Nine Lives(18)

He wrote back:

Same. Something must be up. Should we be worried? I feel more curious.



Caroline:

I’m curious, too. Also a little worried. Did you know any of the other names on the list?



Ethan:

I didn’t, no, and I looked them all up. Nothing rang a bell, but when I saw your faculty page … you seemed familiar to me. Don’t know why.



Caroline:

Familiar meaning we might know each other? Your name doesn’t ring a bell for me.



Ethan:

Really? I’m a famous musician.



Caroline:

Are you actually?



Ethan:

No, but I want to be, I guess. I’m aspiring. And now I’m embarrassed that I even made the stupid joke in the first place. Let’s talk about something else? Where did you grow up?



They emailed back and forth for an hour, comparing biographies, trying to figure out if there was some connection between them. Except for their age—they were both in their middle thirties—they discovered that they had almost nothing in common. All they’d come up with was the fact that they both had had grandparents from the Boston area in Massachusetts.

Ethan wrote:

Maybe what connects us is that nothing connects us. It feels almost strange that we can’t find anything.



She wrote:

You write songs. I like songs. I don’t suppose that counts.



Ethan:

Well, you probably wouldn’t like my songs. But you critique poetry, and I like poetry.



Caroline:

Liking poetry is far rarer than liking songs. What poets do you like?



Ethan thought for a moment, trying to construct a fast list that would impress her, then asked himself why he was trying to do that. Instead, he decided to just be honest.

Off the top of my head: John Berryman, Frank O’Hara, Weldon Kees, Robert Lowell. Also, a bunch of people you probably wouldn’t consider poets: Joni Mitchell, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, James McMurtry, Willy Vlautin.



After sending that last email Ethan didn’t hear back right away, and he wondered if his poetry selections had turned her off somehow. He went and flipped through his records, pulling out Songs of Love and Hate, and dropped the needle on its first track.





8





FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 9:48 P.M.


Caroline was in her bed, wide awake, emailing back and forth with a stranger. Her orange cat Estrella slept, as was her custom, on the edge of the lower right corner of the mattress, curled into a tight ball. Fable, her other cat, could be anywhere.

Ethan Dart, who’d emailed her out of the blue because of that strange letter, had just given her his list of favorite poets, and she was googling Weldon Kees, looking for a poem of his that she remembered liking. After a few minutes she found it and reread it to herself. An odd poem called “For My Daughter.” It was the last line that had stuck with her: “I have no daughter. I desire none.”

She was about to write back to Ethan when she got a second email from him.

I lost you when I called Dylan a poet, didn’t I?



She smiled, and wrote:

No. You didn’t lose me, but he’s not a poet. He’s a songwriter. No, I was looking up a poem by Weldon Kees I like called “For My Daughter.” You don’t hear very much about him these days.



Ethan wrote:

Phew, you’re still there. I was missing you already. I love Kees, and sometimes I think I’m just romanticizing him because he went missing and no one ever saw him again. Do you know his poem “Crime Club”?



Caroline:

I don’t, but I’ll look it up.



Ethan:

Okay. I’ll wait patiently while you read it. I’ll try not to panic that you’re leaving me.



Caroline and Ethan Dart emailed until just before dawn. She knew that it was that late not because of the soft gray glow that was filling her curtains but because Fable had come to wake her up, asking to be let out for his predawn reconnaissance.

It’s nearly morning, she wrote and he wrote immediately back:

My least favorite time of day. Can we continue this conversation tomorrow night? Or maybe we shouldn’t push our luck.



She wrote:

Sure, I could continue, but not until I get at least a little sleep.



She folded up her laptop, then brought it to her office to charge. The window curtains were now almost ablaze with morning light. Still, she crawled back under her covers, and thought about the very strange events of the last two days. First, the letter, and then the phone call from the FBI wanting to take possession of it, and now this long email exchange with a country singer from Austin, Texas, who loved Weldon Kees. She’d looked at the picture he had up on his website, and thought he looked a little like paintings she’d seen of Edmund Spenser. Same narrow, pointed nose, same dark brown eyes.

She pulled the covers over her head, creating a pocket of darkness, and lay for a time with her eyes still open.





9





SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 7:16 A.M.


Jessica Winslow lay awake in her bed, wondering if she’d even managed three solid hours of sleep. Aaron had escorted her home the night before, and she’d let him walk her into her house, even let him poke around for a while. She didn’t offer him a drink, however, and he let her lead him to her front door.