Drought
The opening lines of "Peaches, 1979" fosters an atmosphere that will hang over the rest of the story. "A knot of doom in her gut telling her the harvest was going to fail." The opening line informs the reader that the leaves are yellowing on the peach trees. The second line indicates a lack of moisture in the soil. That doom which is being foreshadowed at the opening is a devastating drought capable of ruining the harvest.
Closeted
"Wife Days" also opens on an important metaphorical image after the protagonist enters a closet. "She loved the shadowy space, as if it was the secret heart of her grandparents’ lakeside mansion in the Adirondacks. The closet was where transformative magic happened." This will prove to be a story about secrets in the shadows and the urge for transformation. The title refers to a marital negotiation in which four days of being the perfect little wife are offered in exchange for three days of non-wifely freedom. This metaphor of closeted spaces being the place where magic lies will become a part of that narrative bargain.
Domination
In "The Heirloom" it is a metaphorical concept that drives not just the action, but the theme. "Everyone is still caught up in their mommy and daddy issues...You have to play one or the other." This business advice to an entrepreneurial startup founder comes not from a mentor or investor. It is advice from a dominatrix with a side hustle. She offers online courses in power dynamics. The clientele of the entrepreneur is almost exclusively white, wealthy men who consider themselves alpha males. When she puts this theory into practice, she quickly discovers that self-image is all a facade constructed from insecurities.
Addiction Noir
The narrator of "Workhorse" is at one point describing drug addict fresh out of an expensive rehab center in Malibu. "His eyes were wider these days, like he was waiting for his addiction to meet him around the next corner, springing from the darkness like a film noir villain." The simile is a reference to a movie genre which hit its peak in the late 1940. A defining element of film noir is that the male protagonist is usually a sap easily taken advantage of by a scheming woman known as the femme fatale. The comparison of addiction to such a woman and drug addicts as saps is very insightful.
Darkness
While used literally in the above example, darkness mostly shows up in fiction as metaphor. As it does in "Wife Days." While in that closet, Farrah remembers "the peach- colored dress spoke to a darkness Farrah could sense in the adult world but not yet name. She could feel it growing in herself." Darkness has an elasticity when used metaphorically that has allowed it to become the defining metaphor of the modern age. This example is typical of its usage to describe something that menacing but ambiguous and ill-defined.
