Flying Leap

Flying Leap
Judy Budnitz

The Brothers Grimm take lessons in fiction from Angela Carter to produce this uncanny and surreal work.Judy Budnitz might just be the most exciting and unusual literary figure to emerge from the US literary thicket in 2000. She marries great technical skill to quirky humour and dizzying metaphor. She has an uncanny knack for the destabilizing and indelible image, but does not abandon sense for sensibility. She is always readable, albeit strangely so. She might yet be an Americanized heir to the throne left vacant by Angela Carter.This collection of stories is strikingly surreal and hugely entertaining. It will appeal to fans of everyone from Tibor Fischer via Lorrie Moore to Nicholson Baker, or put another way, from Heathers to Edward Scissorhands via Annie Hall.Among the storylines: a young man is persuaded to donate his heart to his dying mother; a girl comes of age in strange suburbia, her only friend a man dressed in a dogsuit; a man and a woman conduct a passionate love affair on a park bench.

FLYING LEAP

STORIES

JUDY BUDNITZ

CONTENTS

COVER (#u1ed55d9f-b257-5209-bb09-391c0ea041d6)

TITLE PAGE (#u4e86df34-8506-590c-94d2-1022bd52e4a9)

Dog Days (#u84955d4e-7a82-59bf-8e01-533141567e15)

Guilt (#u08b39fdf-e24d-5bcf-8738-65b872f3177a)

Scenes from the Fall Fashion Catalog (#uae5fc2d3-219e-5591-a651-d2b387eac077)

Directions (#u1637264c-ec48-5436-9fae-e5c428affd1d)

Got Spirit (#litres_trial_promo)

Art Lesson (#litres_trial_promo)

Yellville (#litres_trial_promo)

Average Joe (#litres_trial_promo)

Flight (#litres_trial_promo)

Composer (#litres_trial_promo)

Park Bench (#litres_trial_promo)

Hundred-Pound Baby (#litres_trial_promo)

What Happened (#litres_trial_promo)

Chaperone (#litres_trial_promo)

Vacation (#litres_trial_promo)

Skin Care (#litres_trial_promo)

Barren (#litres_trial_promo)

Lessons (#litres_trial_promo)

Train (#litres_trial_promo)

Permanent Wave (#litres_trial_promo)

Bruno (#litres_trial_promo)

Burned (#litres_trial_promo)

Hershel (#litres_trial_promo)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#litres_trial_promo)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#litres_trial_promo)

PRAISE (#litres_trial_promo)

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR (#litres_trial_promo)

COPYRIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)

DOG DAYS (#ulink_13f57fce-0949-52f5-94ec-4acc1590c770)

The man in the dog suit whines outside the door.

“Again?” sighs my mother.

“Where’s my gun?” says my dad.

“We’ll take care of it this time,” my older brothers say.

They go outside. We hear the shouts and the scuffle, and whimpers as he crawls away up the street.

My brothers come back in. “That takes care of that,” they say, rubbing their hands together.

“Damn nutcase,” my dad growls.

But the next day he is back. His dog suit is shabby. The zipper’s gone; the front’s held together with safety pins. He looks like a mutt. His tongue is flat and pink like a slice of bologna. He pants at me.

“Mom,” I call, “he’s back.”

My mother sighs, then comes to the door and looks at him. He cocks his head at her. “Oh, look at him, he looks hungry,” my mother says. “He looks sad.”

I say, “He smells.”

“No collar,” says my mother. “He must be a stray.”