table of contents
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Shucked
It was the brightest part of the day. She was hurrying home to read the brochures from the universities she considered applying to. She had to earn tuition money and was making a mental…
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The Dilemma
The very wealthy don’t mourn when they lose a longtime spouse, too much to do; obituary, funeral, memorial luncheon, the reading of the will and acting as the referee for the hired help before the…
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Supper in Overtown
From the air Gam Island resembled a leg, slack at the knee, its toes tickled by the Atlantic Ocean and its thigh swaddled in froth from the eastern Caribbean Sea. Libby Jane Boxill was born…
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Ama de Casa
Mr. and Mrs. Fessel lived in a mansion on a private island in Biscayne Bay, just a tad west of Miami Beach. They had twenty employees (six lived in) that cooked,cleaned, chauffeured, tended to the…
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Thievin’
His name was Johnny Lee Handsome and he sure was, handsome that is; real, real handsome. Johnny was tall, a six footer with a carefully tended physique and eyes as green as the glass that…
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The Bee Bag
Acalia Bonilla was a wisp of a woman with the cujones of a heavyweight. She refused to surrender her grandson to the regime that sent policemen and soldiers to the family home to cart him…
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Tre Amici
Oakie used his shirt sleeve to dry his eyes before he placed the “For Sale” sign in front of the building, then he walked round back to sit on the frond covered patio. He watched…
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A Pair
They were identical, well almost identical. Their pale champagne colored hair was the envy of women who paid piles to their hairdressers trying to produce that very shade of blonde and their tall athletic builds…
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Via con Dios
“Aha! Greenwich Village with palm trees. I’m staying.” That’s what I thought when I arrived in Key West on May 4, 1980. By day’s end I rented a small clean studio in a…
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The Awards
He paid for his coffee with the exact change and asked, “Where you from, girl? That’s some kind of accent you got there.” I smiled. A fine Southern gentleman, but such an unsophisticated…
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The Stamp
Rhoady Pilk kicked the book his grandson gave him for Father’s Day clear across the front porch.“Pack of lies. Nothin’ but a pack of lies,” he mumbled. How someone could write about a man he…
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The Tandem Flight of Ursie and Mando
August 1955 Ursie was all of six and a half years old that first day she burst into my social club carrying a well-worn broom twice her size and a homemade dustpan fashioned…
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Hank’s Girl
August 1958 It was a sweltering summer day and I was bored. Inviting a reprimand I whined, “There’s no one to play with around here. I don’t want to move into this new house you’re…