Love and Other Consolation Prizes(94)

“Dr. Luke has treated patients in this neighborhood forever,” Ernest said as they passed strangers in the hallway. “He understands.”

As Ernest reached for his keys he noticed that his apartment door was ajar. Hanny was standing inside, coat and purse in hand. An audience on the TV was laughing.

“Hello. Sorry we’re late.” Ernest glanced about. “Where’s Rich?”

“He said he had a late-night meeting. Rich is always on the go, he said he was pitching a new client who might do business in Nevada. So, where’s Ma?” Hanny looked around wide-eyed; she opened the bedroom door, peeked into the bathroom.

“What do you mean, where’s Ma?” Juju said as she double-checked the tiny bedroom, opened the closet door. “She’s supposed to be here with you.”

Hanny smiled and cocked her head as though she thought her sister was teasing. Then she grew serious. “Wait, she didn’t go out to dinner with the two of you?”





MEET ME AT THE FAIR


(1962)



Hanny telephoned her hotel and left a message for Rich. Then she immediately set off for Juju’s house on Queen Anne Hill. If her mother wasn’t there, she planned to call the police and report Gracie as a missing person. Then she’d sit by the phone. Meanwhile Juju had left to canvas the Betsuin Buddhist Temple, the Japanese Baptist Church, the sento beneath the Panama Hotel, Ruby Chow’s, and any other place she could think of where her mother might have wandered. That left Ernest to visit the nearby train stations and the Union Gospel Mission, where the Tenderloin used to be. They’d check, then call Hanny and leave messages, doing their best to coordinate their search.

A part of Ernest suspected where Gracie was really headed, though, even before Pascual met him in the hallway. A woman Ernest vaguely recognized from the Black and Tan hung on his friend’s arm, smiling.

“Kuya, what’s up? We popped by earlier and Gracie was heading out, all alone. I knew that probably wasn’t a good idea, but she seemed—you know—pretty well put together. I tried to stop and talk to her, but she wouldn’t listen. She just handed me this note to give to you and boom, out the door. I figured maybe one of your daughters was waiting for her downstairs. From the look on your face, I’m guessing I was wrong.”

Ernest unfolded the note, which read:

Dear Ernest, I’ve gone to the fair. It’s been too long. I’m going to make things better now. Go to the Space Needle and you’ll understand. Yours, Gracie.



He found Juju’s business card in his wallet and handed it to his friend. “Call my daughter—her number’s on the back—let her know that I’ve found Gracie.” Then he tucked the note in his pocket and headed downstairs.

Pascual leaned over the banister. “Kuya, wait, where are you going?”

—

ERNEST HAD WORRIED that the new Alweg Monorail would still be jam-packed—overflowing with tourists, even in the early evening—so he skipped the electric sky train and parked as near as he could to the Century 21 Expo’s south entrance, which was mercifully uncrowded. He paid $1.60 for a general admission ticket and pushed his way through the turnstile while hundreds of bells chimed in the distance. Once inside, he felt like a desperate kid again. Everything smelled new, like sawdust, concrete, and blooming flowers, with a hint of cotton candy and candied apples lingering on the breeze.

Ernest inhaled the haunting scents and walked as fast as he could among the thicket of people. He weaved his way through the crowds, past the Interior Design and Fashion pavilion and beyond the snarling stuffed polar bears of the Alaska Exhibit, covered in fake snow. He felt a wave of nostalgia. So much had changed, beyond the location. The long, elegant dresses, petticoats, and colorful parasols were gone, replaced with a rainbow of short dresses and leather boots. Cinched waists had become soft, bare midriffs. Dark French curls had given way to frosted beehives and soaring bleached bouffants. And the decorum of suits and hats had been updated with Bermuda shorts, denim, and sunglasses.

The elaborate neoclassical architecture, the Grecian columns and faux marble arches that decorated his memories had been replaced as well, supplanted with visions of the future made manifest in painted steel and soaring walls of pastel concrete.

The expo made Ernest feel as if he’d stumbled out of H. G. Wells’s time machine and into a strange future where he didn’t quite fit in. He was a Morlock in a world of Eloi, more of a workhorse than a show horse, as he wended his way through the throngs of beautiful, chattering, modern people, who all seemed to be speaking in different languages—Chinese, Japanese, the romantic languages of Europe, sprinkled among the assortment of American accents.

Fortunately the Space Needle made it easy to orient himself as he saw a line of visitors trailing away from the base of the new landmark—hundreds of people, so many that they blocked the entrances of the IBM Center and the General Electric Building, and the sleek rocket-shaped concept cars in front of the geodesic dome of the Ford Pavilion. After fighting his way through the crowd that loitered near a bank of lockers and a row of seashell pay phones, Ernest found the ticket window.

“I’ve lost someone,” he said to the clerk, as he scanned the crowd. “I think she might have wandered up to the observation deck. She’s not well, plus she’s afraid of heights. My whole family is out looking for her, if I could just…”