Bradbury Tales

The Glove

The Glove

There was a glove lying on the floor in the corridor. It was a black leatherette shape, very flat, to one side of the passage and very close to the wall. Ransom stopped to consider it.

The size of the glove suggested it would fit a lady’s hand, rather than a man’s. And the long, elbow length gauntlet reinforced this impression. Unlikely to belong to the Boy, therefore, especially now that he was grown to be a man. This made it difficult to explain its presence however.

Ransom stood for a moment in thought. The glove’s situation in so unlikely a place suggested a sudden abandonment, as though peeled from its hand in haste while the owner proceeded quickly along the passage. Too quickly for its twin to have been disposed of in similar manner.

This raised the problem of where an apparently elegant young woman would be heading in such a hurry. The corridor led only to the bedrooms, one for Ransom and his wife, the other for the Boy.

Which suggested that the Boy might have found himself a girlfriend. Of presumed sophistication, judging by the rarity of such gloves these days. That was surprising enough, since there had been no hint of such an acquisition in the Boy’s talk or behaviour recently. One would have expected there to be some sign of a change in the fellow when in the grip of so new an enterprise.

And then there was the obvious hurry in which the lady had been involved, by all appearances. It did not tax his imagination too much to come to an embarrassing conclusion in this regard. Such haste was not on account of an urgent need to see Ransom’s bedroom, after all, especially when she seemed to be undressing on the way.

Well, well, thought Ransom. Who would have thought the Boy capable of it?

Still, it was bound to happen sooner or later. He continued on his way down the corridor.

His wife, Marion, was in the living room, working on the quilt she was making. “Oddest thing just happened to me in the passage,” announced Ransom as he entered the room.

She did not look up from her work. “What was that then?”

“There’s a glove lying on the floor of the passage. Long black thing, certainly not one of ours. Thought it looked a bit out of place.”

Marion looked up. “Oh that,” she said. “It’s the Girl’s.”

Ransom frowned. “But she hasn’t lived here for years. What the hell is one of her gloves doing here?

“It was amongst a whole heap of her stuff that she left in the spare room,” she explained. “I was moving it to put everything in our bedroom closet when the glove fell off the top. I left it there to see if anyone would pick it up for me.”

“Fat chance of that. I’d have picked it up but then I’d only have put it in the wrong place.”

She looked at him over the top of her glasses. “Without fail,” she said.

Ransom collapsed into an armchair. “Much preferred my glove story,” he muttered.


Word count: 523
For The Bradbury, Week 2.