Ladies and Gentlemen (Vintage Contemporaries)
Adam Ross
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 0307454916
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
After his widely celebrated debut, Mr. Peanut, Adam Ross now presents a darkly compelling collection of stories about brothers, loners, lovers, and lives full of good intentions, misunderstandings, and obscured motives.
A hotshot lawyer, burdened by years of guilt and resentment, comes to the rescue of his irresponsible, irresistible younger brother. An unsettling story resonates between the dysfunctional couple telling it and their listening friends as well. A lonely professor, frequently regaled with unbelievably entertaining tales by the office handyman, suddenly fears he’s being asked to abet a murderous fugitive. An awkward but nervy adolescent uses his brief career as a child actor to further his designs on a WASPy friend’s seemingly untouchable sister. A man down on his luck closes in on a mysterious, much-needed job offer while doing a good turn for his fragile neighbor, with results at once surreal and hilarious. And when two college kids goad each other on in an escalating series of breathtaking dares, the outcome is as tragic as it is ambiguous.
Laced with glimmers of redemption, youthful energy, and hard-won wisdom, these noirish stories unspool purposefully and fluidly; together they confirm the arrival of—as Michiko Kakutani put it in The New York Times—“an enormously talented writer.”
to where we were sitting and compare the guys against her criteria and describe how they’d passed or failed. And the whole time she seemed completely happy. “But none of them made the cut. I don’t think she even slept with anybody. One guy, Thomas, was part of the Heinz or Hellmann’s family—directly related to some condiment. Anyway, he took her out regularly and spent many late nights at the apartment, but always left scratching his head. I mean literally. He looked so puzzled that Maria and I
ask you to lock me in from the outside.” Applelow laughed. “I’m guessing she locked the liquor cabinet too.” “Mom doesn’t have any booze. She’s a true Jew that way.” Cackling to himself, he seemed in good spirits. “I could go for a beer, though.” “I’m out,” Applelow said, though he’d immediately warmed to the boy. “I’ve got some cash.” “No, I’ll pay,” he said, then went to his apartment and took the book down. When he turned around, Zach was standing in the doorway, looking at his far wall,
along three sides of the main room, and there’s a downstairs banquet area for private parties that’s as enormous as this one. Both were filled—Tuesday night and the place was jammed—and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was always this busy during the week. “No,” Kevin answered when I asked him. “Tonight’s some weird exception. The owner, he’s just taking a loss. He’s got another one down in Austin that loses as much money as you can in Texas. It’s a write-off. But that’s how he wants it.” He
early where I work, no “first one in.” We’re round the clock. But I would impress Chuck with my diligence, we’d bond over my wounds, and I’d work my way back into his graces. Meanwhile, I’d leave the suit and shirt hanging on the door for the cleaners. I wished I could see their faces when they inspected this job, and that almost made me want to drop it off myself: the suit and shirt lying on the counter, the fabric starched with coagulation. For a while they’d wonder what the hell had happened.
told me he’d put two bullets in the man’s head: “two eyes for an eye.” He had a ton of these stories, though in truth I thought of Mr. Herman as a Jew mostly because I couldn’t go to Abe’s house on Fridays or during Passover, when his family withdrew and their apartment became a kind of impregnable fortress. I did get invited that December for the lighting of their menorah, when again Abe sang in Hebrew (which I thought must be the same as Yiddish). He put on his yarmulke and chanted at the