Jack Swenson writes when he isn't teaching. His stories have appeared or are pending in Lesser Flamingo, Grey Sparrow, Writers at Work, The Foundling Review, Camrock Press Review, Pindeldyboz, Full of Crow, Weave, and Boston Literary Magazine.

Snapshots


i

One day she gets so mad at him she rakes her fingernails down his face. Jake has to hold her down on the bed. That night they go to their friends' house for dinner. "What happened to you?" Carlos asks. Jake says he cut himself shaving.

ii

Carlos's wife is a spinner, a little blonde. A midget. Jake and the blonde get together on the q.t. Some time later the woman, whose name is Amy, runs off with a high school teacher. Jake is sad. So is Carlos. Carlos, who is enterprising, calls the teacher's wife and asks her to dinner. She accepts.

iii

Years later Amy tells Jake that she faked her orgasms when they were making love. "Ha ha," he says. He makes her take off her clothes, and he takes nude photographs of her. From time to time he takes out the pictures and looks at them. She isn't pretty, he decides. He wonders why he was so crazy about her.

iv

Jake remembers that Amy told him once that she thought that somehow he would always be a part of her life. That was before she went to Spain and married an American bull fighter. He thinks: I haven't seen her in years.