story: Her First Elk
author: Rick Bass
year: 2003
where: work, Saadiyat, between meetings
note: I did not expect to like this story as much as I did.
a line: “And once they had the elk overturned, Ralph emasculated it with his skinning knife, cutting off the ponderous genitals and tossing them farther into the field with no self-consciousness; it was merely the work that needed doing.”
samantha Neugebauer 