The Disappeared by Andrew Porter

Author:Andrew Porter [Porter, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

I wasn’t feeling that way that night, though, when I came home to our apartment and found Amy lying half-asleep on our couch, her arm draped loosely around the head of our Border Collie, Henry, the other hand holding a glass of wine. She looked at me absently and smiled.

“I figured you’d want an out,” she said. “It had been like, what, two hours?”

I nodded. “It wasn’t actually that bad,” I said. “Not like the last time.”

The last time Paul and I had hung out, he’d talked almost incessantly about the department and the mistakes they were making, how they were losing majors left and right because of their unwillingness to embrace the new curriculum, and so forth, and though I knew he was only venting, that he wasn’t actually thinking about me as he spoke, it was still hard to sit there and listen to him, to pretend that I still cared about these people who had essentially screwed me over.

“He wants us to come out there this weekend,” I said. “Him and Elaine. He suggested brunch or maybe dinner.”

“Let’s do dinner,” Amy said, “if we have to. Brunch is always so awkward.”

“Or we could just cancel on them,” I said.

“No.” Amy sighed. “We should go. We’ve been blowing them off a lot lately.”

I nodded and sat down on the chair across from her. I put up my feet on the ottoman. “Plus,” I said. “This will give us a chance to add to our collection.”

Amy shook her head and laughed. “Your collection.”

This had been a running joke, a joke that had started about nine months ago when we came home from a party at their house, and I realized I’d accidentally put this antique bottle opener in my pocket while I’d been standing outside by the pool, opening beers for a group of people who were sitting around the fire pit. I’d made the mistake honestly of course, and yet the longer I stood there looking at it, the longer I held this antique bottle opener in my hands, the less inclined I felt to give it back. It had the look of a family heirloom, maybe something passed down from Elaine’s parents, and I suddenly realized I wanted it, or at least that I wanted them not to have it anymore. The next time we went out there for an early dinner, I found myself taking a framed photograph of Paul and his brother, a photograph from their youth that I figured was probably pretty important to him, and the time after that I took a couple of old books from his personal collection, both first editions. Over the next few months, I took a number of other little things—a tasseled key chain, a pair of cuff links, one of Elaine’s turquoise necklaces. If I came across something small on my way back from the bathroom, or as I was passing by their bedroom, I’d slip it into my pocket, and then later, at home,

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.