I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: December 23, 2023] “Holiday”

This year my wife ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my sixth time reading the Calendar–it’s a holiday tradition!  Here’s what H&O says about the calendar this year.

The 2023 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individual short stories from some of the best writers in North America and beyond.  Now in its ninth year, the SSAC is back to once again bring readers a deluxe, peppermint-fresh collection of 25 short stories from some of the best writers in North America and beyond.

The author of this story was David Ryan.  Each day has an online component with the author with a brief interview.

It’s December 23. David Ryan, author of Animals in Motion, would like to open a chequing account.

I happened to be listening to an audio book about a family of grifters–something that I feel like I don’t hear about all that often.  And yet here was a random short story in this collection that is also about a grifter.

Jeremy and Sophia are in bed together.  They have been a couple for a short time, and Sophia has just told him the Lost in the Bank story (her parents lost her in a bank).  Jeremy: Were they high?  Sophia: Probably.

She is deliberately vague about her past.  But when she says that her father lived in Sacramento, it seems to break something inside of her.  She breaks up with him soon thereafter.

Just before Christmas, her father calls her (from Sacramento) and she flies out to him.  When she sees him, he looks very different.  He has put on weight and has shaved the sideburns and mustache.

Sophie asks about her mom and her dad is evasive.

The family were all grifters.  Small-time, but the local paper had referred to them as Bonnie and Clyde.  Mostly they had small jobs that kept them busy until it was time to leave: insurance scam, Ponzi scheme, mail-order, etc.  When they lived in Chicago her dad worked for Symphony Sid, aka The Iguana.

Her dad says that he is legit now.  But he admits that her mother has left him–because she was bored with his new life.

That night she goes for a walk and passes a pawn shop. The shop has a guitar that is clearly her father’s.  She knows the carvings that he put into the back of the guitar.