Dissolution
“We can’t help you, sir.” The smartly-dressed paralegal’s smile was fixed as she rose to show the conversation was over. Kemp resignedly gathered up his files and walked out past a sign reading “Discount Divorces. Egress for Less!!” Inside, he fretted. How difficult could it be? It was an uncontested divorce, no custody disputes. . . “And, heaven knows,” said Jillian, ever mischievous, “we won’t be fighting over the furniture.” Kemp ignored her and kept turning the matter over in his mind. Nothing hard. Just one unusual factor. “Oh, yes. Just that...
Read MoreA Country for Old Men
Part One 1 Every great wealth creation in America has sprouted from the opening of a new frontier. Those who were the first to understand that virgin territory was beckoning just beyond the familiar borders, and who had the ability to act on that understanding, have always been rewarded to a degree that could never occur in an established economy. Sometimes this frontier has been geographic, as in the westward expansion. Sometimes it has been a technological frontier, as in the development of the Internet. In Florida, the frontier was old age. There was a time before people retired. Instead,...
Read MoreGentlemen’s Piracy
Cayo Hueso, Ponce de Leon’s isle of bones, dosed under the feet of thousands of March tourists. They called it Key West, not knowing any better, and thought it was the capital of the easy life. Five o’clock somewhere and all that Jimmy Buffet nonsense. Life had not been easy for the Calusa Indians, who left their dead to bleach in the sun on the tide line. It hadn’t been easy for Ponce de Leon, who took a poisoned arrow in the thigh on his way past and died in Cuba a few days later. It hadn’t been easy for the Americans in the 1830s, tryig to carve a living out...
Read MoreThe World As It Could Be
They lay on the hood of Joe’s car, Joe and Tom, and stared at the cloudy sky. Shapes rolled past overhead, spirals and angles of white, words written across the dawning blue. They read what the sky had to say, content for a time just to lie still. After a while, Tom spoke up. The dreams were troubling him again. Joe was the only one who would even listen. If Tom didn’t say something, he would burst; if he said something to the wrong person, they’d label him crazy. “I had more dreams, Joe.” “Why am I not surprised? Weird ones, like...
Read MoreThe Red Panda
I don’t breed well in captivity. This is a problem, because I live in a cage. Although I enjoy telling other animals that I was born in the wild, the truth is that I’ve been in one cage or another for as long as I can remember. I have some very vague recollections of the wild that feel like a scene from a dream, everything was dark green and scary. But my first clear memories are of the zoo back in Nebraska where I had spent most of my life. My current cage is the most frustrating one I’ve been in yet. The female they have me with, Shama, is not my type at all. I was talking about this...
Read MoreThe First Minutes
Something is different; something is not right. Gone is the wonderful warm floating and the world is collapsing in on itself – in on me. Upside down, I feel gravity’s first insistent pull. For the last few hours I have felt what should be called beforeshocks, each amplifying in intensity; constricting. The biggest yet grips, and with it this time I am squeezed downwards. I feel a presence at the heart of this, closing in on me, outreaching when the quaking occurs, but this quickly passes. And then there is light below me, bright white and red. I can feel it course through the crown of my...
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