Miller Time

UNITED STATES—There I was a few weeks ago in my hometown, up north, trying to get waited on in a doughnut shop. A man is in there in athletic clothes of the casual kind worn by those who are seldom athletic. He is passionate, he is overwrought; he is passionately overwrought, barely kept in check by a forced calmness...

UNITED STATES—Mary Reno stopped and stared at the fig bush. It looked more like a tree now that it had been severely hacked since Mary first saw it a few days ago and was filled by anticipation for ripened figs. She was crestfallen. All the bulbs from the fig branches about to turn purple-black had  been pruned away, and all...

UNITED STATES—Katy is the neighbor with the junky porch and lots of cats. Lotte was the 96-year-old German neighbor with incontinence and an aversion toward bathing that manifest near the end of a long rich life. The foul scent of Lotte’s dried urine and unbathed body was sharp, I might even say tangy. The smell reached out all the way...

UNITED STATES—The house on 1514 Manhattan Place was emptying out, prelude to its new career as a sober living facility. As part of the Wylie team, we already had the wife of the handyman Lorenzo staying in the long windowless room that opened onto the cathedral ceilinged living room. After the meek postman, the next tenant out was the relative...

UNITED STATES—Finally, just after nine in the hot clear morning, the bus curled around the overpass to the housing development 50 kilometers north of Madrid, where I'd spent two wondrous days. It left Fernando free to go back to his chores and Carmen and I were off to the city, passing through a number of smaller cities and developments....

UNITED STATES—Peet Boggs, the film historian and schnorrer manqué, interviewed filmmaker Jules Kaminsky many times starting in the mid-70s. The two first met when Boggs had a part as a scrub pine in Kaminsky’s long-awaited masterpiece, “Masterpiece.”  In the lore of unfinished film, this work is a holy grail, occupying a place equaled perhaps only by Orson Welles’, “The...

UNITED STATES—"OK, when will you be back?" the mom says from her wheelchair to the parting figures of her caregiver and boyfriend. "Sunday afternoon," Tatiana calls back and then the glass doors shut behind her and Oscar. A serious looking woman in a gray knitted sweater and shouldering a handbag comes to close to the door and a harsh new...

UNITED STATES—Mary Reno twirled her heels on the baking sidewalk. She was still smarting from the loss of the figs.  Yes, she was. Add to that the nagging hunch that something else was wrong. Mary had lost the bundle that had her money folded up in one corner. A coolness pervaded her toes through the open toes of her...

UNITED STATES—As a matter of courtesy and kindling goodwill in people who enjoy giving, I generally say yes to food gifts. It keeps the flow going. The urge to give is so heartfelt, nevermind that the gift is trans-fat loaded pastry with a mile-long list of toxic ingredients; it is something to cherish in people, the giving urge. I...

UNITED STATES—That fall and winter at Estrella Avenue I endured penuries that I hoped were behind me for good, such as living on ten dollars a month, and one episode that still provokes a pang of regret. My friends from Nadeau Drive, who I still socialized with even though they had dismissed me from their couch, invited me to hear...