Lost and Wanted(95)

“Excuse me,” he murmured, before crossing the street toward a waiting car.

I had come to the river. It was a clear night, but the skyline gave off too much light to see stars. I crossed the new pedestrian bridge over Memorial Drive, clogged with red and yellow taillights, but didn’t descend on the other side. From up here I could see the river. Jagged floes of gray ice clung to the shore, but out in the middle the office towers dropped their inverted reflections in still, black water.

Automatically I reached for my phone. But what did I want to say, and to whom? The object had lost its special power because there was now no chance that something would come from “Charlie.” There was no chance, because there was no Charlie anymore. My friend was gone.





5.


I picked Jack up from Miles’s house the following morning. It was a crisp, bright day, and I had the idea I might take him downtown to the aquarium. I hoped Terrence and Simmi would agree to join us. I thought there would be a moment when the children would want to split up and see different exhibits. I could offer to take her wherever she wanted to go—the Pacific Reef, or the touch tank—and use that opportunity to talk with her alone. I’d texted Terrence early to suggest it; I hadn’t heard back, but when we came in the front door we could hear them in the apartment.

“They’re home!” Jack said, and knocked.

There were thumping feet, and then a female voice: “Just a sec!”

Jack gave me a questioning look.

The door was opened by a young woman. Simmi was behind her in the kitchen, and Terrence was nowhere to be seen.

“Hey!” Simmi said. “I’m making pancakes by myself. You want some?”

“Yeah!” Familiar with Terrence’s house rules, Jack slipped out of his shoes without being told, and hurried into the apartment. He barely looked at the stranger who’d opened the door.

Her hair was dyed an artificial jet-black, cut short in a jagged style. She was wearing black jeans, ripped across the thigh, and a purple tank top, no bra; over the tank top was Terrence’s blue sweatshirt with the Japanese logo. She was wearing too much eye makeup for 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday, she was very pretty, and there was no way she was older than twenty-five.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Nicki.”

“Is Terrence—”

“He went surfing. I stayed over so he could leave last night.” She imparted this information in a helpful way, without suggesting that there might be anything disturbing about it.

“Surfing where?”

    “Rhode Island? I don’t exactly know. I’ve only done it a couple of times—but I’ve dated surfers before? They get up really early. That was mostly when I lived in the Bay Area.” She spoke in a familiar way; it wasn’t only teenagers anymore. You heard it from parents pushing strollers in the supermarket, and podcasts on NPR: overwhelmingly interrogative and laden with pauses, confident in its carelessness, as if each sentence came as surprise—though not an unpleasant one—to its speaker.

“You’re babysitting?”

Nicki glanced in the kitchen, where Simmi was balanced on a kitchen stool, in order to be at the right height for the stove. “Yeah? We’re hanging out.”

“Can I stay for pancakes?” Jack asked.

“We’re going to the aquarium.”

“Can Simmi come?”

I looked at Simmi, who was dribbling batter from a plastic ladle onto the griddle. She finished one and looked back: not unfriendly, but a little wary. She acknowledged what we both now knew, but wanted to be sure I wouldn’t say anything in front of Jack and Nicki.

“Not today, honey. Terrence wouldn’t know where we were.”

“You could text him,” Jack suggested.

Simmi made an effort to flip a pancake that wasn’t ready. It fell apart.

I went over to the stove. “You need some help?”

Simmi glanced at me anxiously. She was standing on one of those collapsible kitchen step stools—I thought Andrea and Günter must’ve left it behind—and I imagined her toppling forward, her hand landing on the sizzling griddle. I decided that Nicki had no idea how to take care of children, that that was the reason I was suddenly furious with Terrence.

“Can I jump on the trampoline?” Jack asked, and I gave him permission. I put my hand on Simmi’s back.

“Careful on this stool, okay?”

Simmi looked up uncertainly. “You’re not mad?” she said in a low voice.

“What?”

    “About the—” She glanced at Nicki, who had sat down on the couch and was looking at her phone.

“No,” I said. “Of course not.”

“You’re not going to call the police?”

“What?”

“You said Daddy would call the police.”

“Oh, honey—oh no. No, I didn’t mean—”

“You said.”

“But I didn’t know it was you then! I didn’t know until last night.”

Simmi picked up the spatula again; this time the pancake turned, but ended up on the burner instead of on the griddle. She started to cry, silently. I put my arm around her and took the spatula in the other hand. I flipped a pancake, which was now burnt almost black on the other side. Simmi laughed at the terrible pancake, but when she looked up at me, her eyes were full of tears. I remembered Terrence saying that Simmi didn’t cry when her mother died, only when they couldn’t find the phone. Had she been struggling with that guilt, on top of everything else? And then instead of helping, I’d frightened her with the notion of the police. I wondered if Terrence’s absence last night had been the reason she’d risked taking out the phone and contacting me again.