PIRANHAS & QUICKSAND & LOVE PIRANHAS & QUICKSAND & LOVE STORIES Sally Shivnan Press 53 Winston-SalemX Press 53, LLC PO Box 30314 Winston-Salem, NC 27130 First Edition Copyright © 2016 by Sally Shivnan All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For permission, contact publisher at
[email protected], or at the address above. Cover design by Maryam Banyahmad and Amir Khatirnia www.behance.net/amirkhatirnia Author photo by James Gerfin This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Printed on acid-free paper ISBN: 978-1-941209-42-4 For Jim and remembering Alan Cheuse, teacher and generous soul Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the publications where the following stories, some in a slightly different form, first appeared: “Dicking the Buddha,” The Antioch Review; “The Confectioner,”Glimmer Train Stories; “Simon’s Berth,” The Chesapeake Reader; “Something, Anything,” Rosebud; “Dee Told Bea,” Perpetuum Mobile; “The Mover,” The Baltimore Review; and “Lola,” So To Speak. The book referenced in “Rapture” is Sailing: a Lubber’s Dictionary by Henry Beard and Roy McKie, published by Workman Publishing, 2001. CONTENTS Dicking the Buddha 1 The Confectioner 19 Simon’s Berth 29 Piranhas & Quicksand & Love 41 Something, Anything 59 The Detectorist 65 Blood Lake 77 Dee Told Bea 91 The Mover 101 What Do You Remember? 115 The Accidental Inventor 125 Rapture 145 Lola 167 Bit and Piece 179 Dicking the Buddha I waited for my sister to sit down, before I asked her.