Jean Michel was smoking in the living room when she arrived, and drinking brandy. “There’s a good idea,” she said and helped herself to a glassful, though she hated the stuff.
“What’s wrong?” Jean Michel asked.
“I got stood up,” she said, feeling…

     At five she hurried down to the café—he wasn’t there yet—so she ordered Fanta and sat and talked to Dr. John. After a while he began directing his comments to a couple of young women at the neighboring table who were speaking in German, and soon he’d invited them...

     She slept late—until she heard a knock on the door and at her window saw Terry below. She went down to answer it in her nightgown, just as she was, one strap hanging down, one breast exposed. Then in the narrow lower bunk of her bed, she surrendered to him again,...

     The next day she drove to the neighboring town of Figueras with Jean-Michel as planned, but in the evening she went over to Alana’s. There was supposed to be a big dinner, and she knew Terry would be there. She took the lane past the twins’ house—her favorite in...

     If the second volume of my memoir, Callie’s Ragbag, ends with a true story that I patched a fictitious ending onto, the third volume begins with the factual ending to that story. In the previous volume, my alter-ego, Seely, after spending the night with Eben in a...

When I remember my dream about the iridescent birds, I think: I’m the red bird (a redhead), Eben is the green, representing the natural world—grass, leaves, water (with algae like the pool I bathed in)—opposite colors on the color wheel, and so, complementary. And...