Don't You Cry(13)

Pick up milk.

Did you eat my cheese?

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Ran out. Be home soon.

It’s lonely, I realize again then. The apartment is lonely without Esther home.

I pick up my phone to call Ben, a coworker and also a friend. Ben is, more or less, the only person I talk to at work unless of course I’m being paid to talk to them. The lawyers who beckon me to fetch files and make photocopies—I only speak to them because I have to speak to them. It’s required. Part of the job description essentially.

But Ben I speak to because I want to. Because I like him. Because he’s nice.

He’s also handsome as all get-out, a twenty-three-year-old PA like me, though one with legitimate plans of law school ahead. But he’s got a girlfriend. A college coed, another law school hopeful like him. As soon as she finishes up a prelaw degree at UIC, they’ll both apply for law school together in Washington, DC. So romantic. His girlfriend’s name is Priya, a name that even sounds beautiful.

I’ve never met her in person, Priya, but I’ve seen the assemblage of photographs Ben stores in his smallish office cube: photos of Priya alone, photos of Ben and Priya, photos of Priya and Ben’s dog, a one-eyed Chihuahua named Chance (and if that doesn’t say something about the size of Ben’s heart, I don’t know what does).

I find Ben’s number in my call history and click on his name, and then proceed to listen to the phone ring five shrill times before it sends me to voice mail. I listen to Ben’s message, the simple and robotic and yet entirely charming sound of his voice as he says, This is Ben. Leave a message. I could listen to that message on repeat all night. But I don’t. Instead, when the phone beeps, I take my cue and leave a vague message. “Hey,” I say. “It’s Quinn. I have to talk to you. Call me back, okay?” I don’t say a thing about Esther. That’s not the kind of message you leave on a voice mail; it’s tacky. Important things aren’t meant for voice mail. I’ve been dumped that way before, and so I should know. I’ll fill Ben in when he calls back, but then I picture Ben and Priya together and wonder when he’ll call back, or if any of this will matter any more when he does. Esther will surely be home soon, I think, although now I’m not so sure.

I sit on the sofa all alone and watch as the apartment is besieged by blackness. Nighttime. The only light derives from a streetlamp or two outside our apartment window—and even those are few and far between—our little residential Chicago neighborhood too far from the Loop to be illuminated by the likes of the Willis Tower or Donald Trump’s posh hotel. As darkness takes over, I start to fill with a sense of unease. Where is Esther? Esther has done strange things before, don’t get me wrong, but never before has she left me for a whole day without saying where she was going or when she’d be home. Never before has she climbed out that fire escape window and disappeared into the darkness of night. I stare at the clock on the wall and realize it’s been twelve long hours since Esther’s alarm clock first woke me from sleep, and still she’s not here.

I start to worry. What if something has happened to Esther, something bad?

And so I contemplate a second phone call. Not to Ben this time, of course, but to the police. Should I call the police? My mind vacillates back and forth between Call the police and Don’t call the police like a game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe, before landing on Call the police. And so I do. I dial 311, the city’s nonemergency phone number, as opposed to 911. This isn’t an emergency, or at least I don’t think it is. I pray it’s not an emergency. A woman answers the phone, and I picture her, some telephone operator, sitting at a computer desk with a headset on her head, flattening her hair.

At the operator’s request, I state the nature of my nonemergency. “My roommate,” I tell her, “is missing.” And then I fill her in on the details of Esther’s quick departure—the window, the screen, the fire escape.

She listens attentively, but when I’m through, her words are wary. “Have you checked the local hospitals?” she asks.

“No,” I admit, feeling suddenly like a fool, “I haven’t.”

It didn’t occur to me for one split second that Esther might be hurt.

“That’s a great place to start.” And I gather from her comment that calling the police isn’t a great place to start. “You’ve checked in with your roommate’s family? Other friends?” she asks, at which I shake my head in silent admission. I did not. Well, I called Ben, that’s one step in the right direction, but I didn’t even think of calling Esther’s family, not that I know a phone number, anyway, or have the slightest clue how to find it. I don’t even know her mother’s or father’s names, nothing other than Mr. or Mrs. Vaughan, or so I assume. And I’m guessing there are tens of thousands of people in the world with the last name Vaughan. Besides, I rationalize in my head, Esther and her family aren’t close. Esther doesn’t like to talk about them, but I gather that her father’s out of the picture; her mother and she are estranged. How do I know this? Because while my own mother sends care packages galore and shows up without warning at our door, Esther’s mom doesn’t even call to say hello. I asked Esther about her family once; she said she didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t ask again. One time a card arrived, but Esther let it sit on the kitchen table for four days, unopened, before throwing it in the trash.