Fiction | Page 26 | The Common

Sofa

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction, Translation

My parents conceived me on a sofa in a department store. My mother worked in the underwear section and was a second-year nursing student. My father worked in the household appliances, hardware, and gardening section, and was a fifth-year social sciences student. They’d hardly been dating a month, and they’d never worked the same shift. Until that morning in May. No one saw them enter the warehouse holding hands—the store wouldn’t open to the public for another hour. No one heard them either, despite the fact that the sofa still had a plastic covering on the cushions to protect it from any stains. The sofa was more cream than yellow; it had solid wood legs and fit three people comfortably. Though my parents didn’t intend it, that morning there were already three of us.

The History of Sound

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction

By BEN SHATTUCK

I was seventeen when I met David, back in 1916. Now I don’t very much care to count my age. It’s April 1972 here in Cambridge. White puffballs that must be some sort of seedpod have been floating by the window above my writing desk for days, collecting on the sidewalk like first snow.

Three

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction, Translation

By CHRISTIAN IBARRA

Translated by JENNIFER ACKER

The three of them play cards in the dining room. This is the story. Nothing else. Collectively, they’re almost three hundred years old. They drink juice and laugh. Now one of them turns on a small radio, which plays “Autumn Leaves.”

The Burrow

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction

By TERE DÁVILA

They started building right away, as soon as it was safe to go outside.

“I can feel them moving!” Cristina squealed, standing knee-deep in leaves.

“Their teeth tickle!” laughed Zoe.

Something had caught their attention as they searched for pebbles and twigs. They crouched amid the soggy storm debris, then sprang up, kittenlike, uncombed curls against the gray sky, chattering and unaware of my presence. But as soon as they saw me approaching they stopped and exchanged looks. Cristina bit her bottom lip and smiled, a small and well-calculated gesture of contrition designed to deflate a scolding, but Zoe, the eldest, fixed her eyes on me, and her body tensed. She seemed ready to run, like a surprised wild thing.

People Who Go to the Beach Alone

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction, Translation

By SERGIO GUTIÉRREZ NEGRÓN

Translated by HANNAH COOK

Bimbo has gone to the beach alone three times.

The first time was when he bought the used car which he would drive for the next decade, at nineteen. As soon as he arrived at his house after having finalized the transaction and showed it to his family, and as soon as his grandmother had gone back to her telenovela after congratulating him, and his brother back to the phone, stuck talking to his girlfriend, Bimbo went into his room, put a bathing suit on under his jeans, threw two towels into his backpack, got into the car, and descended, alone, from the mountains of Caguas, where three generations of his family still lived. He went alone in his new-but-old Toyota Corolla without air conditioning and with the windows down and the radio tuned to the only English music station that reached them up there. He felt nervous. It was 11 a.m. on a Wednesday.

Put-in-Bay

October 29, 2018 Fiction, Issue 16, Issue 16 Fiction

By SHIRA ELMALICH

“Could you take a picture?” the girls ask, and I jump up from the bench outside the candy store and check they are all here, all thirteen. I am pleased they want a picture together, considering their history, which is fraught and filled with ugliness.

This is their Senior Trip. We’ve only been off the ferry for two hours, and the girls have spent most of that time weaving in and out of the gift shops on Main Street, finally emerging with a concerning excess of commemorative merchandise.

For the picture, they dress in their loot, rummaging through shopping bags to pull off tags and tug new items over their regular clothes—ball caps and sweatshirts and long-sleeved T’s, Put-in-Bay scrawled over the front in block letters or cursive or cartoon fonts, accompanied by graphics of anchors and lifesavers and compasses, in theme with this Lake Eerie Island off the coast of Sandusky, Ohio. The clothing is boxy and not particularly attractive, but the girls sell it because they are masters at posing. “Smile!” I say, and they throw up their arms and jut out their shoulders and squeeze at their waists. They embrace. They grin with their whole faces, which are fresh and round with youth. Posing, they look happy, and this makes me happy. I tell myself that I am seeing their true selves. “Another one!” I say. “Another!”

Little Wonder

October 3, 2018 Fiction

By KAT GARDINER

Sunlight and Shadows

The sunlight filtered through the window of our cafe. Golden sweet, it wove around the trees, the garden, over the stage, through the window and onto the railroad tie floor. I didn’t mind sweeping, because I got to dip my feet in it.

There was music on, and in the late spring air, it sounded perfect. Gram Parson’s Brass Buttons. Like it was made for right there right then, even though we all knew it was made a long time ago, back when parents were young and happy and we were only a microscopic part of them.

Dogs

September 25, 2018 Fiction

By KELSEY LEACH

I walk along the sidewalk, my little dog tugging at her leash. The snow has begun to melt; water gathers in puddles and darkens the leather of my boots. The sun breaks over the roofs of houses across the street and the wet tree branches gleam. A sun too hot for January, but beautiful. The neighborhood is quiet and empty. I sniff the air.

An Untouched House

August 14, 2018 Fiction, Translation

Excerpt from the novel by W. F. HERMANS
Translated from the Dutch by DAVID COLMER

I went out the back door, across the marble terrace and down into the garden, as I had done so many times before. I looked up at the two windows I had calculated as belonging to the locked room. There was nothing to see. As always, they were covered with blackout paper. Nothing had changed. Walking back and forth, I studied all of the protrusions on the back wall: window frames, downpipes. I couldn’t see any way of climbing up without a ladder. It wasn’t even possible to reach them from the window of another room.

Reading Willow

July 31, 2018 Fiction

By ARTHUR KLEPCHUKOV

My wife pointed out the willow tree on move-in day. The branches draped over a hill as round as my wife’s belly at seven months. We’d traded a West Coast high-rise for an East Coast village where the only thing to wake our baby would be other babies. We came to the city in our youth. And we left for our youth.

All posts tagged: Fiction

Sofa

The History of Sound

Three

The Burrow

People Who Go to the Beach Alone

Put-in-Bay

Little Wonder

Dogs

An Untouched House

Reading Willow

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