On "Waiting for the Americans" by Debra Di Blasi (5390 words) ***

After finishing graduate school, I returned to California and to my old university. Everyone seemed so much younger than I remembered. It was a commuter school, older students--but still, they were young. A few years after a job of mine in Fort Worth ended, I came back to visit. Most of the buildings downtown were still there, but of course, my company was gone, moved out, and so were so many of the people I'd known. Without my old company downtown, the place seemed, well, somehow incomplete. The trip itself proved a bit less than satisfying, the old haunts not so grand. Di Blasi's story is about the same kind of thing, a return to a past, an attempt to recapture those fondly remembered moments--and not so fondly (for me living in Forth Worth was not my favorite time in life either, but I still find a certain joy in thinking about that tough time). And it's about how we can't recapture that past. Here, it's a French man, come to see a place he'd ventured with his former wife--and a place where some American friends promise to return to visit him. He'll wait a long time. Read the story here at the Center for Fiction.