Jayne Anne Phillips - Fast Lanes

The authors sympathy, her ability to imagine herself into the feelings of very different kinds of people, in no way lessens a precision that we are more used to finding at cooler temperatures. The stories in Fast Lanes frequently hover on the edge of poetry.

Los Angeles Times Book Review

One of our most fascinating and gritty writers. [Phillipss] keenest asset is her ear, her ability to make art out of the desperate, nervous voices in the nether corners of America.

The Washington Post

Phillips is first-rate at first-person narration. In Fast Lanes she adopts distinct voice after voice, and shes equally adept at all of them.

USA Today

Phillips weds a bittersweet, lyric prose style with stories that count on our hearts. Scenes from these stories will haunt me for a long time.

Chicago Tribune

Judging from this collection, it seems as if theres nothing Phillips cant do a tremendously talented writer working to the limit of her powers.

Publishers Weekly

Phillips has a gift. She resists literary voices to discover real ones. In the streets, the rooms, the truck cabs of her own time, Phillips fares wellin no small part because she hears well.

St. Louis Post Dispatch

Phillips sustains her myriad voices until their words roll with the angry cadences of sex or music. Its a kind of dream surfing. A writer of immense perception, her world view tarnished and yet undiminished by the fragmented reality she presents.

The Boston Globe

Jayne Anne Phillips
Fast Lanes

Jayne Anne Phillips was born and raised in West Virginia. She is the author of three novels and two collections of stories. She is the recipient of the Sue Kaufman Prize and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Bunting Institute fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in fiction. Her work has been translated into twelve languages.

Also by Jayne Anne Phillips

MotherKind
Shelter
Machine Dreams
Black Tickets

LIMITED EDITIONS
The Secret Country
How Mickey Made It
Counting Sweethearts

FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, MAY 2000

Copyright 1987, 2000 by Jayne Anne Phillips

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States in different form by E. P. Dutton/Seymour Lawrence, New York, in 1987.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Comtemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Lyrics on from Be My Baby by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich, Phil Spector 1963 (renewed 1991) Trio Music Company Inc., Universal/Songs of Polygram International Inc., and Bertha Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Lyrics on from Blue Moon by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers. Copyright 1934, (Copyright Renewed) by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. All rights controlled by EMI Robbins Catalog Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.

These stories have been previously published in Esquire, Granta, Ploughshares, Rolling Stone, Gallimaufry, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize IV. How Mickey Made It was first published as limited editions by Bookslinger Editions. Fast Lanes and Counting were first published as limited editions by Vehicle Editions. Callie was first published in Family (Pantheon Books).

Publishers Note: These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Phillips, Jayne Anne, 1952
Fast lanes / Jayne Anne Phillips.
p. cm.
Enl. ed. containing 3 additional stories.
Contents: How Mickey made itRaymeFast LanesBluegillSomething that happenedBlue moonBessCallieAlmaCounting.
eISBN: 978-0-307-80883-7
1. West VirginiaSocial life and customs20th centuryFiction. 2. United StatesSocial life and customs20th centuryFiction. I. Title.
PS 2566. H479 F37 2000
813.54dc21 99-057850

Author photograph Marion Ettlinger

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

For Mark

The author wishes to thank the National Endowment for the Arts for support during the writing of this work.

I have begun my freedom and it hurts.

ALAN DUGAN
Stability Before Departure,
from Collected Poems

T his bed is wicked comfortable, I mean I sleep like a baby and dont wanna wake up. I guess you OWN a bed like this when youre twenty-eight huh (smile, tawny skin, fine sharp face) and this place is so CLEAN, nothin outa place but your head. Just kidding Darling, dont get hot (lighting his cigarette, frowning over cupped hands). No I mean older women are fine with me, youre fine with me really, a little awesome but Ill call you Mom once in a while just to keep us in line (inhaling, looking up with smoke on his lips). But dont pull any teen-ager numbers on me, thats all in the past, remember Im twenty now, thats uh, TWEN-TEEyou remember, a week ago when you gave me that book of jokes, those cartoons? in the bar, handed it right over the counter with the little sketch inside of me in my nifty bartenders coat & cardboard bow tie compliments of Savios, what? yeah, she remembers, signed it with love from your customer Happy birthday Mickey. Look just because we got a little boozed when you took me to lunch that next day, and you said I should call in sick so we could go to the beach, doesnt mean youre RESPONSIBLE for me. I mean if they fired me for that they were going to fire me anyway. I shoulda given them a better excuse but what the fuck it was a suckass job to begin with. I only had it the month Ive been back from England, just bread till I get a band together. Ive been fired plenty from everywhere without your help, so dont get pent up about it. Ill get another job tomorrow, dont worry about Mickey (shakes his head, black curls cut short on top & long in the back, Galahad punk) I mean I havent been on my own since I was twelve for nothin, I can get BY you knowIm a kid but I try real hard.

Ooh, that is intense. That is so intense softer, a little softer, there. Oh, you feel good. Relax, were OK, really, Ill pull out. Take it easy, Im nowhere near coming