"Paris," said Twist.

"Moscow," said I.

She: "Cairo."

I: "The Hague."

She: "London."

I: "Quito."

She: "San Francisco."

I: "Canberra."

She, after a long pause: "Hatrack."

I considered my next move carefully. Was it a trick? "Lima," I said.

She: "Cajolery."

I: "Ventriloquism."

She: "Pawn. I win."

I: "Och, you win."

She gave ( Read more... )

Nobody knows what's in my cellar, stacked up in boxes or piled around in plastic bags, locked up in a vault or sealed in tinted glass bottles. They don't know what it is, can't imagine what it tastes or looks or sounds or smells or feels like. They've never been down there and they never will.

Nobody knows if it's money or gold, or some famous ( Read more... )

I saw one left shoe on the highway, and since I had nothing in particular to do, I decided to stop and throw it in the back of my truck. I knew there were more of them, so I figured I'd make a day of it.

Four hours later, 72 left shoes and 54 right ones. Mostly sneakers. A few women's shoes with pieces broken off. No matches.

Now what?

( Read more... )

Once there was a pig named Citrine who loved to eat pancakes. But this story isn't about her. This story is about Walter, the hard-boiled private detective who never met a pair of fishnet stockings he didn't like.

One day a dame walks into Walter's office, all taffeta, curves, and ( Read more... )

My uncle Zefrabados was fairly wealthy when he moved to America ( Read more... )

Here among the stars, actual Buddhists were underrepresented, and the precepts of Zen had been completely co-opted by silly people. The only ideas retained were that monks should have shaved heads and that paradox was somehow essential. There were a lot of Zen filmmakers, and they made shorts, or koans, like this one:

INT. MONASTERY - DAY ( Read more... )

The play was really written by John Thatch in an unknown language that ( Read more... )

We used to go down to the 9th Avenue El and flick pennies at the third rail. If you got your penny close enough, a bolt of electricity would leap off the rail with a loud crack and turn it to copper vapor in midair. I always thought I was prepared for that thunderclap, that flash of blue-white light, but I blinked every time.

In those days they ( Read more... )

Parkira and Adhmesh had a secret between them. No one else in the world knew.
( Read more... )

It's lunchtime. There are four men in the bar. I can look at them and know all their deepest secrets, their private hopes and passions.

The man with the newspaper, at the end of the bar, is mostly bald ( Read more... )