Friends have been asking me to share links to my stories more regularly, and since most of my friends are reading this blog, at least occasionally, I feel like this is a good way of putting y’all on notice.
Here’s a story about a guy who’s much funnier than he comes across in my story, alas, and who does some really nifty magic tricks on the Strip:
- “Hands are a strange thing to dwell on, but Mat Black’s demand notice. He has long, slender fingers with short, well-kept nails. Like a violinist, he spends several hours at a time training them to move: a flick of the wrist here, a tap there. He needs the muscles to remember what to do when he is distracted by the story he’s telling, or by his nerves. One wrong move and he looks like the worst kind of idiot: the guy who interrupted your meal to show you a magic trick only to botch it, dropping coins from all the wrong places or forgetting where the queen of hearts went.”
The whole piece is here.
…And here’s a story about another guy (who looks exactly like someone I think looks like Tom Cruise, but I don’t think he himself looks like Tom Cruise. How does that work?), who runs a fascinating rehab program in San Quentin State Prison:
- When he stands, Gerry Harris towers over everyone in the room. He’s bald, with a salt-and-pepper beard that climbs to his temples and big, almost square glasses. His presence is gentle, even when he’s agitated, which he is now. “Three minutes,” he tells the men in the room. “I can’t account for three minutes. I might never get them back.”
The whole piece is here.
