters, be they governors, state legislators, U.S. congressmen and senators, or other lobbyists. In Celebrity Teacher, I have drawn from all of those experiences.
One of the most intriguing people I came across was a Oklahoma legislator. He was a cocky, good-looking politician who liked to chase women, drink hard liquor, drive his new Corvette, and give sermons to the churches in his district on Sunday mornings—especially during times when he was campaigning for re-election.
He also ran a collection agency while serving in the legislature, which I always found fascinating in that it meant he would harass his constituents to pay their debts one day and knock on their doors to ask for their votes on another. He would laugh when I told him I didn’t know how he survived such a balancing act, and say something like, “I guess it’s just because of my good looks.” Whatever trick he used, he always got re-elected.
One night over dinner and drinks, he told me about his experience as a substitute teacher. Although he touted himself as a “Friend of Education”—a claim all politicians make—he had little respect for the job of a teacher. Then a teacher in his district challenged him to serve as a substitute teacher for just one day so he could see what it was like trying to supervise 25-30 kids while providing them with a good education.
The school district that was in his legislative district had a program which allowed a teacher to take a day off if he or she could get a “celebrity” to cover the classroom. The idea was to get important people in the classroom so they would pass the word about how tough the teaching gig was.
Never one to back down, my friendly legislator accepted the challenge. His experience, which he recounted to me that night, serves as the basis for much of the story I present in Celebrity Teacher.
Click + to read Fragments
Jonah, a Boston Globe reporter, rejects the advances of a woman he admires, then searches for a way to undo what he has done.
About Suffering
In writing Suffering, I was influenced by Dan Fogelberg’s song, “Same Auld Lang Syne.”
The story also carries a theme common to my writing: an author who has traded in his real-life friends for the imaginary characters in his books. I’ve used the theme in several of my stories.
A Fragment from the story
I first laid eyes on her in the Massachusetts State House. She was taking notes during a debate over a new voting rights bill. Me? I was an ambitious investigative reporter in search of an interesting story.
I nudged Randy, a friend and fellow reporter. “Know her?”
“Jessica Boyd,” he whispered. “Committee staffer.” He frowned, shaking his head. “She’s latched to some dude. A guy named Leo, I think.” I took the information as gospel. Randy—single and always on the hunt—knows the skinny on every Beacon Hill mark.
I recorded her name in my small spiral notebook, saving it for future reference. Jessica Boyd. In time I’d call her Jessie.
We met three weeks later when I spotted her slender frame hustling up the front steps of the capitol. The gleaming rays of a February sun reflected radiantly off the building’s dome as I stepped up beside her.
“I’m calling security if you keep following me,” I said.
Startled, she fumbled an armful of file folders onto the capitol steps. I offered a lame apology and helped retrieve the scattered papers.
“Jonah Burke,” I said, impressed by her surprisingly strong handshake. Her light brown hair hung in seductive curls around her high-cheekbone face—a genuine All-American girl with magnificent green eyes.
“I know you,” she said with a mischievous smile. “I read your articles all the time.” Her forehead wrinkled. “You’re not writing something awful about me, are you?”
I grinned. “Please tell me there’s something awful to write about.”
She flashed a wide, beautiful smile that I instantly fell in love with.
. . .
In the beginning, ours was just a friendship. I had a wife while Jessie, who had been married once before, was single. Randy’s research was spot on—she really was dating a guy named Leo. But when their dysfunctional relationship ended, she muddled through a series of equally unfulfilling courtships. She had developed the reputation as a woman who always fell for the wrong guy. “She’s the best,” Randy liked to say, “but she’s attracted to the worst.”
She left her Senate staff position later that year and joined a powerful Boston lobby firm. And we spent even more time together. I scratched her back, giving her inside dope on breaking news, and she scratched mine by passing on the latest Capitol gossip, some of which I’d use in my newspaper column and attribute to an anonymous source. We’d make the information-for-rumors trade over drinks at any number of Beacon Hill bars, where I’d listen to her stories about the legislative crowd, and she’d hang on every new revelation about my latest investigation. I became her personal confidant, offering romantic advice she rarely heeded, always cautioning her against rushing into a new relationship.
As for me, I was moving on autopilot through a tiresome marriage. Then came the night when I told her I was getting a divorce. She opened her mouth in feigned surprise, but it was just an act. She knew too much about my relationship with Joanne by then for the announcement to come as a shock.
“Don’t do it, Jonah. You’re not meant to be single.” She smiled. “You need mothering.”
I was in no mood for her humor. “I was a freshman at UMass when I got married. Just a kid, for chrissake. The marriage hasn’t worked for years. And to make matters worse, the job has grown stale too. I’m tired of chasing stories about sleazy politicians.”
“Then quit” was her unusually sharp reply. “Stop whining and start writing the way you’ve always wanted to. You’ve got a ton of stories in you—let them out. But don’t underestimate what you have with Joanne. She loves you, and you love—”
“I care about Joanne,” I said, correcting her. “She’s the mother of my two girls, so sure, I have feelings; but the kids are the only thing holding us together. She’d stay in the marriage forever, I guess. I can’t. There has to be something more than growing old together, neither one satisfied, both just punching the clock.”
