a taste of the frozen moment: THE VISITATIONS

[the book is THE FROZEN MOMENT. the publication date is DECEMBER 17th. here's a little TASTE of one of the stories...]

THE VISITATIONS by Tom Spanbauer

Two weeks of hot hot bright August. Portland. During the day, the kind of heat your old house soaks up into its bones.  At night, the heat is inside the walls, under the floor, comes off in waves from the ceiling. Forget about going upstairs. All your long skinny windows open with those pop-in expandable screens.  

At night, they walk by, drunk from the Alto Lounge or the Belmont Inn. They are loud and horny, passing cigarettes, joints, yelling fuck on their way to the bars on Stark and  28^th. Youth. You remember youth. How you walked from bar to bar. The night at Zefiro’s you drank espressos and dirty martinis back to back. Nat Shermans, Galois, Camel straights.  In one of the narrow toilettes, the door locked, a line of cocaine tapped out on the sink.  Above the toilet, the photo of the young naked woman on the beach.  A moment that one night when you stopped.  You looked around.  This isn’t supposed to be good for you, you said.

[Tom Spanbauer is the author of Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, Now is the Hour and In the City of Shy Hunters. You can find his website here.]

Tom will be reading along with contributors Michael Sage Ricci, Margaret Malone, Charles Dye, Liz Prato, Mary Wharff, J. W. Griffith and Brad Rosen on December 17th at The Woods. The facebook event is here. Books will be available at the event. You can also order books through Publication Studio here.