The Kiss of the Prison Dancer
by Jerome Richard
Summary
Max Friedman, a concentration camp survivor, goes for a walk one night in Golden Gate Park. There is a noise and suddenly a young man leaps out of the bushes, stares at Max a moment, and runs away. The next day, Max reads in the paper that a girl has been raped and killed in the park. Soon, a man is arrested for the crime. The suspect is a neo-Nazi, but he is not the young man Max saw in the park.
Excerpt
Max put on his tie because he believed that people who were well-dressed encountered less trouble in the world. He was only going for a walk in Golden Gate Park, but the newspapers told of hoodlums who hid near the dark walks and beat people up just for the thrill of beating them up, and only last month there had been a murder. His eyes were the only parts of his body that were tired. Perhaps when he got back, he thought, he would be able to fall asleep….
Suddenly there was a noise in the bushes beside him. Max held his breath. Someone leaped out and landed on the path in front of him, a young man, a boy, poised momentarily with his arms outspread like a bird winged and motionless for just the shadow of a second. Max and the young man exchanged looks, not of surprise so much as incredulity, each of them facing a ghost, before the young man turned, the bird finding the wind, and ran off down the path. Max could still see his face, as if he had left it there when he ran, blond hair on a football with deep, scared eyes and a cupid mouth open as if to talk or scream, a boy seventeen or eighteen, pimples. Then the face vanished too and Max started to breathe again. Another noise came from the bushes. It sounded like someone clearing his throat and Max took it as a warning, thinking that whoever had scared the boy was still in there, and he hurried down the path.
Reviews
Runner-up, PEN/Hemingway Award 2005
Author's Biography
Jerome Richard is the author of the novel The Kiss of the Prison Dancer and editor of The Good Life, a collection of articles about communes and utopias. He also writes about travel, food, and social issues for various publications. He lives in Seattle.