A few seconds of silence passed, then she said, “Don’t do something stupid, that’s all I’m saying. Look at me, Jonah. I know a thing or two about bad relationships, and breakups aren’t always the answer. At least promise that you’ll talk to me before you do anything, okay?”
I filed for divorce three weeks later, and no, I didn’t talk to her any more about it. My mind was made up, and even Jessie wasn’t going to change it. Fortunately, our relationship continued as usual. We saw each other at the Capitol each day and conspired over drinks most nights. I enjoyed my freedom at first and loved giving her the details of my newfound bachelorhood…well, most of the details. She’d listen, lean her head back, and laugh at my stories about the dating game.
Noah Ballard’s plan to cut ties with his girlfriend is ruined by an Irish mafia family.
About Playing Handball Off A Curb
Playing Handball Off a Curb was inspired by a real-life experience. Noah Ballard is the story’s protagonist. The name shows up in a few more of my stories that are partly autobiographical.
In November of 1993, I went to the Notre Dame versus Florida State football game in South Bend with my wife, our college-aged son, and his friend. We spent the night before the game in Chicago and had dinner at The Chop House on Ontario Street. Playing Handball Off a Curb is based in part on events that happened that evening.
A Fragment from the story
The limousine was Jodi’s idea, and a good one at that. The twins are in the jump seat facing us, poking, prodding one another and giggling incessantly. Bringing Nate and Josh to Boston—another thing Jodi insisted on—was not a good idea. Not that I dislike the boys. It’s just that watching two chubby ADHD thirteen-year-olds constantly picking and pawing on one another creates a level of tension I could live without.
We’re in the middle of a thunderstorm as the limo turns onto Boylston and heads toward the Italian restaurant on Beacon Hill. Jodi turns to her sons and says, “Boys, you can ask Noah anything about Boston, can’t they, Noah?”
The boys respond with wide-eyed stares. They’re good kids, I guess. They just get in the way, and I don’t like having to explain everything to them. Jodi knows this but it doesn’t seem to matter. I turn toward her with a sardonic grin. She knows what I’m thinking.
Jodi’s a looker: silky white skin, apple cheeks that turn a darker shade of red when her anger is up, almond-shaped baby blues that frame a perky nose, beautiful full red lips. Her hair is blonde…naturally so. At thirty-three, she’s three years younger than I am. We met two years ago when I was going through an ugly divorce. She was a divorcee too. She told me then that the boys were her anchors, something to show for what she always calls her “three years in Dante’s Inferno.” She’s the one who pushed me to continue writing, and I give her credit for keeping me on track. We enjoy one another’s company when we’re alone and that’s been reward enough up to now; but lately she’s been insisting that I get to know the boys better, which can only mean that thoughts of a more permanent relationship are spinning through her pretty little head.
She looks at the plastic Go-cup in my hand. “You shouldn’t have that in the car, Noah. That’s not being a good role model.”
I take a long drink from the cup I’ve brought from the hotel bar. “What the hell’s wrong with bringing a drink in the car? I’m not driving.” I look at the boys. “You see, boys, the idea is that you shouldn’t drink and drive.” I take another swig. “But there’s nothing wrong with drinking when you’re being chauffeured.”
Josh elbows Nate and they both giggle.
Jodi frowns. “That’s no way to have a positive influence on the boys. They look up to you. You’re a role model for them, isn’t he, boys?” They look stupefied. “And please don’t cuss in front of the boys.”
“What in the hell are you talking about? I didn’t cuss.”
“You most certainly did. And you just did it again.”
“What’d I say?”
“You used the H word.”
“Hell isn’t a cuss word.” I turn to the boys. “Boys, you can find the word hell in the Bible. You can’t go wrong using words that are in the Bible.”
Jodi’s eyes narrow and deep lines crease her forehead. “It’s cussing and you know it. I just wish you’d think about that before using the word.”
I sip from my cup, so it won’t runneth over. “Well, boys, your momma is so sweet she doesn’t know what real cuss words are. Now if I started using the S word or the F word—”
“Noah, please!” She sits back in her seat, folds her arms across her chest and stares at the squirming boys. I gaze out at the rain and finish my drink.
“You really are in one fine mood tonight,” she says as we pull up to the restaurant. “One fine mood.” She puts her hand on my arm as I reach for the door handle. “Listen, you’ve been drinking since early this afternoon. I would appreciate it if you could lay off during dinner.” She nods in the direction of the twins. “For the boys’ sake.” Then she steps from the car and tap-dances under a green awning to the restaurant door, her sons’ heavy steps splashing the puddles of water behind her.
“Stay close,” I whisper to our driver as I ease out the door. “I might need you.”
His smile tells me that he understands.
My forthcoming short story submissions will be added to this space from time to time.
