Theft by Finding - David Sedaris

Don called last night, and during the course of the conversation, he forgot my name. “So Pietsch said,
‘I don’t know that we can give…can give…can give…Sedaris both the audio rights and the ten
percent.’”
I was thinking he could have solved the problem by using the word you, figuring the discussion
probably pertained to the person he was calling. When he forgets other people’s names, I normally
help him out, but it seemed more awkward when the name was my own. “Oh, Lord,” he said, “this is
going to be a tough day.”
December 29, 2001
Paris
Hugh made me a belated-birthday cake, decorated with the candles Patsy gave us for Christmas.
When told to make a wish, I settled back in my chair, realizing I should have given it some prior
thought. One option was an apartment in London, but in the end I wished for the opposite: the absence
of things. Over the past few years I’ve fallen deeper into the luxury pit. I used to get pleasure from
sitting at the pancake house with a new library book, but now I mainly buy things and work crossword
puzzles. In my twenties and early thirties I was able to disguise my shallowness, but now it’s written
all over my shopping bags. On my forty-fifth birthday I looked across the table at the director Mary
Zimmerman and thought, That’s what I want, to be like her. I wanted the change to be immediate. Oh,
but first there were perfumed soaps to be opened.
Gretchen went to the National Museum of Natural History with her friend Patty, and I walked alone to
the zoo, the little one at the Jardin des Plantes. I hadn’t been in years and it was a good day for it. In
the reptile house I saw two small children confined to wheelchairs. Both wore glasses and were
pushed by their fathers. Crocodiles dozed on the concrete shores of their pen, and I noticed a number
of dead cockroaches floating in the water. I saw a lot of unintentional animals yesterday, mainly birds
and insects taking advantage of the free food. The keepers had just fed the vultures, and the floor of
their cage was littered with what looked like a medium-size dog chopped in half with a hatchet. I
thought vultures were always hungry, but rather than eat, they stared toward the big cats, where a man
in a hat chipped away at a block of marble. You often see people drawing and painting at the zoo, but
I’d never seen anyone with a chisel, sculpting.