The Forgetters Books

Cole lives alone, has no pets, and has grown accustomed to a homelife of profound quiet (not to say tedium). When Daphne and her two young children move into the apartment next door, the noise is extraordinary--impossible to believe, really--and Cole assumes he'll have to move. But his new neighbors, and their very odd cats, see him differently than he sees himself, and he soon adopts an entirely new persona, that of an older gentleman in a cardigan, ready to assist and advise. This third installment of the series of mini-books called The Forgetters builds into a powerful meditation on forgiveness, grace, and the happiness of being called upon.

Lionel Vratimos is a beat reporter covering the San Francisco Giants -- an enviable job if not for the soggy fries, and the so-so weather, and the Giants' losing record, and the shoe Lionel paid a Romanian shoemaker re-sole but which now squeaks with every footfall. His colleagues are even more dissatisfied, mired in statistics and myopia and complaints about a certain elevator that is really too slow. One day, though, a new pitcher, Nathan Couture, is brought up from the minor leagues; he's tall and lanky and talks like no one they've ever covered. Even more startling is Nathan's actual interest in the words Lionel writes, and his rare, even unprecedented, ability to see the beauty in the game he's paid to play. This short story, the fourth in The Forgetters series, finds Eggers at his most comic and lyrical.

The fifth short novella or long short story in Dave Eggers's The Forgetters series.