If Angels Fight Read Online Free
Author: Richard Bowes
relief, maybe even the happiness Mr. Dunn had mentioned. From his perch near the front, the bartender gave me a slightly wary look like maybe I had come in at 2 A.M., drunk ginger ale, and had a conversation with myself. I occurred to me that if that’s what happened, the first one to go take a leak was going to get a very nice surprise.
But as I went out into the cold, the bartender’s gaze shifted, his hand reached for the pouring bottle, and I heard the cellar door swing open behind me.
The verbal snapshot, the anecdote, the New Yorker “Casual” is a staple of life in this city (“You wouldn’t believe what I just saw!”).
Recently there’s been a newfound interest in very short stories (usually a thousand words or less) referred to as “Flash Fiction.” Once this was a popular length for newspaper and magazine fiction and the pieces were called “Short-Shorts.” By the late ’50s that term was used by people my age for the pants girls wore in summer and boys wore for gym.
Here are three of mine.
EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE
His Only Nose
A few weeks ago I passed a guy on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. He was saying in a loud, aggrieved tone of voice to the woman he was with, “I ONLY GOT THIS ONE NOSE.” And though I’ve lived in Manhattan for a long time and heard lots of great mad street cries and wonderful twisted passer-by talk, I still paid enough attention to wonder what led him to mention this.
When I told people about the incident a writer friend suggested that the woman had bopped him in the nose. An interesting premise, but in my quick glance I’d seen no evidence that his nose (a serviceable but common enough medium sized specimen—not a pug, not a wild honker) was bleeding or was in any way not “a virgin.”
That’s how unbroken noses were described in the South Boston of my childhood, a time and place where it was said that anyone who reached the age of twelve without a broken nose was either a newcomer or a girl.
My friend, Liz, who has known me for decades, was inclined to believe that he came from an alternate world where any individual could have a variety of noses and other body parts. At first I thought this was a nice piece of whimsy on her part and was amused. Then she reminded me of certain experiences we had shared.
The first involved a man with whom the sister of a mutual friend went out, a guy who was fascinated but terrified by electricity. One night, drunk and stoned, he claimed to be from a reality where Con Edison had never moved from very crude Direct Current to Alternating Current. Thus the New York City of his birth was dangerously lighted and electrical fires were commonplace. The sister soon dropped him and we learned no more.
Another was a bartender with what sounded like a French Canadian accent who worked at a place on Sullivan Street some years ago. He would claim once he’d had a few in him that he came from a world where Napoleon had conquered North America and Noveau York was French speaking.
“You know,” my friend said, “that every time there’s calamity anywhere in the world: war, poverty, pestilence, man-made or natural disaster, refugees from that location appear in this neighborhood and open ethnic restaurants. It’s a law of nature.
“We’ve got all the old and new trouble spots from Italy to Ethiopia, Vietnam to Afghanistan. I’ll bet Libya is next. If all of them end up here why not people from Alternate Realities.”
When I mentioned this jokingly to a guy I know slightly, Frankie who’s an administrator the University, he told me in a condescending manner that everyone used to say Alternate Reality. But the label is now considered insensitive. The correct term is Diverse Origin Worlds or DOW. And that this was a situation which was just beginning to be better understood.
I mentioned that troubles in places with less fortunate histories than ours always translate into refugees in the neighborhood. Frankie said, “Once you
But as I went out into the cold, the bartender’s gaze shifted, his hand reached for the pouring bottle, and I heard the cellar door swing open behind me.
The verbal snapshot, the anecdote, the New Yorker “Casual” is a staple of life in this city (“You wouldn’t believe what I just saw!”).
Recently there’s been a newfound interest in very short stories (usually a thousand words or less) referred to as “Flash Fiction.” Once this was a popular length for newspaper and magazine fiction and the pieces were called “Short-Shorts.” By the late ’50s that term was used by people my age for the pants girls wore in summer and boys wore for gym.
Here are three of mine.
EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE
His Only Nose
A few weeks ago I passed a guy on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. He was saying in a loud, aggrieved tone of voice to the woman he was with, “I ONLY GOT THIS ONE NOSE.” And though I’ve lived in Manhattan for a long time and heard lots of great mad street cries and wonderful twisted passer-by talk, I still paid enough attention to wonder what led him to mention this.
When I told people about the incident a writer friend suggested that the woman had bopped him in the nose. An interesting premise, but in my quick glance I’d seen no evidence that his nose (a serviceable but common enough medium sized specimen—not a pug, not a wild honker) was bleeding or was in any way not “a virgin.”
That’s how unbroken noses were described in the South Boston of my childhood, a time and place where it was said that anyone who reached the age of twelve without a broken nose was either a newcomer or a girl.
My friend, Liz, who has known me for decades, was inclined to believe that he came from an alternate world where any individual could have a variety of noses and other body parts. At first I thought this was a nice piece of whimsy on her part and was amused. Then she reminded me of certain experiences we had shared.
The first involved a man with whom the sister of a mutual friend went out, a guy who was fascinated but terrified by electricity. One night, drunk and stoned, he claimed to be from a reality where Con Edison had never moved from very crude Direct Current to Alternating Current. Thus the New York City of his birth was dangerously lighted and electrical fires were commonplace. The sister soon dropped him and we learned no more.
Another was a bartender with what sounded like a French Canadian accent who worked at a place on Sullivan Street some years ago. He would claim once he’d had a few in him that he came from a world where Napoleon had conquered North America and Noveau York was French speaking.
“You know,” my friend said, “that every time there’s calamity anywhere in the world: war, poverty, pestilence, man-made or natural disaster, refugees from that location appear in this neighborhood and open ethnic restaurants. It’s a law of nature.
“We’ve got all the old and new trouble spots from Italy to Ethiopia, Vietnam to Afghanistan. I’ll bet Libya is next. If all of them end up here why not people from Alternate Realities.”
When I mentioned this jokingly to a guy I know slightly, Frankie who’s an administrator the University, he told me in a condescending manner that everyone used to say Alternate Reality. But the label is now considered insensitive. The correct term is Diverse Origin Worlds or DOW. And that this was a situation which was just beginning to be better understood.
I mentioned that troubles in places with less fortunate histories than ours always translate into refugees in the neighborhood. Frankie said, “Once you
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