Miller Time

UNITED STATES—Can the expenses incurred by a writer working at a café be written off on taxes? You bet if it qualifies as a business meeting, then it will qualify as a tax deductible expense. This is the first year I’ve been getting receipts for my ritual morning expresso. Let me tell you evasion is the mother of tax evasion....

UNITED STATES—After the Delaney’s second tenure, the company gradually but steadily slid in till the year Richard Nixon ran for president, the new Nixon (thank you Bernard Lukasey, the public relations wiz manipulator extraordinaire) who said there were indeed some people he would not work for, including Hitler, whose people had sought to contract him, but Nixon he didn’t...

UNITED STATES—Meet Eliza’s accomplice: Roger worked for a production house in Hollywood and had slickly edited together breaking news flashes about a terrorist group that was going to release a geriatric bomb in different parts of the globe. From the Hollywood Hills to Lake Cuomo, in Italy. Flashes appeared of people in black ski-masks that revealed only their eye-holes...

UNITED STATES—"Are you going to stay the night?" says the mother. Hers is the last bed in the room that has a light on over the headboard of the hospital bed. "Don't go changing the subject," says the son. "I didn't know there was a subject," the mother groans. "Can you do something about my head, so it can get comfortable?" "The...

UNITED STATES—The sun can, at times, be so raw and unforgiving, it can give you a toothache. And the survivors of the dreams and plans stand stunned in the blinding blaze: what happened? what went wrong? They say we’re living in a desert, and the desert will make you crazy . . . A lot of things happened at Manhattan Place that spring....

UNITED STATES—There was always a second banana at the drug store—the relief pharmacist. Johnson Drug wasn’t a one man show. The first relief pharmacist was Chet Turney, a thin wise man, who always carried a thousand dollars in his wallet and was a ham radio operator. He exposed all of us to the word, “Andale” (Hurry up in Spanish). Then...

UNITED STATES—As they sank into the couch, Mr. Monroy opted for Nescafe and Mrs. Monroy accepted the honey-ginger tea proffered by Mr. Wynn. "Thank you, Don Carlos," she said. With the real estate sharks absent, the 'don' reinserted in their courtly discourse. And she started to speak frankly about why they were forced into selling. "During the summer we got really...

UNITED STATES—I am in the final stages of a major novel, my first, and both my bonds with teaching are eroding and emotional tensions are mounting. I am under great tension albeit, creative tension, which is very good, sort of like good cholesterol is good. But this makes me prone to uncharacteristic outbursts and sudden tenderness, at the most...

UNITED STATES—Now suddenly, the itch to get away was enormous, Archer felt choked by it. Night had fallen and suddenly, he was his father now, something he had scrupulously avoided becoming. He was his father without the shapeless black, London Fog coat. His father was extremely mild and contrary to the prevailing values. He never left the continental United...

UNITED STATES—Famously articulated by Alfred Hitchcock as the secret to constructing his movie stories, a MacGuffin is the object of overwhelming importance for the characters that drives a story forward while having little importance in overall plot. The briefcase of money and the Big W in It’s a Mad Mad World,” the uranium-filled wine bottles in Hitchcock’s “Notorious”—these are...