Rogue's Atlas: 66 Flash Fiction Stories - Hardcover

WOEFULLY SHORT

Mr. Patrick Maloney checked in with the receptionist, who swiped his insurance card and said the doctor was running a little late. “So kindly take a seat, and keep your mask on at all times.” 

Maloney sat in a lopsided chair, and would gladly have announced his arrival with a nod or a smile to the others scattered around the waiting room. But all eyes were glued to their phones. Except the young woman sitting directly across from him, wearing trendy transitional glasses with the lenses that darken in the light, so he couldn’t see her eyes all that well. Only enough to note that they never acknowledged his existence when he sat down, not eight feet away from her.  

Maloney took the high road and absolved the young woman, who evidently didn’t know much of anything. Who thought combat boots, with the laces untied, compliment a dress? If she called that a dress. Open halter, back-slit something or other. And mint green? He flinched to imagine her, turned out in that ensemble, showing up at his firm for a job interview.   

She looked right at him now, with burrowing intensity, which only broke when, with a start, she appeared to catch herself daydreaming. Or more likely, zoning out. This young woman looked hungover if ever Maloney had seen someone, bleary and bewildered after a bender. She’d learn, he hoped. Or she’d end up in a trailer in Pacoima. 

A nurse came in for a Mr. Ovitz. When the young woman glanced that way, Maloney saw the orderly cluster of small black dots tattooed on the young woman’s shoulder. Was that kind of thing fashionable these days? Maloney chuckled to himself. He didn’t know trendy from Yankee Doodle.  

After his own daughter—around the young woman’s age⁠—got a tribal sleeve tattoo, maybe to spite her Irish ancestors, they barely talked for a month. Now she only called on Christmas, speaking briefly to his wife. He sometimes wondered how his daughter had plunged so far off the rails.