The Best Possible Answer(33)

The building, with its skeleton of concrete and steel, breathes heavily against the push of the elevator’s descent. There’s a constant hum of air—it sweeps up through the elevator shaft as we descend toward the eleventh floor—it’s louder than usual, maybe because we’re not stopping at multiple floors to pick up more passengers. Or maybe it’s because we’re all quiet and nervous, and it’s even more awkward and weird between us now. Along with the loud hum of the building I hear the beating of my own heart inside my head.

The doors open to the silent and empty hallway.

“Professor Cox said it’s eleven eighteen,” Evan says.

“This way,” Sammie says. “He’s kitty-corner from you. Right, Vivi?”

“Let’s see, if I’m in sixteen twenty-two—” We walk to 1118. “Then yes, he’d be two over in this direction.”

A door opens down the hall and a mom with a kid in a stroller emerges, the kid in full tantrum mode, crying and screaming for his pacifier. She gives us a suspicious look, like she knows we don’t belong here.

Rather than stopping at Professor Cox’s door, Sammie and I follow Evan as he continues walking down the hall. “Did we get off at the wrong floor?” he says, and then we follow him into the emergency stairwell.

We wait there for a few minutes until we hear the ding and the shutting elevator doors, which drown out the wailing kid’s cries.

Evan sneaks a peak into the hallway. “All clear,” he says. We follow him to number 1118.

Evan bends down to look for the key, which Professor Cox said was under the mat. We hear sniffing from behind the door. “Must be his dog,” I say, and then he starts barking and scraping. “Is it there?”

“Got it,” Evan says. He stands up and holds out a gold key. “Here we go.”

He puts the key in the lock and turns. The door opens. The dog jumps at our feet, and his barking echoes through the hallway even louder now. “Quick, get in.” Evan bends down and picks him up. “Shhh, boy. It’s okay. Everything’s okay now.”

Sammie and I follow Evan inside, and I shut the door.

I expected the smell of dog, but instead I’m hit by the thick, sharp smell of incense—patchouli and orange. Even from Sammie’s apartment, we could only really see the front room, the dining room, where his cactuses are. I also expected a bizarre dungeon of a room, but when I step inside, I’m shocked by the emptiness of it. It’s a small studio apartment that’s decorated all in white, like a hospital room. There’s a small white futon that looks like it serves as his bed, with neatly folded sheets and blankets on the table next to it. Apart from the dining room table, there’s not much else—just a desk with some papers scattered on top and a small white bookshelf with a few dozen books stacked in piles.

“It’s like he just moved in,” Sammie says.

“Or is about to move out,” I say.

Evan picks up Professor Cox’s shivering dog in his arms. He takes the dog to the kitchen, where he pours out some food and water. “He already went on the floor,” he calls. “Poor guy. We’ll need to take him out.”

“Does he have a name?”

“His dog tag says ‘Peyton Manning.’ Never would have taken Professor Cox for a Broncos fan.” The dog takes a break from drinking his water to lick Evan’s hand. “But he’s cute.”

I walk around the apartment and try to figure out what it is, exactly, we’re searching for. On the walls are a few of his paintings and some framed photos of Professor Cox posing with his dog, and I have to admit, it’s really sweet, but also really sad. There are no photos of him with anyone else. I wonder who the photographer was.

Sammie runs to the closet. “Let’s look for the bathing suits!”

“How about we just take care of his dog,” I say. “And then let’s get out of here?”

“Found them!” Sammie’s standing at the open closet, and there they are: a few dozen bathing suits, each on a hanger.

“Unbelievable.” I turn to Evan. “What, exactly, are we supposed to be looking for?”

He shrugs. “Honestly, I’m not sure. Something he’s worried about the police finding? Anything that looks weird or suspicious, I guess?”

“All I see are clothes. And shoes. And bathing suits. Lots and lots of bathing suits.”

The dog emerges from the kitchen and runs straight to Evan. Evan picks him up and takes him over to the desk. “What have we got here, boy?” Evan shuffles through a stack of postcards. “Oh no … take a look at this.”

Sammie and I walk over and each of us picks up a batch to skim through. They’re notes, postmarked and sent via USPS. All addressed to Professor Cox, from Petyon Manning—the Chihuahua, not the football player.

“I didn’t realize it was so bad,” Evan says. Some are notes, little philosophical musings about “idealism” and “materialism,” which are vaguely familiar to me from my history classes, and then other notes on “reflexivity” and “agency,” which I’ve never heard of before. Then there are the orders, written from his dog, telling him to do things. They’re harmless reminders to pay the electric bill and do the laundry, but there are quite possibly hundreds of these postcards. It doesn’t seem like it’s something that was done for fun.