I'll Stop the World (60)

Rose didn’t get anywhere with McMillain either. She told me she tried to talk to him after school, but he didn’t want to talk to her while he was working. So she waited in the library until he was ready to leave for the day, and it turned out he didn’t want to talk to her then either. She’s going to try again today, but I somehow doubt he’s going to suddenly decide to spill his guts to her.

Which leaves me without a lot of other options. My column in Rose’s to-do list is pitifully short. I could get up and pick through the garage again, but I can’t see how that could help. I could ask Mrs. Hanley more questions, but I can’t think of anything I haven’t asked already.

I could go to Wilson Bridge and hurl myself off, in the hopes that whatever invisible rip in space-time got me here works both ways. But I’m not quite desperate enough to try that yet.

There’s one other thing I can do. I really don’t want to, and it probably won’t get me anywhere. But considering I have no ideas other than jumping off a bridge or staying in bed all day and resigning myself to 1985, this is all I’ve got.

I haul myself out of bed and shower, pulling on the same black jeans I’ve been wearing since Saturday and one of Noah’s old shirts from the dresser in Mrs. Hanley’s guest room. The selection isn’t great, and I wind up in a loose-fitting purple button-down that—even though Noah is about my size—feels about eight sizes too big. But it was either that or a Hawaiian shirt, and I just couldn’t bring myself to go there yet. I don’t know how long I’d have to live in the ’80s to brainwash myself into thinking Hawaiian shirts look good, but I know it’s longer than a few days.

Mrs. Hanley told me she’d be out for most of the day today attending her ladies’ Bible study and then going to lunch with a friend, which means I have the house to myself. I cut myself a slice of the homemade pound cake in the fridge, pull a chair up next to the wall-mounted phone, and get to work.

Wishing for Google for the thousandth time since I wound up stuck in 1985, I start with the heavy yellow phone book Mrs. Hanley keeps in one of her kitchen drawers. Stan was probably around my age in 1985, maybe a little older, so I’m not sure if he’d have been living on his own or with his parents. I’m actually not even sure if he was living in Stone Lake at all. I know he lived here for a while when he was young, before spending most of his young adulthood bouncing around from state to state, but if he ever told me how old he was when he lived here, or when he left, I must not have been paying attention.

It takes me an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to dial Mrs. Hanley’s phone, which has a spinning dial with little holes over each number. First, I try pushing the numbers, but nothing happens. Then, after a few minutes, I realize I’m supposed to spin them, but when I pick up the handset to initiate the call after entering the number, all I hear is an interminable dial tone. There’s no “Send” or “Call” or “Dial” button anywhere. Eventually, I figure out that I have to pick up the handset before dialing and am finally rewarded by the sound of ringing on the other end.

I find myself simultaneously wishing Rose had been here to explain to me how to use the phone, and glad she wasn’t here to witness just how bad I am at existing in this stupid decade.

Once I get the hang of dialing, I spin the same story over and over: I’m a friend of Stan’s who moved away a while ago and is trying to get back in touch. I will say this for the people of 1985: they’re way more generous with personal details than the people of the future. A couple of times, I think I’ve found him—they have a cousin with that name, or know someone in the next county over—only to get my hopes dashed when they tell me he’s in his fifties, or married with kids, or dead.

I’m not sure what I hope finding Stan will accomplish. Obviously, the fire hasn’t even happened yet, and his obsessive quest hasn’t begun, so it’s not like he can tell me anything about it. And even if I were somehow able to call up future Stan and have him consult his murder board for me, he still couldn’t tell me for sure what to do since he’s never managed to solve the case. I only know that he says he knew my grandparents, and that he really cared about what happened to them.

I guess I figure that if I can talk to him, something might jump out at me. Maybe a word that seems meaningful, or a clue he doesn’t realize he has. Or maybe, once I see him, the sight of his face might jostle free one of my own memories that I’d previously forgotten.

It’s the longest of long shots, but it’s something to do, and at the moment, I’ll take what I can get.

And—I can barely admit this, even to myself—it might be nice to see a familiar face. Even if it’s Stan’s.

But by the time I’ve gone through every possible number in the phone book that could be him, it’s early afternoon, and I have nothing to show for my half day of work. I truly am the world’s shittiest detective.

There are other things I could do today. I could take yet another tour through the garage and the police file. I could go to the bridge. I could seek out my grandparents, see if I can determine what leads them to the school instead of the debate on Saturday night, or talk to McMillain myself.

Instead, I wind up on Mrs. Hanley’s couch.

It’s not that I don’t want to make the most of the day, or that I don’t care about getting home. It’s that I want those things so badly that I feel paralyzed.