Short Stories about Teddy and the Lower East Side

Spend a little time in a place in Teddy's life, or afterlife.

Bycatch

Short Stories

-- a Teddy story

Ned Sheen could not get warm. Even in the 103 degree temperature on the street outside the Bellagio hotel he shivered. “I want to be warm,” he said, to no one in particular. Just another faceless body on the crowded Las Vegas Strip, Ned leaned on the railing around the resort’s massive fountain lake. He looked at the color brochure that had been shoved into his hand by a young Hispanic boy, maybe ten or twelve. The women all looked to be nineteen or twenty years old, scantily clad or wearing nothing at all, each photograph tagged with a single word:

HOT!

They indeed looked hot, but not by the definition of the thousands of male tourists who took time for a glance before tossing the tacky brochures to the sidewalk. Ned envied the sweat that glistened on their skin. He envied the warmth of the blood that coursed through their veins.

“Fisherman!” The voice came from the water, an odd and quavering timbre.

Ned ignored the sound and focused on the girl’s picture in front of him -- a twenty-ish redhead with hand drawn stars serving as pasties on her thirty-eight-ish endowments. He stroked the photo with his index finger and imagined that he felt the warmth of her smooth, glossy skin.

“Fisherman! Breathing water is hard. It hurts.”