DIRK VAN NOUHUYS Dirk van Nouhuys is a native of Berkeley, California. He writes short stories, some experimental forms, and occasionally verse, but mostly novels, which have been published as excerpts or serially. About 100 items of fiction and a few poems have appeared in literary or general magazines. He has a BA from Stanford in creative writing and an MA from Columbia in contemporary literature. He worked for decades as a tech writer and manager for SRI’S Augmentation Research Center, Apple, Sun, and others. This century he devotes full time to fiction. He occasionally publishes translations and photography. http://www.wandd.com/about_me.html
Faith It was the day before Thanksgiving. Celia was an orphan since her grandmother had gone to Wisconsin, and no kin offered the ritual turkey. She had been invited to Thanksgiving dinner both by the family of her high school friend The Pretty Girl, who would be back for the holiday, and by her suite mate Angelique. Angelique was a fellow math major whose mother ran a café that featured food and music from the Azores. The subject of the holiday had not arisen between Celia and the guy she was hooking up with. Celia had committed to dinner with Angelique, who seemed to her to open toward another world.
She returned to her dormitory after her morning classes to find one of the girls in her suite, Debby Leigh, lying on the floor weeping. Debby was not close to Celia who remembered her mostly attached to her boyfriend—like a parasitic fish, Celia thought. She did not even know what Debby’s major was. She was surprised to see her in the dorm at all, because she knew that she had planned to travel with him to her home town in the California gold country. Debby did not seem to notice that Celia had entered, as she sprawled abandoned on the tile in paroxysms of weeping and choking, her moans as physically immersive as passionate lovemaking. Celia knelt and put her hand on Debby’s shoulder, as much puzzled as distressed. Debby twitched as if startled by a loud noise, then rolled over on her back and looked up.
continued overleaf... © Dirk van Nouhuys 2023 November - December POETRY & WRITING © liveencounters.net
