The Vanishing Half(19)

“She took a job,” she said. It all sounded so simple when she said it aloud, and of course, it had started that way. Stella needed to find a new job, so she’d responded to a listing in the newspaper for secretarial work in an office inside the Maison Blanche building. An office like that would never hire a colored girl, but they needed the money, living in the city and all, and why should the twins starve because Stella, perfectly capable of typing, became unfit as soon as anyone learned that she was colored? It wasn’t lying, she told Stella. How was it her fault if they thought she was white when they hired her? What sense did it make to correct them now?

A good job for Stella, then a good job for her, that was the plan. So Stella would have to pretend a little but a little pretending to keep them off the streets seemed worth it. Then one evening, a year later, Desiree came home from Dixie Laundry to find an empty apartment. All of Stella’s clothes, all of her things, gone. Like she’d never been there at all.

There was a note left behind in Stella’s careful hand: Sorry, honey, but I’ve got to go my own way. For weeks, Desiree carried it with her until one night, in a fit of fury, she ripped it up, scattered it outside the window. She regretted that now, wished she still had something as small as a scrap of paper with Stella’s handwriting on it.

Early was quiet a moment, then he finally pushed his empty cup toward her.

“What if I help you find her?” he said.

She frowned, pouring the coffee slowly.

“What you mean?” she said.

“Got a new job out in Texas, then I’m headin back this way,” he said. “We could drive into New Orleans. Ask around.”

“Why you wanna help me anyway?” she said.

“Cause I’m good at it,” he said.

“Good at what?”

He slid a worn manila envelope onto the countertop. It was addressed to a man named Ceel Lewis, but she recognized Sam’s handwriting.

“Huntin,” he said.



* * *



—

IN A LITTLE TOWN outside Abilene, Texas, Early dreamed about Desiree Vignes.

Beneath the setting sun, he sprawled along the backseat of his El Camino, cradling a photograph of her. He’d given all of Ceel’s pictures back to her except for one, which he’d already slid into the inside pocket of his leather jacket, feeling its corners poke his chest. He wasn’t sure why he kept that picture. Wanted something to remember her by, maybe, if she decided to never speak to him again. She’d looked so shaken when she learned his true purpose in finding her, which he couldn’t blame; he didn’t stick around to find out if she could forgive him. Off to Texas, where he was hunting a mechanic charged with assault and attempted murder—his wife, her lover, a torque wrench. The blood-splattered garage made the front page in the Times-Picayune. On his drive west, Early imagined the mechanic swinging that wrench like Samson hurling a donkey jaw, blinded by his own righteousness and betrayal. Once, he might have been excited to hunt a man accused of such a sensational crime. But he was distracted now; when he closed his eyes, he imagined only Desiree.

At the truck stop, he bought a Coke and stepped into the phone booth to tell Sam Winston that his wife wasn’t in New Orleans.

“Probably lit out east,” he said. “New York, New Jersey, somethin like that.”

“Why on earth she go out there, man?” Sam said. “No, I’m telling you, she’s back in New Orleans. You just ain’t looked hard enough.”

“Ask Ceel how hard I look. If she was here, I woulda found her already.”

“What if I send you more money?”

“Then I tell you the same thing,” Early said. “She ain’t here. Try someplace else.”

He hung up the phone, leaning against the booth. His mind started to unspool backward; he knew how to find a hiding man but how to hide a woman so that she would never be found? Plant misinformation, scatter the trail so that any other man Sam hired wouldn’t even know where to start. He fished in his pockets for a cigarette, his hands trembling. He’d never walked away from a job before. Exposed his camera film under the sunlight, the photographs of Desiree on her porch blackening. Money disappearing from his pockets. When he told Ceel that he’d come up empty and needed another job, quick, Ceel just shrugged, handing him the mechanic’s photograph.

“Can’t believe that little lady got the best of you,” he’d said, laughing, as he pushed away from the bar.

She had, Early was starting to admit. He didn’t know what it was about her but she’d hooked into him like a burr. He couldn’t shake her. Didn’t want to. In the phone booth, he pulled out a crumpled receipt from his pocket and dialed Lou’s Egg House. When he heard her voice, he felt so nervous that he thought, for a second, about hanging up. Instead, he cleared his throat and asked how she was getting on.

“Oh fine,” she said. “You know how it is. Where you off to right now?”

“Eula, Texas,” he said. “You ever been to Eula?”

“No,” she said. “What’s it like?”

“Dry,” he said. “Dusty. Lonesome. I feel like the only man alive out here. Like I fallen off the edge of the earth. You ever know that feeling?”

He imagined her on the other end, clutching the phone as she leaned against the kitchen door. The diner would be emptying now, near closing. Maybe she was all alone, willing the time to pass. Thinking about her sister, or maybe even thinking about him.