Excerpt from Brass by Xhenet Aliu, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

So fine, I'd gotten rid of Franky, because it was true he was no knight in shining armor. But I wondered for a minute if that hunk of Toyota steel he used to drive me around in was close enough to it, because I didn't feel a single one of the eight degrees the bank's digital thermometer had said it was while I waited ten, then fifteen minutes for my mother, who had a history of leaving me stranded while she napped. And even if I found a dime to call from the pay-phone lobby, and even if she didn't sleep through the ringer, it would be ten minutes minimum before her LTD could even begin to climb out of first gear and keep pace with our neighbor Jimmy riding his daughter's pink ten-speed to some strip-mall pub after having sold his ancient Chevy for scrap metal. So I stomped my Buster Browns on the pavement, partly to keep the blood circulating but mostly just because--because the skid marks Franky's tires had made a week before were still frozen into a blackened patch of ice that I could shatter if I kicked down hard enough, because to hell with my mother and to hell with Franky and to hell with the waitresses who were inside and warm and giving head to the cooks in exchange for baskets of hot cheese fries.

Then I heard, from behind me: What are you doing, ding-dong?

It was enough of a shock to scare the steady out of my legs and send me ass-down to the ground. "Huh?" I said and scrambled to get back to my feet.

"I said, 'What are you doing, ding-dong?' " Footsteps crunched over the gravel, and then Bashkim stood in front of me, fists gripping the red ties of a half dozen weeping trash bags.

I must've looked like someone who knew a thing or two about trash herself, down on the tar with my legs splayed, showing off the cotton briefs bunched underneath my pantyhose, the ugly, shiny pantyhose that only fat dance-line girls and diner waitresses wore. And I was the most beautiful girl Bashkim had ever seen, right? Obviously he didn't understand what the word meant in English, or else he'd gotten fluent enough to lie straight-faced in a second language.

"I fell down, jerk. Thanks for asking," I said.

Bashkim offered his hand to help me up, and his skin was as cold as the air, so his touch felt like needles. And he didn't let go when I was back on my feet, and I swore even with everything else out there frosted over I was somehow sweating, that a fever I didn't know I had was breaking.

Still, I managed to say, "And don't call me ding-dong. Nobody says that. Just call me an asshole if that's what you mean."

Instead he called my name.

"Elsie. Elsie," he said.

Where it came from, what it meant, I didn't know. But I knew where it went. Straight from the tips of my toes, which I thought had been frostbitten to permanent numbness, but no, I was wrong, because a feather-tickle started there and then danced on up those shiny tights, which were suddenly warm as fur. Franky had never said my name twice like that, as if it sounded so good he had to hear it again. Rocco before him had never said it, or Joe Pelletier before him. Especially not Joe Pelletier before him, who instead had just shrieked when he tore what was left of my virginity, crying because he thought the blood on his thighs was his own.

"What are you doing out here? It's too cold for you out here," Bashkim said.

"It's too cold for anyone out here."

"It feels good to me. The grill is hot. Even in winter it feels like hell back there."

"Maybe hell froze over," I said. "And that explains why it's so cold in this town."

Bashkim finally let go of my hand and squinted at me, as if he'd lost a contact lens and had confused me for someone else this whole time.

"It's an expression," I said. "?'When hell freezes over.' "

"I know that. I know the expression. You think this is hell here?"

Excerpted from Brass by Xhenet Aliu. Copyright © 2018 by Xhenet Aliu. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.