The Magician's Assistant

by Ann Patchett

She imagined her loneliness taking the shape of boxes and boxes of other people’s possessions, a terminal moraine that would keep all she had lost in front of her.

So maybe that was why he didn’t tell her. Maybe it was better to keep it that far away, to never have to look at someone who was remembering when you have made such a concerted effort to forget.

meant to come there at all, people who meant to leave but couldn’t find exactly the moment to go. She wondered if they were from all over the world, from every place she had ever been to with Pársifal, sleeping in their borrowed beds, drying their hands on guest towels. She wondered how it was they’d come to be here. Had their cars broken down? Had they spoken to a stranger in a restaurant and stayed to find out more? Had they come here to visit someone, some relative so distant that the blood ties were all but untraceable, and then somehow just fell into a habit? They had grown used to being there even as they longed to leave. They missed the beautiful places they were from. They missed the indigenous flowers, the good local supermarkets, their families, and still they did not know how to go. It was impossible that what was happening to Sabine could be happening to her alone.