New York City stories – Bonita LeFlore

A collection of my linked short stories was published on 4/30. It’s available through your local book store on IndieBound or on Amazon

The Claudia Stories

Claudia Marron has an interview a world away from her home in Brooklyn. The ninety minute trip through the labyrinth of New York City reveals the imaginative tales of the people she sees in her neighborhood and the strangers who populate the landscape of traveling to the upper east side of Manhattan.

The immigrants who run the local bodega, Sweet Hearts; a middle schooler who tames the bullies on the local bus; the woman with turquoise eyes rehearsing her programming pitch at Telemundo; and the nanny who quotes Eleanor Roosevelt, are some of the fourteen characters linked by Claudia’s journey.

In these stories, the strangers she passes have lives just waiting to be imagined. These are the inhabitants of a complicated city; they have so much more to them than what we see: invisible people who brush up against us on an ordinary day.

What power do these momentary connections have for Claudia and for us?

Kevin McCarthy jogged up the subway steps with such exuberance that the few souls going in the opposite direction at 5:30 in the morning moved aside. At the top of the stairs he inhaled the scent of the city, still stale from the night before.

Under a sign marked Service Entrance, a path led past trash barrels, toward a black steel door. This was not Kevin’s first job in the brotherhood—that’s what his father called the union. When he reached for the buzzer, the rubber band twisted around his wrist, as tight as he could stand it, pulled at the hairs on his arm. The tug against his skin was to remind him of the role he was playing: a kid without experience.

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