Author Gerard

  MY DINNER WITH MORRIS FINK   It was a Friday afternoon in February, and I was just clearing off my desk in preparation for departing the office for the day.   After a stretch of unusually disagreeable weather, I was looking forward to a weekend of repose.   During the week, the town of Norwich had been assailed mercilessly by three separate days of snow, followed by a quick thaw and then an overnight freeze-over.   This left the streets slick with an impenetrable rind of ice.   The mere act of walking had become a treacherous feat, and via typed bulletins and telegraph dispatches that crossed my desk, I had learned of numerous accidents and casualties all along the New England seaboard.   The worst of the wires reported a seagoing tugboat named had lost the two coal barges she had been towing up to Providence from Norfolk.   It appeared that all eight men and one woman, the wife of one of the barge captains, had been lost at sea when the bar...

  LAS FLACAS Gerard Thornton                  Curt and Troy rolled to a stop in the big red pickup truck.   They waited impatiently for the light to change on Collins Avenue.    The stereo was blaring a Morgan Wallen song.   Troy craned his neck to make sure the case of Bud Light that he had perched on the gear in the back seat didn’t topple over.   Once he was satisfied the beer was stable, he returned his attention to the nightlife parading down the street of Miami’s fabled South Beach neighborhood.   The lights of the late night strip blazed out, turning the night into almost daytime brightness.                “Yo, man, check out those bitches,” Curt shouted over the music.   Troy followed his friend’s gaze to the car sitting next to them at the light.   It was a brand new M8 Gran Coupe. ...