Waiting For Something To Happen and Other Stories

“These lovely riffs by Lorraine are ocean-fresh and fanned by palms.”
Mark Howell,
“Howlings”

Peopling these 14 short stories by Bill Lorraine are the inhabitants of tropical Paradise today – the folk on the edge of unbridled stupidity, the hillbilly hookers, the hectoring homeless, the tourists from Akron, a pot-smoking tour train driver and Freddie the rooster, all coalescing toward collision. Here are such sweet flirtatious questions as, “Is this lust?” Here there’s Lenny in the mangroves, Louisa Iglesia, late wife of a rumrunner turned banker, so scared of the dark she has a window in her coffin. There are huge Haitian rats that lurk beneath Solares Hill and then there’s always Theron, appearing and reappearing on Duval Street, waiting for noting and no one, careful to keep the red high heels on the girl he undresses in his mind.

These lovely riffs by Lorraine are ocean-fresh and fanned by palms. Like the melodies he is famous for, this is margarita music, redolent of salt and sweat and sunshine, freshly cool, sometimes autumnal. Sounds that wing you into the souls of the characters, notes of yearning and despairing and joy. This is Paradise now.

Bill Lorraine was born in Miami and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Maryland. He is former editor and publisher of the Key West Arts Review Magazine and former assistant managing editor of the Key West Citizen Newspaper. He has published one book of short stories, Waiting for Something to Happen, and one book of poetry, From the Balconies of Key West, illustrated by his wife, Ann Lorraine. An accomplished composer and pianist, Lorraine was piano soloist on Royal Caribbean cruise ships every summer for 10 years. He has produced 3 CD.s of original music, including the Hemingway Suite, scored for symphony orchestra. He has been a resident of Key West, Florida since 1975.