Delayed boarding, and a long taxiing queue before an evening departure should’ve made me tired enough to sleep on the overnight Air France flight from JFK to Paris. Instead, I dozed fitfully, mostly listening to Anthony and Basso snore in their Business Class seats. Arriving the next morning at Charles de Gaulle Airport, a rainy…
“Valentina. I’m making myself an espresso. Do you want a cappuccino?” My eyes rose from the laptop. Earning my fee as a cybercrime consultant for the FBI, I was browsing the Dark Web, trying to sniff out the jamokes who’d turned identity theft and defrauding the government’s unemployment insurance into a multi-billion-dollar black industry. I…
Was I in heaven? Standing on the bridge above Triphammer Falls, a rare sunny day in Ithaca lifted my spirits as a wafting breeze carried the scent of the surrounding forest, and my ears sunk into the soothing roll of white water churning beneath me. The day would’ve been worthy of bottling had my mind…
Chapter One When her son Billy was sent to Iraq, Angie Dekker purchased fifty-two pairs of athletic socks. She sent him one every week. Like an hourglass, the pile shrunk marking the year until her son returned home. Pair thirty-two was in her hand when the two marine officers appeared at her door. She heard,…
Valentina didn’t know her birthday. As an infant, her mother stuffed her into a turnstile at the Brooklyn Monastery of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the nuns’ main interface with the outside world. Maybe she gave the delivery bell a tug before she fled, or maybe the sisters heard a baby’s sobs. All Mother Superior…
At the Naples marina the sun broiled humanity like chops on the grill. Leonardo and Anna were on the street at the edge of the crowd. Peasant men in brimmed caps and ill-fitting vests and women in white blouses and billowing ankle-length skirts held onto wide-eyed children and waited to be called for pre-board inspection.…
Stories and Places I Remember. Humorous and poignant, the twenty-six fiction pieces in Stories and Places I Remember will take you around the world from the streets of Brooklyn to the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, including New York, Texas, Brazil, Greece, Ireland, the Middle East, and Italy. Many have an Italian American “flavor.” Here’s the…
