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Short Story

Kugelman The Tumler

Ron Pies wonders if people live authentically according to their early ideals.

Bok was able to round up three of the Iverson Four, but Kugelman was playing cat-and-mouse, just like in their college days. “Lots going on that weekend,” he had written in an email, “but I’ll try to make it, if I’m not getting laid that Saturday!”

At this, Bok had heaved a sigh, animated not so much by Kugelman’s provocativeness, as by the sense that – once again – things were out of his hands. The galaxy would go on spinning its merry way. His osteoarthritis would progress at whatever rate his genes dictated. The sagging skin over his upper eyelids would continue its descent, unless, as a plastic surgeon had told Bok recently, “We do a bilateral blepharoplasty,” which had sounded vaguely fatal.

…