Thief Read Online Free

behavior might embarrass me, but I knew it was my own personality asserting
     itself. Yet the opposite was also true. How many times had I drunkenly spent the night with a man, fucking him with enthusiasm
     and desire— only to be grateful to see the door close on him the next day when I was sober? The fuck and the intimacy had
     been genuine, but so were my daytime thoughts of retreat. Sometimes my desire for solitudewas so strong I couldn’t even last a night with a man. If I was the one staying over, I might leave in the early morning hours,
     stealthily, or after making some excuse about why I had to get home.
    In fact, the contrast between daytime and nighttime thoughts was what prevented me from taking half relationships and weekly
     assignations seriously. What I wanted at night was sometimes entirely unrelated to what I was willing to contend with day
     to day. And I knew other people must feel the same. If they didn’t, Etta James wouldn’t sing about wanting a “Sunday Kind
     of Love.” So maybe I was wrong about Breville. Maybe he wouldn’t have committed the rape if he hadn’t been drinking.
    I walked outside then. To clear my head and to get away from the circle my thoughts had made.
    Earlier in the morning it had rained, hard, and the gravel road still showed pocks and ribbons. I’d only walked a little way
     when I saw something crossing ahead of me, small and low to the ground. When I got to the place, I looked in the grass and
     saw a salamander. Not much bigger than a finger, it stood still long enough for me to study it— a dark, moist thing with tiny
     spots and beads for eyes— and then it disappeared into the tall weeds. I walked all the way to the north end of the lake after
     that. At first I was thinking about Breville, but in a while I wasn’t. In a while it was just me out on a cool morning walk.
    When I got back to the cabin, I printed out my letter as it was and signed it. I didn’t use any closing, just my name, the
     only thing to appear in cursive.
Suzanne
. The walk had made things plain again. It was one thing if drinking made you want to screw a goodlooking and willing stranger,
     and quite another if it made you break into a woman’s house and rape her. And so I reminded myself that Breville was the criminal,
     not me.

5
    A FEW DAYS LATER when I went to pick up my mail, I saw Merle standing by the mailbox at the end of his drive. The cabin I was renting was
     on a portion of his land and had no separate street address, so I shared Merle’s mailbox. A couple of times he walked down
     to the cabin with mail for me, but since I’d been writing to Breville, I’d been trying to beat him to it. Not today, though—
     today I’d been in the water, and the water was so cool and pleasant I’d just gone on swimming and swimming.
    “I believe it’s all for you,” Merle said. “I only got the paper.”
    He handed me the pile of envelopes with Breville’s letter on top. I didn’t know if Merle had seen the return address or not,
     or if he’d been able to decipher what a letter with a Stillwater address and long number meant— and I didn’t know that I cared.
     Still, I turned the pile of mail in my hand so the address was facing down.
    “You must be quite a swimmer to stay out as long as you do.”
    “I don’t swim very fast.”
    “Still. Most people around here don’t swim. Just kids. Adults lose the knack of it.”
    “Do you swim?”
    “I did until a few years ago,” Merle said. “Now I just feel the cold.”
    If he’d been younger, perhaps I would have felt odd standing there and talking in my bathing suit, my towel wrapped around
     my waist, my hair streeling down my shoulders. I could feel him watching me, taking me in, but I didn’t feel funny about it.
     He was my father’s age and he seemed to treat me carefully, with some sort of distance or respect— I couldn’t quite tell which.
     In any case, I didn’t feel uncomfortable or exposed standing there