“Same as I do now. Cut ’em off.”
“What do you do when you’re not working here?”
“I just gave a Ghost Walk,” Annie says. “Have you ever gone on that?”
“No,” he replies, moving closer.
“You’re not going to give me this bar,” she says, meaning: What would your wife say?
Then he kisses her, planting his lips on hers slowly, so that she has time to think the word lingering, and all she has to do is stand there and feel how much taller he is, how big, and how she must feel like an escape to him. If this were a movie, she’d lay her head on his shoulder, curl into the embrace. But she can taste Dale’s worries on his lips, the dry breath of another’s fear. She steps away.
“Do you give good ghost?” he asks.
“It’s funny,” she says, “the way people want to be scared. The Ghost Walk, horror movies. Why? When there’s so much real stuff to be afraid of?”
Something like anger flickers in his eyes. He says, “That pig stuff. That’s what’s scary. My wife’s going out of her freakin’ mind.”
“Get her to collect something completely different,” Annie suggests, “to throw people off the scent.”
“You think we didn’t try that already?” Dale snaps.
He jerks open the door and goes inside, and Annie follows.
Costumed celebrants stream into the bar for food and drink: devil, clown, cowboy, pirate. Annie takes their orders. The pirate grins when she hands him a plate of fried mozzarella, and hope shoots through her. His teeth and his earring catch the light. She imagines lying in bed with him, telling him about the woman who turned into soap.
Her twisted ankle throbs, and she kicks off her shoes. The floor of the bar feels ice cold, and every passing car on the cobblestones outside sends a tremor beneath her feet.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
MEREDITH ANTHONY is a Pennsylvania native who spent considerable time on Philadelphia’s Main Line with her beloved mother-in-law, the late Nancy Light. She is the coauthor of the thriller Ladykiller, which received many rave reviews and was nominated for the year’s best mystery by ForeWord Magazine. Her short stories appear in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. She currently lives in New York City and is working on a new thriller.
DIANE AYRES is the author of Other Girls, a widely praised satirical novel. She also does editorial consulting, and her “Fiction Addiction” workshops, developed at the University of Pennsylvania, have inspired many students and professional writers. Ayres has lived in the Bella Vista neighborhood of Philadelphia with her husband, author Stephen Fried, for over twenty years, so they are still considered newcomers. For more information, visit www.dianeayres.com.
CORDELIA FRANCES BIDDLE is the author of the Martha Beale novels Without Fear, Deception’s Daughter, and The Conjurer, set in Victorian-era Philadelphia. The series was inspired by research into two ancestors: Nicholas Biddle, president of the Second Bank of the U.S., and Francis Martin Drexel, whose brokerage house helped finance the government during the Civil War. Biddle also penned the historical novel Beneath the Wind. For more information, visit www.keithgilman.com.
KEITH GILMAN’s debut novel, Father’s Day, was awarded Best First Novel by the Private Eye Writers of America. Gilman is also a cop, on the job in the Philadelphia area for over fifteen years. The second book in Gilman’s series of detective novels is due out in 2011. For more information, visit www.keithgilman.com.
CARY HOLLADAY, a native of Virginia, lived in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, in the early 1990s and still misses the cobblestoned streets and the cheese shop. She is the author of five volumes of fiction, including The Quick-Change Artist: Stories. She teaches at the University of Memphis.
SOLOMON JONES is the best-selling author of six novels, including The Last Confession, The Bridge, and his critically acclaimed debut, Pipe Dream. Jones is an adjunct professor at Temple University’s College of Liberal Arts, an award-winning columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, and an aide to U.S. Congressman Chaka Fattah. He is a member of The Liar’s Club, a Philadelphia-area writers group. For more information, visit solomonjones.com.
GERALD KOLPAN lives in Philadelphia’s Queen Village neighborhood. He has been an illustrator, graphic designer, and rock musician, as well as a print and broadcast journalist. In the 1980s, Kolpan was a contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered, and for over twenty years he was the Emmy Award-winning features reporter for Philly’s WXTF-TV. Ballantine Books published his first novel, Etta, in 2009 (www.ettathenovel.com).
AIMEE LABRIE received her MA in writing from DePaul University in 2000 and her MFA in fiction from Penn State in 2003. Her collection of short stories, Wonderful Girl, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction in 2007. Her short stories have also been published in Minnesota Review, Pleiades, Quarter After Eight, Iron Horse Literary Review, and other literary journals. Currently, she is the director of marketing and communications for alumni relations at the University of Pennsylvania.
HALIMAH MARCUS was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Narberth, a western suburb of the city. After receiving her BA in English at Vassar College, she returned to live and work in West Philadelphia. She currently attends Brooklyn College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing for fiction.
CARLIN ROMANO, Critic-at-Large of the Chronicle of Higher Education and Literary Critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty-five years (1984-2009), is now Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Ursinus College. In 2006, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism, cited by the Pulitzer Board for “bringing new vitality to the classic essay across a formidable array of topics.” He lives in University City.
ASALI SOLOMON was born and raised in West Philadelphia. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and was selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” for her first book of short stories, Get Down. After nearly twenty years of wandering, she once again lives in West Philadelphia, with her husband and son.
LAURA SPAGNOLI lived in various apartments in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square area for twelve years before moving to the Italian Market neighborhood. Her poetry has appeared in ONandOnScreen.net, New Millennium Writings, and Philadelphia Stories, among other places. She works as an associate professor of French instruction at Temple University, where she founded a magazine featuring students’ original writing translated into and out of English.