A man showed up at the door the other day. I don’t know if he knew I saw him. I hope not. Couldn’t hear, from where I was, what he said to Mrs. Lu. Hard to read Asiatic faces, or, hard for me. I didn’t get a clear look at his, which makes me think he was hiding it. She said he asked for me. She said she said I’d moved. Mrs. Lu is an angel; she might throw a shoe at you, but she’s an angel.
“Did he buy it?” I’d asked.
“Buy it?” she asked.
That language barrier surmounted, she said she didn’t know.
I’d been across the street, enjoying tea after recaulking their bathroom—for such odd jobs I asked a very minor fee and was subsequently rewarded by a general goodwill that had saved my life many times ere now, and I never needed the money—when I’d seen him at Mrs. Lu’s door. The whole affair was the work of five minutes, his coming and going, and their exchange but half a minute, a slow thirty seconds or so.
I knew him immediately—the baring is unmistakable, the way the dead walk—as I knew he would know me. It has been, so far, my inestimably good luck that these beta-fish swim ahead of the sharks. Their appearance is always my high-sign to move on.
Pausing, I laid the unfolded shirt down on the bed and sighed. I always hated to leave in the Autumn. Fall made my heart ache for a home I could no longer return to. How can you convince your soul to run away when all you want to do is stay with the people you love?
Tale Told 