Stephen King And Bar Rafaeli: The Unlikeliest Of Pairs?

So, I don’t usually read “Esquire,” or at least, I never have before. That was until I saw that Stephen King had written a short story exclusively for the magazine. Or maybe I realized that only after I saw model Bar Rafaeli on the cover, wearing only phrases of King’s writings on her body. So I thought it would be worth reading. Hell, truth be told, I’d read the Communist Manifesto in Sanskrit if it was written on Bar Rafaeli’s body

Anyway, King’s story, “Morality,” is short even as his short stories go. But as always, he finds a way to make the telling truly his own, only a tale that he could weave. After all, only Stephen King can take a tale about woman punching a random 4-year-old kid on camera for money and turn it into something that reaches beyond a morality tale and actually has depth and multiple perspectives.

As much of his later work has become, “Morality” is semi-autobiographical, featuring a struggling writer and part-time teacher and his part-time nurse wife having money trouble. The nurse looks after a dying reverend, who offers a seemingly simple solution to their problems by promising her a financial way out in exchange for the ability to sin vicariously through her. Of course, after she performs the sin, she then becomes tainted and depraved by it, which leads to other lapses in morality. The husband finally leaves the wife he no longer recognizes, though he has lost something as well. King puts one of his classic twists on the eternal question of, “How much are you willing to give up in exchange for money?”

Later in the magazine, I found a cool little blurb called “Arrivals at the Airport,” by Chris Jones. I think we’re all guilty of Jones’s growing view of airports as hubs of hassle and centers of cynicism, but after reading his short piece, I will do my best to look at airports more like this guy.

Post-9/11 security measures have sapped a lot of the fun and emotion from meeting someone at the gate. Now it's become less a heartfelt welcome than a Kentucky Derby-style race to jockey for position at yellow-marked curbs just outside baggage and to time it exactly right so you don't have to make another lap around the airport while fending off the Mogodishan cabbie in the dented-up Cardinal. Jones somehow found a way through that race to remember the human interaction that once brought up the occasional good vibe from a visit to the airport. Kudos to Jones for a really, really good, very short story.

So who knew that “Esquire” contained such hidden journalistic gems? I, for one, was glad to find them. And if it wasn’t for Bar Rafaeli and her curves words, I might never have known …