Free The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

gestures, imagined alternatives. In the harsh light of my apartment, there was only room for practical concerns. The entire place was shabbier, smaller, and more desolate than I remembered, as if while I was eating dinner someone had entered my apartment and stolen a few years off the furniture. The only thing that wasn’t scavenged from the trash was a solid oak desk that I had saved for three months to buy. Everything else bore the stamp of too many lives and too many people. The couch was draped with a heavy navy blue fabric I had bought from a garment store to cover up the unknown stains and worn armrests. The coffee table was balanced by a stack of magazines on one side and an old bowl on the other. The rug in the center of the room had been left by the previous tenant, who had most likely inherited it from the tenant before him. The ends were so frayed that at least twice a month I had to trim a piece off to keep from tripping on the loops of extended thread. Five years later now and one end of the rug was noticeably longer than the other; the corners had been rounded off, and then cut like a pie sliced into at odd, uneven angles. The television had knob dials and terrible reception, and it sat on an old trunk that looked solid from a distance, but was in fact practically paper thin. A man, I told myself, is defined not by his possessions but by the company he keeps. That was a phrase I had stolen from my father, along with this: the character of a man is like the tail of a monkey; it is always behind him. I knew from experience that moments of sorrow and self-pity were the best times to think of these old phrases and axioms. Not because they provided any comfort, but because, like any other deliberate act of memory, they could supplant the present with their own incorrigible truth.
    From my living-room window I could see the lights in Judith’s house. There was at least one room on every floor that was fully lit. I decided there was something monstrous about a house with so many lights, something distinctly unjust.
    After I’d been standing there for only a few minutes, the lights on the second floor began to flicker on and off. It was a signal from Naomi. We began to turn our lights off and on in an imaginary Morse code dialogue. I could picture her standing by the switch, eagerly flicking the lights until her head began to hurt. Finally, instead of continuing to respond, I just stood in the dark and tried not to think of her disappointment.
     
    The next day Joseph and Kenneth came to the store and I told them about my dinner with Judith. I had mentioned her before—the house, Naomi, our conversations at the store—but only infrequently, and with no more passion than I discussed anything else that might have happened on that given day. When I told them about the dinner and brief kiss, the two of them looked up from their chessboard at each other, and not me.
    “You see?” Joseph said. “You should listen to me more often.” He was wagging one of his chubby fingers at Kenneth, who was now leaning back in his chair with his hands folded on his stomach.
    “What can I say? You were right.”
    “About what?” I asked.
    “Jo-Jo said you were…what’s the word you used?”
    “Enamored.”
    “Yes. Enamored by this woman.”
    When I looked over at Joseph he was struggling and failing to contain his grin.
    “You have nothing to be embarrassed about, Stephanos. You’ve been in America for almost seventeen years. It’s about time you dated a white woman.”
    “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
    “He’s right,” Kenneth jumped in. “You spend too much time by yourself. You’re in this store all alone, and then you go home. It’s no way for a man to live.”
    “What about the little girl’s father?” Joseph asked me.
    “It was just dinner,” I said.
    “Where is he?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve never asked her.”
    “I imagine if I saw the three of you walking down the street, I would think you