Lost Things (excerpts)

Lost Things (excerpts)
THINGS LOST (SHORT STORY COLLECTION)

LOST (excerpt)

I passed the guard at the front desk. I wondered if he knew if I had been there yesterday. Then there was the guard at the gate as I left, maybe he might know if I had been there yesterday. Would they have known? Would they have known among all the other cars that came and went, all the people who came and left those offices? Again, it was not the type of question you could ask someone, without them thinking you were crazy. I had never talked to either of these people, except to exchange a glancing greeting. I had worked here seven years and I did not know their names, even though they had black name tags with white letters. How was I to ask them to remember me when I didn’t even know their names?

LOST PHOTOGRAPHS (excerpt)

My story is difficult because I bought my wife and daughter the ticket. Try explaining to a judge that your little girl was stolen from you and disappeared for three years on an airplane ticket that you bought. As my wife said in a pre- trial deposition, “How can he say I stole my daughter? A mother cannot steal a daughter. He drove us to the airport, luggage and all. He put the tickets in my hand.”

LOSING THE FAITH (excerpt)

John and Joanne were Missionaries celebrating their sixth wedding anniversary. They were from Iowa— big-boned people with a healthy look of righteousness. John was balding, thirty-five, with a stomach that came tight around his belt. Joanne was motherly, the kind who can’t have babies, whose short fingers were always adjusting something on her husband or holding his wrists when they sat.

PARADISE LOST (excerpt)

“My Dad used to have this great place in the Cayman Islands. You are down there a week and everything is great. The swimming, the bar scene is all great. But by the second week, you are bored out of your mind. My Dad ended up selling the place. I admit it. Teaching English, living in a foreign country-- that all looks like great fun. But that is all it is. You can’t live that way all your life.”