Avery and the Grifter

I stood, mouth agape, in my living room. The television was gone. Had I been robbed? As I ran toward the media console, I noticed that its lower cabinet was slightly ajar and more than half of my music and video collection was missing.

I began to panic. How could I have been burglarized? This is a secure building in an excellent neighborhood. Simms, the doorman, had said anything when we spoke just five minutes ago.

Oh my goodness, I immediately thought. Could the thief still be in the apartment?

I crept toward the bedrooms. My heart was in my throat. I pictured the headline as it would run in the Sun-Times: LOCAL GAY MAN DUMPED THEN JUMPED. It wasn’t a pretty picture. Kicking open the master bedroom door (as I’d seen Benson and Stabler to so many times on Law & Order: SVU) I quickly scanned the quarters. No one there. I inched into the room and silently entered the adjoining bathroom. No one there either.

Suddenly, I heard a loud THUMP come from Jack’s office. Oh no, I thought to myself. I’m going to be murdered. Back in the bedroom hallway, I grabbed a broomstick—the only weapon I could think to grab—from the opened linen closet and made my way toward Jack’s office. The door was closed. I took a deep breath and then kicked it open, again SVU-style.

No one was in the room but the cats. The loud THUD was a book they’d knocked off of the windowsill. I sighed with relief. It wasn’t a break-in. No sooner had I calmed down did a knot form in the pit of my stomach.

Jack’s office was nearly empty. His computer? Gone. The pictures of us on one of our many vacations to New Orleans? Gone. Instinctively, I ran back to the master bedroom and violently opened the closet door. None of Jack’s clothes remained.  

Jack didn’t leave, I said to myself, He wouldn’t leave like this.

We’d both agreed to go through our belongings and separate them together. This was as much for my own closure as it was to insure that he didn’t take anything I wanted to keep. Apparently, he decided not to live up to our agreement, but rather chose to steal away into the night like a grifter.

I noticed an envelope taped to the back of the front door. Written on it, in Jack’s handwriting, were two words: I’m sorry.