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Also by Lucia Berlin
A Manual for Cleaning Ladies (1977)
Angels Laundromat (1981)
Legacy (1983)
Phantom Pain (1984)
Safe & Sound (1988)
Homesick: New & Selected Stories (1990)
Where I Live Now: Stories 1993–1998 (1999)
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories (2015)
This is
A Black Sparrow Book
Published in 2016 by
DAVID R. GODINE, PUBLISHER
Post Office Box 450
Jaffrey, New Hampshire 03452
Copyright © 1993 by Lucia Berlin
Copyright © 2016 by the Literary Estate of Lucia Berlin LP
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact Permissions, David R. Godine, Publisher, Fifteen Court Square, Suite 320, Boston, Massachusetts, 02108.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some of these stories first appeared in Phantom Pain, Tombouctou Press (1984) and Safe and Sound, Poltroon Press (1989). Some of the stories also appeared in the following magazines: City Lights Review, Folio, Gas, In This Corner, Jejune, Peninsula, Rigorous, Rolling Stock, The New Censorship and Zyzzyva. Many thanks to those publishers for permission to reprint.
SOFTCOVER ISBN: 978-0-87685-893-6
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-57423-230-1
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA BERLIN, LUCIA.
So long : stories, 1987–1992 / Lucia Berlin.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-87685-894-9 (cloth) : $25.00.
ISBN 0-87685-893-0 (pbk.) : $13.00.
ISBN 0-87685-895-7 (cloth signed) : $30.00
I. Title.
ps 3552.e72485s6 1993
813’.54–dc20 93-6659
CIP
For Monica
Contents
Luna Nueva
The sun set with a hiss as the wave hit the beach. The woman continued up the checkered black and gold tiles of the malecón to the cliffs on the hill. Other people resumed walking too once the sun had set, like spectators leaving a play. It isn’t just the beauty of the tropical sunset she thought, the importance of it. In Oakland the sun set into the Pacific each evening and it was the end of another day. When you travel you step back from your own days, from the fragmented imperfect linearity of your time. As when reading a novel, the events and people become allegorical and eternal. The boy whistles on a wall in Mexico. Tess leans her head against a cow. They will keep doing that forever; the sun will just keep on falling into the sea.
She walked onto a platform above the cliffs. The magenta sky reflected iridescent in the water. Below the cliffs a vast swimming pool had been built of stones into the jagged rock. Waves shattered against the far walls and spilled into the pool, scattering crabs. A few boys swam in the deeper water, but most people waded or sat on the mossy rocks.
The woman climbed down the rocks to the water. She took off the shift covering her bathing suit and sat on the
