He came home late from the record shop one day and almost collided with his father going to bed. His father looked at him. He seemed very mildly startled, as if at a near-stranger whose existence he had forgotten, encountered unexpectedly in the street. “Getting quite tall, aren’t you,” he said, with a faint note of accusation. Elliot held on to his tape deck and tried to smile. “I suppose,” he said. His father slipped softly and silently by him, like a ghost whose haunting of this house had been only briefly disturbed. He was glad when the time came to go. He left a note on the table for his
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