What We've Lost Is Nothing Read Online Free PDF Page A

her.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œHere. Right here.”
    Two chairs, pulled out slightly. The minute he’d walked in, Michael knew there’d been something off about the room. So subtle. But he noticed these things. Once, as an undergraduate, he and some friends had moved every piece of furniture by a single inch in his roommate’s bedroom. The roommate never guessed what they’d done. He knew something was wrong—he’d banged his knee on the bed frame when he came in—but he never knew what it was. All semester long it irked him, until he eventually grew used to the difference and the difference became the habitual. One single inch. Could change nothing. Could change everything.
    Michael followed Mary’s pointed finger to the floor. His mind calculated:
    On the floor.
    Under the table.
    Feeling fuchsia.
    Not in school .
    â€œJesus Christ, Mary,” Michael McPherson said. Now fully aware. And pissed off.

Chapter 3
    1:58 p.m.
    A rthur Gardenia had been the first to call the police. He’d heard noises but was too terrified to go downstairs and actually find something.
    â€œThe police are going to come right in,” warned the dispatcher. “Stay right where you are, sir.”
    He stood behind his desk. Not breathing, pressing his heels together as if the action might diminish him in some way.
    The police swarmed Arthur’s house in a small army, lights flashing, stationing themselves in both the street and the back alley. Arthur could hear snippets of words through their radio static. Canine . . . burglary one . . . Detective . . . in progress. They yelled up to ask if he was okay, told him not to move, not to touch anything, to wait for their all clear. He heard the clunk of heavy gear, jiggling metal, and a single hard pounding as if something had been dropped. One set of feet bounded up the stairs.
    â€œIn here,” Arthur said.
    Detective Wasserman followed the sound of Arthur’s voice to the study. He came in the door and flipped on the light switch. Arthur gasped at the sudden burst of fluorescence and covered his eyes, and the detective drew his gun and squatted. Three or four confused seconds elasticized the two men, until Arthur waved one arm toward the detective saying, “Turn it off. Turn it off. The light.”
    The detective turned off the light and adjusted his eyes to the darkness, and Arthur quickly told him he had day blindness, and both men began to breathe again.
    â€œWasserman,” the detective said by way of a more appropriate introduction. He took a single stride toward Arthur, holding out his hand, gun still drawn in the other, and he swiped his forehead with the back of his hand so that the gun arced through the air. Arthur did not think to shake the detective’s hand until the gun was back in its holster.
    The police cleared one room at a time, checking closets and under furniture. They sounded like a whole platoon. Wasserman sat Arthur down in his study to take the report once the premises had been checked. Arthur had not yet established those things missing from his house and he had not witnessed any perpetrators, despite feeling nearly sure he’d heard something . Wasserman advised Arthur to buy curtains for his downstairs windows. Invest was the word he’d used. Arthur might want to think about investing in a set of curtains, as if a dividend might be available on such a purchase. Arthur had lived without curtains for so long, lived without the ability to see past a reflection for so many years, that he’d forgotten—or else never considered—that his personal security might have been jeopardized by that one angry, fiery afternoon when he’d burned them all in a fit. Occasionally, he had to remind himself that while he could not see well, most people could see him just fine.
    The police downstairs were loud, shouting to one another over their radios and their own lumbering movements. The lights in the