Imaginary Men

Things seldom turn out as planned in the finely crafted stories in this collection, 1992 winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award. In ``Her Michelangelo,'' solidly middle-class Riva Stern, determined to save her boyfriend Paul Auerbach from poverty, loans him money to attend college; he then dumps her for a new flame. Set mostly in Washington, D.C., or Florida towns and trailer camps, the sharply observant tales explore diverse situations: a jury debating the fate of a man accused of murdering his son; the deepening friendship between two women--one white, one black--as the latter desperately searches for her missing son; teenage necking in a school for the handicapped. Poet Shomer easily makes the transition to fiction, showing particular sensitivity in stories told from a woman's point of view, such as the title piece, in which a wife confesses to an imagined infidelity in order to even the score with her estranged, cheating husband, who begs for a reconciliation. Some of her characters dream of escape; hypertense plumber Harry Goldring, ``the family mensch ,'' fantasizes that a trip to the tropics will free him from panic attacks and anxiety over his elderly mother's refusal to enter a nursing home. Mostly, though, Shomer's protagonists just muddle through, despite broken hearts, dysfunctional families, sibling rivalries and the curveballs life throws their way. (Mar.)