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    Davis Five Short Stories

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    Gordon FUNG
    The document contains 5 short stories: 1) A story about a landlord in Brooklyn whose salamis were stolen from his shed during a crime wave. The landlord corrects those who refer to the stolen goods as "sausages" rather than "salamis". 2) A friend tells the narrator a sad story about their neighbor who fell in love with a man online but when he traveled to meet him, the man had died of a heart attack that very day. 3) Notes from a long phone call with the narrator's mother that are mostly illegible. 4) On a train, the narrator feels united with a stranger against two loud women but then notices the

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    Davis Five Short Stories

    Uploaded by

    Gordon FUNG
    54 views3 pages
    The document contains 5 short stories: 1) A story about a landlord in Brooklyn whose salamis were stolen from his shed during a crime wave. The landlord corrects those who refer to the stolen goods as "sausages" rather than "salamis". 2) A friend tells the narrator a sad story about their neighbor who fell in love with a man online but when he traveled to meet him, the man had died of a heart attack that very day. 3) Notes from a long phone call with the narrator's mother that are mostly illegible. 4) On a train, the narrator feels united with a stranger against two loud women but then notices the

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    Davis Five Short Stories

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    The document contains 5 short stories: 1) A story about a landlord in Brooklyn whose salamis were stolen from his shed during a crime wave. The landlord corrects those who refer to the stolen goods as "sausages" rather than "salamis". 2) A friend tells the narrator a sad story about their neighbor who fell in love with a man online but when he traveled to meet him, the man had died of a heart attack that very day. 3) Notes from a long phone call with the narrator's mother that are mostly illegible. 4) On a train, the narrator feels united with a stranger against two loud women but then notices the

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    54 views3 pages

    Davis Five Short Stories

    Uploaded by

    Gordon FUNG
    The document contains 5 short stories: 1) A story about a landlord in Brooklyn whose salamis were stolen from his shed during a crime wave. The landlord corrects those who refer to the stolen goods as "sausages" rather than "salamis". 2) A friend tells the narrator a sad story about their neighbor who fell in love with a man online but when he traveled to meet him, the man had died of a heart attack that very day. 3) Notes from a long phone call with the narrator's mother that are mostly illegible. 4) On a train, the narrator feels united with a stranger against two loud women but then notices the

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 3

    1

    Originally published in Five Dials (https://fivedials.com/fiction/five-short-stories/)

    Five Short Stories


    by Lydia Davis

    A Story of Stolen Salamis

    My son’s Italian landlord in Brooklyn kept a shed out back in which he cured and
    smoked salamis. One night, in the midst of a wave of petty vandalism and theft, the
    shed was broken into and the salamis were taken. My son talked to his landlord about it
    the next day, commiserating over the vanished sausages. The landlord was resigned
    and philosophical, but corrected him: ‘They were not sausages. They were salamis.’
    Then the incident was written up in one of the city’s more prominent magazines as
    an amusing and colourful urban incident. In the article, the reporter called the
    stolen goods ‘sausages’. My son showed the article to his landlord, who hadn’t seen
    it. The landlord was interested and pleased that the magazine had seen fit to report the
    incident, but he added: ‘They weren’t sausages. They were salamis.’

    A Story Told to Me by a Friend

    A friend of mine told me a sad story the other day about a neighbour of hers. He had
    begun a correspondence with a stranger through an online dating service. The friend
    lived hundreds of miles away, in North Carolina. The two men exchanged messages
    and then photos and were soon having long conversations, at first in writing and then
    by phone. They found that they had many interests in common, were emotionally and
    intellectually compatible, were comfortable with each other and were physically
    attracted to each other, as far as they could tell on the Internet. Their professional
    interests, too, were close, my friend’s neighbour being an accountant and his new friend
    down South an assistant professor of economics at a small college. After some months,
    they seemed to be well and truly in love, and my friend’s neighbour was convinced that
    ‘this was it’, as he put it. When some vacation time came up, he arranged to fly down
    south for a few days and meet his Internet love.

    During the day of travel, he called his friend two or three times and they talked. Then
    he was surprised to receive no answer. Nor was his friend at the airport to meet him.
    After waiting there and calling several more times, my friend’s neighbour left the
    airport and went to the address his friend had given him. No one answered when he
    knocked and rang. Every possibility went through his mind.
    2

    Here, some parts of the story are missing, but my friend told me that what
    her neighbour learned was that, on that very day, even as he was on his way south,
    his Internet friend had died of a heart attack while on the phone with his doctor;
    my friend’s neighbour, having learned this either from the man’s neighbour or from the
    police, had made his way to the local morgue; he had been allowed to view his Internet
    friend; and so it was here, face to face with a dead man, that he first laid eyes on the one
    who, he had been convinced, was to have been his companion for life.

    Notes During Long Phone Conversation with Mother

    for summer – she needs

    pretty dress – cotton

    cotton nottoc

    coontt

    tcoont

    toonct

    tocnot tocont

    tocton

    contot

    On the Train

    We are united, he and I, though strangers, against the two women in front of us talking
    so steadily and audibly across the aisle to each other. Bad manners.

    Later in the journey I look over at him (across the aisle) and he is picking his nose. As
    for me, I am dripping tomato from my sandwich on to my newspaper. Bad habits.

    I would not report this if I were the one picking my nose.

    I look again and he is still at it.


    3

    As for the women, they are now sitting together side by side and quietly reading, clean
    and tidy, one a magazine, one a book. Blameless.

    Susie Brown Will Be In Town

    Susie Brown will be in town. She will be in town to sell her things. Susie Brown is
    moving far away. She would like to sell her queen mattress. Do we want her queen
    mattress? Do we want her ottoman? Do we want her bath items?

    It is time to say goodbye to Susie Brown. We have enjoyed her friendship.

    We have enjoyed her tennis lessons.

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