Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen

Author:Te-Ping Chen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780358275039
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2021-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

One morning, before work, Perry found me at the coffee shop. He lurched in and immediately sat down at my table.

“I am really sorry to keep bothering you,” he said. His face looked red and flushed, his cheek creased from his pillow that morning. What an unattractive man, I thought. “I just need to find her, and I have no idea where else to go. She didn’t leave a forwarding address? Do you ever get any of her mail?”

I looked at him, considered him. He was wearing a green sweater. He didn’t look like a madman. He looked like a man in distress. He also didn’t seem inclined to leave me alone.

“How did you know her, anyway?” I asked. For a moment I closed my eyes and pictured her. She had very ordinary hands, Lisette, I remembered that: a little plump, a little fat, like sugar cookies that hadn’t been properly rolled out, and hair so fine it felt like water. She had a body that wasn’t extraordinary, a little squat. Big blue eyes, though, as blue as any starlet’s.

“I told you, we dated,” he said. “Before I went to Abu Dhabi.” He was jiggling his knees now, looking anxious and hectored. He took a piece of biscotti off my plate without asking and nibbled it before realizing what he was doing and put it down, abruptly.

“And?”

“And nothing,” he said grumpily, as though I’d overstepped my bounds. “We got into an argument—​we stopped talking. But I’m back now, and I thought I might be able to make it up to her.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Four years ago,” he said. “I guess it’s longer ago than it seems.” He paused and eyed my biscotti again. “Are you going to eat that?” I slid the plate over to him wordlessly.

“Lisette doesn’t live there anymore,” I said.

“I got that,” he said. “I just wanted to know, do you have any of her mail or anything? Something that might have a return address, someone else who might know how to find her.”

Finally I acquiesced. “Okay,” I said. “Come by tomorrow evening. I’ll take a look.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.