New on Redux: A beautiful story by my former writing group member, C.M. Mayo. Her comments on my work often sounded like this, in a very sweet voice: “Leslie, I can’t see this.” So as I wrote, I tried to anticipate where she might not be able to see—and I became a far better writer in the process. Still—miles to go before I ever come close to the wonderful visual sense and details that she captures, as evidenced in this wonderful story, “Revillagigedo.”
Rigoberto Castro had a flair for the dramatic, his wife Beatrix always said, and when she said it she rolled her eyes like a saint, engulfed in flames, imploring heaven. Beatrix had been obliged to speak to him recently about his new habit of wearing an ascot. Before they were married, when they were novios, when Rigoberto was twenty-two and Beatrix barely twenty-three, she had been obliged to speak to him about his habit of using an ivory cigarette holder. "Riggy dear," Beatrix had said, Riggy dyahr, in her plummy BBC accent, "You fancy you look like a movie director, but you look rather like Roosevelt. An old man with snaggly teeth." Rigoberto Castro did have snaggly teeth, which were now stained with the coffee and nicotine of five decades. He was sixty-nine years old, and with a bum ticker, too. Mitral valve prolapse.
*****
Speaking of Redux…
Don’t forget that there will be an open reading period that starts on October 8. Details can be found here.
And I’ll be introducing a brand new editorial board in the coming days. You can get a sneak peek here.