Kitchen with an Island

Short story, shortlisted for the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize, 2020-21

“Through the cedarwood door, and there’s no Otto Preminger, no Roman Polanski; no slinky-hipped, darting waiters; no school of girls who have grown out their hair like Jane Fonda. There’s just a smack of humidity, with a chlorine tang like a pool. A frontage of glass, burbled and yellowed, and a flat-faced girl behind it, feet bare on the desk, phone in the crook of her neck.

“‘Yes, sir, you can simply immerse yourself and you don’t even need a girl there, if that’s to your taste.’ She waggles her fingers at Gene.

“Lois has no reference for this place: it’s part doctor’s office, part YMCA, and the well-thumbed pamphlets in the plastic case on are very Chinese take-out. A clipboard rocks from a nail, with a ballpoint on a chain, as knotted up as the signatures. ‘Gene’s Sand Bar’ is mimeographed at the top.”

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