Sublime

Updike’s “A&P”

That day had come and it was good.

perennial.

through the yearbook carefully from cover to cover looking for him. He isn’t in any group picture or on any list of names.

Fiction

‘You’re our longest-serving contributor,’ said Carleton, flinching at the bang. ‘Our most admired. Indeed I should say our most popular.’ I’m beginning to speak like him, he thought: Thomas Hart is catching, that’s the trouble. ‘I’ve often heard it said that it’s a consolation – that’s the general feeling, as I said to the board – to wake on Thursd

People from another planet will wonder what’s wrong with earthly names, that it takes so many different ones to tag a thing. But here he lies, alongside this friend he has known only weeks, joined again after so many lifetimes. Nick and Olivia, Watchman and Maidenhair—the complete quartet of them—open to the January night, under topless columns of

the days in captivity seemed to lengthen every time he dreamed of freedom.

said. If Peyton Travis is dead like he’s supposed to be, you