Holidays Frightened My Father and Other Stories: Personal Essays and Short Stories


DEAR SEX PREDATOR
A brilliant 14-year-old computer prodigy enjoys chats about sex with weird guys. When her parents see an alarming message on her screen, they get a cop from the D.A.'s "Sex Predator Office" to warn Nikki of the risks. He tries to clip her computer wings, but she runs circles around him--until one of her internet friends decides to meet her on the way to school...

THE FATHERING BARGAIN
Trudie and Walter are loving living together in a great Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan with "Baldy," a Persian cat who is seriously neurotic, but she wants a baby--now--and that has always scared him. When she sets a deadline, they struggle for their future with some very "advanced" psychotherapists and by discovering if they can even see eye-to-eye in parenting a cat that pisses in the bed.

SAY HELLO TO NEW YORK, FOR ME
When his car goes dead in the hills of West Virginia, with night and a snow storm approaching, a New Yorker finds out from a kid in Appalachia how much competence is worth in life.

SUDDENLY--NO WHEELS!
When I woke up one day, in Worcester, Massachusetts, to find that my midnight blue Corvair had been stolen, people kept saying "Just some kids on joy ride" and "Who would want it?"

THE TOM
A fashionable summer lake community has a peeping Tom and so far the police haven't been able to catch him. So runners in the community make a plan to do try to do it. But when the 'Tom" turns out to be a 'she," Annie Burke conceives a bright idea for raising big money at the community's summer auction.

EASY RUNNER
When I ran every evening on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, through Carl Schurz Park and along the East River, I discovered that there are almost as many ways to be competitive as there are steps in a run.

THE BRIGHT IDEA
The mayor's beautiful, ambitious wife would love to eliminate his chief rival for the governorship, and also get back at a guy who gives her too many long, lingering looks.

WHAT MR ZIMET SAW
A NYPD detective drafts a psychic into a scheme to trick a murder suspect into leading the police to a body they haven't been able to find. Mr. Zimet goes along with the "sting,"--and the detective discovers Zimet has extraordinary powers, after all.

HOLIDAYS FRIGHTENED MY FATHER
He propitiated the gods at Thanksgiving and Christmas by finding the toughest, messiest job around the house. When he bought a summer vacation home, the required penance for enjoying himself was monumental. And so the whole family joined in drilling the new well--by hand.

VERNON BAGLEY'S GOLDEN YEARS
After 40 years in the basement of Martins and Snead in shipping and receiving, Bagley would do anything--anything--to live his life again as a novelist. He's willing to give that opportunity to young Earl Stokes, so he can be a painter, but Stokes just won't take it.

FEELING MY WAY
When my father died suddenly I discovered the demands that the dead make on the living.

LOVE AND HONOR AT ENGHEIN
Jon Kister is in Paris in June, celebrating his graduation from Harvard, enjoying his first love affair, and trying to recover from a shocking row with his father. When his college roommate and best friend, Lance, suddenly shows up, Jon wonders if Lance's card-counting skills can save his trip--and probably his love affair.

DIALOGUE
After Kate goes out on a dinner date, Roy and Helen sit at dinner speculating about their daughter's sex life. Helen goes from wondering if Roy ever heard of the sexual revolution to sudden fear that he is too interested in Kate.

STOLEN CHRISTMAS GIFTS
Alec is a handsome young man with a new job at a department store and the Christmas rush is on. Soon, though, he finds himself in a new love affair--and in a big, sophisticated, long-term shoplifting ring. Who do you think will be in trouble by Christmas?