[Note: I read a lot of literary journals. When i find a really phenomenal short story in one of them, I do a short write-up of adoration here.]

This one, from the New England Review, is a night in the life of a woman stranded in a weird city where she knows no one, washing dishes for a lesbian restaurateur who finds her cute enough to forgive her always being late and stoned, living with a man she doesn’t particularly like, saving money to get the hell out of Providence with only the vaguest and most unrealistic plans of how to actually do that.

I almost didnt read past the first paragraph, with its long twisty comma-ridden sentences which felt like someone maybe trying a little too hard to be Literary. But “A Street Guide to Providence” (hereafter ASGTP) really is that well-written, that literary. Told in close-third person, the story gets inside of Nikki’s head while preserving enough objectivity that we see the flaws and warts that make her so compelling. And make her make so many stupid decisions.

Nikki has pulled up all her stakes and moved to Providence to be with a boy she’s in love with. Not long after her arrival, he disappears. Skips town without a word. So she’s stuck, unable to take charge of her own life because it’s easier for her to just float along.

One lovely feature of ASGTP is its refusal to wade too far into what Nikki’s running away from. At a party, she meets a mixed-race woman - “what her mother called an octoroon, such a horrible, nasty word, and this is the kind of filth Nikki has to purge herself of.” This slim scrap elegantly implies her repressive and small-minded family life, yet spares us the need to waste space spelling out every little thing that went wrong in her life - which tends to feel like an author apologizing for her/his creation.

In the end, Nikki’s actions, even the stupid ones, even the ones that fuck over the people who have been good to her, make sense. High on ecstasy, in the middle of a threeway with two people she just met, she finally sees that she has the strength to do what she needs to do in order to move on. To make her own way in life. And even if that means stealing the life savings of one of the few non-creepy characters in the story, we feel that Nikki has come to a place where she’s finally in charge of her own life.

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