Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler Read Free Book Online

don’t know what year it is anyhow,” he said, “unless I take a minute to think. The years have started flying past so fast that I can’t keep track. You’ll see that for yourself, by and by.”
    But Kitty appeared to have lost interest in the subject. She was crushing saltines into her soup with the back of her spoon. Her fingers were long and flexible, ending in nail-bitten nubbins—lemur fingers, Liam thought. He wasn’t sure she had taken so much as a mouthful of soup yet. When she felt his eyes on her, she looked up. “I’m going to have to sleep in the room he broke into, aren’t I,” she said.
    “Pardon?”
    “The room where the burglar came in. I saw that door! That’s the one he entered through, isn’t it.”
    “Well, but then it wasn’t locked. Now it is,” Liam said. He had checked the lock himself, earlier. It was a little up-and-down lever arrangement, not complicated at all. “If you like, though,” he said, “I can sleep there.”
    So much for letting his memory come back to him in the dark. But already he had begun to admit that that wasn’t likely to happen.
    “Seems to me you’d be scared too,” Kitty told him. “I would think you’d have the hee-bie-jeebies forever after! Living in the place where you were attacked.”
    “Now that I have been attacked, though, I somehow feel that means I won’t be attacked again,” he said. “As if a quota has been reached, so to speak. I realize that’s not logical.”
    “Durn right it’s not logical. Guy breaks in, sees all the loot, doesn’t have time to grab it …
    More logical is, he decides to come back for it later.”
    “What loot?” Liam asked. “I don’t have any jewels, or silver, or electronics. What would he come back for, except that wallet with seven dollars in it?”
    “He doesn’t know it’s seven dollars.”
    “Well, I hardly think—”
    “Is seven dollars it?”
    “What?”
    “Is that all you’ve got in the world?”
    Liam began to laugh. “You’ve heard of banks, I trust,” he said.
    “How much do you have in the bank?”
    “Really, Kitty!”
    “Mom says you’re a pauper.”
    “Your mother doesn’t know everything,” he said. And then, “Who is this so-called boyfriend of hers?”
    Kitty batted the question away with a flick of her hand. “She’s worried you’ll end up on the streets, what with getting fired and all.”
    “I wasn’t fired, I was … downsized. And I have a perfectly adequate savings account. You tell her that. Besides which,” he said, “I did turn sixty in January.” He let a significant pause develop.
    The pause was for Kitty to realize that she had forgotten his birthday. His whole family had forgotten, with the exception of his sister, who always sent a Hallmark card. But Kitty just said, “What’s that got to do with it?”
    “After fifty-nine and a half, I’m allowed to draw on my pension.”
    “Right; I bet that’s a fortune.”
    “Well, it’s not as if I need very much. I’ve never been an acquirer.”
    Kitty dropped another saltine in her soup and said, “I’ll say you’re not an acquirer. When I went into the den I was like, ‘Whoa! Oh, my God! The burglar guy stole the TV!’ Then I remembered you don’t even own a TV. I mean, I knew that before but I just never put it all together. I’m going to miss all my shows while I’m here! There isn’t a single TV anywhere in this apartment!”
    “I don’t know how you’re going to survive,” Liam said.
    “I’ll bet the burglar looked around and thought, Great; someone’s beaten me to it.
    Everything’s already been ripped off, he thought.”
    “Funny how people always assume a burglar’s a he,” Liam said. “Aren’t there any women burglars? Somehow you never hear of them.”
    Kitty tipped part of her milk into her soup. Then she started stirring her soup around and around, dreamily.
    “I keep trying to put a face on him. Or her,” Liam said. “I’m sure it must be somewhere in my