"Anthony's house is full of family photos -- of his parents' trip to Paris, his great aunt, and Anthony himself as a toddler, holding his favorite rock. When Anthony wakes up one morning, he sees that his "rock" has cracked open -- it's hollow inside. He doesn't see the little face peering out from the closet. Later, he discovers the newly hatched creature and they become friends. Anthony asks his mother about the rock, and she shows him a photo album...

Though she wrote only one novella, one short play, and fewer than a dozen short stories over a roughly twenty-year span from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s, Jane Bowles has long been regarded by critics as one of the premier stylists of her generation. Enlivened at unexpected moments by sexual exploration, mysticism, and flashes of wit alternately dry and hilarious, her prose is spare and honed, her stories filled with subtly sly characterizations...