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Baffler Archives: Stories

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from How Late It Was, How Late
Alright? Just find this damn bloody button … The doors shut on him. They opened again. Fucking bastard, muttered the guy. The doors shut. Sammy waited a wee minute then wandered. A door opened. He called: Hullo? Yes? said a man with a polite voice. I’m looking for ...

Meeting Polanski
I should have seen it coming. I should have known it was going to happen. I mean it’s not like I wasn’t forewarned. All the signs were there that this was going to be the worst day of my life, and the very best I could probably expect from it was an over-the-counter ...

What Jane Wore to Jamaica
January 23, 2013
Emerging from the subway into the miasma of workers, men striding superbly in their splendid suits streaming currents of thick-headedness and cologne, ripe to bursting with self-confidence and generalized contempt, lost in thought no doubt of cigars growing cold on their ...

Springs
January 18, 2013
It’s so damn long ago that I started remembering myself from a movie. Walking around in circles in a widely-striped tan and white turtleneck sweater in the middle of the winter when I was 32. I had that one basic shape. Looking around, confused, nothing to do. I kept ...

To the Magical Memory of Rain
January 17, 2013
Out of the supermarket, on their way home with three bags full of groceries in their arms, foul weather struck down the day and swept up the loveliness in a monstrous rain. Felicity felt that she had been momentarily prevented from making any revelations to Desirée. They ...

Heather
The day my father told me he was leaving for China he found me sitting on the back steps digging my toe into the dirt and playing with an errant stick I’d found far from whatever tree had rejected it. Twelve was my age. We were reading Johnny Tremain in school and dominating ...

Handless
I didn’t want to upset him. I wanted to impress him. He opened the car door for me. And I got in. Carefully. Gracefully. He closed the door on my hand. And I left my hand in the door. He got in the car and we drove. Fifteen, twenty miles to dinner. He stopped the car and ...

from In the Country of the Young
January 15, 2013
Hugh found that his mother did not like his pictures. She scolded him for wasting paper and chewing pencils. His twin sisters merely giggled when he brought them views of things familiar or sometimes seized him for a game. They wanted to dress him up and Mrs. Cullom never ...

I’m OK, Eeyore OK
January 15, 2013
It was a beautiful day in the Hundred-Acre Planned Community. The sun was shining on the green grass where all of the houses backed up onto the nine-hole golf course. Christopher Robin had come out at dawn to get in a couple of early rounds, for, as he had often been told by ...

Saturday Night at the Movies
January 14, 2013
Marshmallows. I see the marshmallows. They fling themselves above me, high flyin’. I watch them with a dulled absorption. Patting. Something is patting my face. A gentle rain of gentle pats. On my nose, cheeks and mouth. Then God speaks. God is the atmosphere in which ...

Stormy Love Story
January 14, 2013
I still think about him. You know, my ex-boyfriend, four-star General Norman Paul Schwarzkopf. It’s hard. I was a civilian, he was a general, leading our troops to victory in the Gulf War. To you, to the public, he was sober, fearless, dedicated, loyal. He delivered those ...

One Thing about a Goat
January 13, 2013
Animals don’t have it so good. It’s no secret. One thing’s clothes: you won’t see a goat browsing in Petites on Saturday afternoon. You won’t see a goat exercising her rights as a consumer. I’m not saying they can help it, I’m just saying it bugs me. I mean it just ...