Tag: fiction (Page 3 of 5)

The following flash fiction was inspired by the people of New York, and the street photography that captures the diversity and excitement of the city.  The story, names, and situations are all 100% fictional.   Photo and story by Neil Kramer.

Honey, Sweetie, Hot Mama. Sherry had heard them all. She was an expert in wolf whistles, deciphering the lout’s jerk-level from the tone and the pitch.

New York was a tough place for a looker like Sherry. The men showed no respect. Every guy, from the Wall Street CEO to the delivery man thought that he was Prince Harry, and she was the royal prize.

Sherry didn’t hate the men of New York.   She hated herself.  Because she knew that when the time came when no one admired her ass for the precious jewel of her youth, that she would miss it.

The following flash fiction was inspired by the people of New York, and the street photography that captures the diversity and excitement of the city.  The story, names, and situations are all 100% fictional.   Photo and story by Neil Kramer.

When Anthony Vizzi was fifteen years old, at 7:40AM, on the way to his job at the warehouse, he stopped at Caffé Napoli on Hester Street and ordered an espresso. He knew that he was too young to be drinking coffee, and that his mother would object, but since the night before, he had lost his virginity to Angela Finaldi, he felt that he deserved an espresso, if not for the taste, which was as sour as the dark hidden spaces between Angela’s ample thighs, but for the symbolism of the event.

Eighty years to the day, Maurice, the forty-something morning-shift waiter at Caffé Napoli, noticed that Mr. Vizzi was absent from his usual table. Mr. Anthony Vizza had ordered an expresso at 7:40AM from the same table at Caffé Napoli for the last eight decades. Maurice immediately ran to the manager, Mr. Scuza, and told him of his concerns about Anthony’s absence. Mr. Scuza immediately called 911. Something was wrong.

Ten minutes later, police officers from the 13th and 1st precincts arrived at the door of Anthony Vizzi, along with the fire department, senior members of the Italian Fraternity of Hester Street, an ambulance from Saint Francis, representatives of the McNeil Funeral Home, friends from the nearby Jewish and Chinese community boards, and Mr. Scuza, manager of Caffé Napoli. Maurice, the waiter on duty, tagged along, carrying a take-out espresso for Mr. Vizzi, just in case this was all some horrible mistake.

It was as if the entire community was there to pay respect to Anthony Vizzi, the man who learned to appreciate the pleasure of a woman’s touch when he lost his virginity to Angela Finaldi eighty years ago. But Anthony Vizzi opened the door to his apartment. He was wearing a snazzy seersucker suit and looked not dead, but quite healthy and fit for a man of his age.

“Thank God you’re alive!” said Mr. Scuza, the café manager. “I was so worried.”

It was a false alarm, and off went the police officers from the 13th and 1st precincts, the fire department, senior members of the Italian Fraternity of Hester Street, an ambulance from Saint Francis, representatives of the McNeil Funeral Home, friends from the nearby Jewish and Chinese community boards, and Mr. Scuza, manager of Caffé Napoli, back to their usual day.

The only one who remained at the door was Maurice, the waiter on duty. He was taking this experience the hardest of them all. Ever since his time in Catholic school, he believed in the sacred order of things, and for eighty years, Anthony Vizzi stopped by for his espresso.

Except for today.

“I don’t understand,” Maurice said to Mr. Vizzi. “You are in fine health. Why didn’t you come today for your usual espresso?”

“I wasn’t in the mood. I decided to walk up to Mrs. Wang’s place in Chinatown and try some of that Chinese health tea she’s always talking about.”

“But you’ve been having an espresso for eighty years! Eighty years!” Maurice repeated. “No disrespect to you, Mr. Vizzi, but it seems “irresponsible” for you to stop and go in another direction so late in life.”

Mr. Vizzi never finished high school, but he was a keen observer of human nature. You couldn’t survive in the warehouse all those years without learning a thing or two about people. And he instinctively knew that that Maurice’s anxiety was about his own personal fears over the fragility of life than anything to do with Anthony Vizzi’s eighty years of espresso-drinking.

“You’re never too old to change,” Anthony Vizzi told the forty-something Maurice. “I know you hear people say that and you think it’s all bullshit. But it’s not. Look at me. Now you have proof that it isn’t bullshit. You’re never too old to change.”

Maurice nodded slowly. He had just received a great gift. He took a sip from Mr. Vizzi’s take-out espresso and planned his future away from the Caffe Napoli.

It didn’t take Marc long to figure out secret of living in the city.  “New York is theater,” he would say, from his studio on East 43rd Street.   “You leave your apartment and enter stage right.  No one cares about YOU. You are the role you play.  Either it is assigned against your will, or you create it with your own hands, like a special piece of Play-doh.”

And Marc certainly made myself.   He asked for no help.  He was taught by his hard-working parents never to ask for a hand-out.   It was his parents who built “The Gaucho House” from scratch — the first faux Argentine steakhouse ever seen in the Buffalo area.  Yes, Marc ran from home as fast as possible, at the age of seventeen, but he always respected the self-sufficiency of his parents.

It was in this spirit of kinship that Marc became his own guide.  He devised a look that intimidated and a way of speaking that invited envy.   And when introduced to others at parties, he would say his name was — Markk.

Growing up in Queens, Lien dreamed of one day having a wedding in her favorite spot in the New York – the manicured French Conservatory Garden in Central Park.  Under the flowery arches, and before the statues of the two Maidens dancing in the shaded pool, Lien would speak her vows of love and companionship to the man who would be her husband.

Lien’s two young sisters, Amy and Grace, were intelligent and deserving women, and Lien was proud of her role in guiding them to maturity. But attending their double weddings this afternoon, in the very spot she had yet to stand, dressed in black like the spinster she had become, felt like two sharpened knives thrust into her chest.

He sat in the back of the van for the rest of the morning, not to avoid traffic, but to be seen. By his neighbors. By the suckers off to their jobs at the banks and brokerage firms, slaving for hours and always dying at fifty. By their snooty kids off to their private schools with the French names. By the too-thin wives stuck at home, bored, giving off that ‘please, fuck me” vibe whenever he’d be over fixing their sink. He was out of this town, and he wanted everyone to know. Goodbye, New York City.

“I don’t care about “making” it here.  That’s fool’s gold,” he yelled at a passing neighbor, the depressing guy who lived in apartment 3D.   “I’m off to Nebraska.”