I spotted him at Tanya’s barbecue, balancing his baby in the crook of his toned forearm. In his free hand he held a beer—something crisp and low ABV—and with it he gesticulated an elaborate story about a time he was humiliated then redeemed himself with charm and wit. Tanya worried about the cheese. It had …
This was back in 2010 when I was working as an assistant at Balaskas Bros Wound Care. The sign said Balaskas Bros, but I never met any brothers. As far as I knew there was just Iannis Balaskas, who went by Bob, a Greek immigrant from Athens with pig eyes and a snub nose like …
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Dmitri was the only flicker of color in a drab Russian office. He wore dress shirts in paisleys and florals, once a riotous Hawaiian print. Buttons were occasionally, endearingly, one off. His blazers––I only ever counted four––never fit quite right, were never pressed. His physique suggested a blend of natural athleticism and the slapdash self-discipline …
1999 Fuck it, is the general feeling here, because we are minimum-wage employees in a doomed independent bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky, because what we do is useless, stocking and straightening and standing idly at the register, answering phones, ferrying customers to the Health & Fitness section, Gardening, Travel, guiding them back to the books they …
It was Valentine’s Day, two months before my sixteenth birthday, when Todd first noticed me. I opened the front door in my brown-and-gold Wildcats uniform, still flushed from my track meet, to find Beth and Todd curled up on the couch, his hand on her thigh. Beth’s eyes flicked to me, then back to American …
Ezra Barsky died at his desk around lunch time. His body sagged in his chair, his head fell on the keyboard, and his left arm dangled like it had no bones. A group of his colleagues walking to a conference room passed him but thought: so what? Ezra could’ve been taking a power nap or …
I got a letter from the government claiming an easement on my leg. I had just moved into this house and must not have looked at the paperwork carefully. A few months later, an official in a yellow vest and hardhat knocked on my door. He was carrying a machine that looked like a hole …
Mitchell vanished from my life more abruptly than anyone had. Though we had been exceptionally close as children, he came infrequently to mind as I grew older. High school graduation then college in Upstate New York, my first job, and my first kiss with another man, all passed without a thought of Mitchell. It was …
Becky Hagenston is the author of four award-winning story collections, most recently The Age of Discovery and Other Stories, which won The Journal’s Non/Fiction Prize and was published by The Ohio State University Press/Mad Creek Books in August 2021. The collection also won the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters prize in fiction. Her third …