Have You Seen Me?(91)

“Thank you . . . I feel like all we’ve done lately is talk about me. What about you, Damien? What’s happening in your life?”

“I guess life is good overall. I’m single at the moment and still living down here. Playing the guitar, though I don’t know if I’ve improved since you last heard me. Trying to squeeze in as much travel as possible. And still loving every day at Greenbacks.”

“Has Sasha surfaced again?”

“The beauty guru? I haven’t heard anything else. Maybe she went back to covering split ends and dry cuticles.”

“It’s none of my business, of course, but could she make trouble for you—for the company?”

He narrows his eyes again, studying me.

“I’m not perfect, Ally,” he says finally. “You know that. But I’d never fuck up something that mattered so much to me. . . . Is that why you asked me to join you tonight? To find out if I was cooking the books?”

“No, though it’s good to know you’re the same person from five years ago. But there is something I wanted to ask you. The private investigator I’m working with found out I stayed in this hotel the night before I went to Greenbacks.”

“And you have no recollection of it whatsoever?”

“None.”

For half a minute neither of us speaks.

“You’re looking at me as if I might have something to contribute,” Damien says, raising an eyebrow.

“Do you? This is two blocks from your apartment. I mean, the one you lived in when I knew you.”

“Are you asking if we spent the night together, Ally? No. When I saw you in the conference room, it was the first time I’d laid eyes on you in five years.”

“Okay. I . . . I just wondered. Because it seemed more than coincidental. Me being in your neighborhood—and the fact that I showed up at Greenbacks the next day. I thought maybe I did something crazy and invited you to my hotel room.”

He smiles. “If you had, I would have been happy to oblige. Sorry, I don’t mean to make light of it. Not knowing about a chunk of your life must be frustrating.”

“Most of the blanks have actually been filled in by this point, thanks to the two investigators I’ve worked with. But what’s frustrating is not knowing why I did some of the things I did. It’s pretty clear why I fell apart, but why dump my purse in my office and set off on this crazy journey through the East Village? And end up here? And then Greenbacks? What was I hoping to accomplish?”

Damien reaches for his beer bottle and runs a thumb up and down its side.

“Maybe it’s not all that complicated. You could try looking at it literally and see how that sits with you.”

“What do you mean?

“When we spent time together, you told me you used to wander around the East Village. And daydream in a little restaurant there. So maybe you were trying to be in a place that felt good to you and recapture someone you used to be. Or experimented with being.”

I reflect on his words. Is that really what those two days were about? If so, it also would mean that I’d felt a yearning to connect with Damien again.

“It’s funny,” I say. “My father always called me Button because I was so buttoned-up—but there’s a part of me that wants to be different than that. Not a wild child, but freer. I’ve only let that side of me out once in a while.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Not sure. Perhaps I sensed my parents loved the girl who worked extra hard and didn’t cross the line. But more importantly, I think finding Jaycee Long’s body put the fear of God into me. It felt as if I was being punished for breaking the rules.”

“You mean because you’d taken the shortcut that day?”

“Right. I’d never done—”

A thought flits around the edges of my mind, vaguely familiar.

“What?” Damien asks.

“I just remembered something. Another lie I told back then—though, thank god, this isn’t as consequential as the other.”

“Tell me.”

“I told my family and the police that I took the shortcut home because I dillydallied around school that day, but that’s only party true. Believe it or not, I was also looking for arrowheads.”

“Arrowheads?”

“I was fascinated by the whole idea of them, and I’d heard someone say they were all over New Jersey, in fields and woods. That’s probably why I was off the path, kicking at piles of leaves.”

He laughs a little. “Sorry, once again the wrong response, but it’s funny to think of you heading out with that secret plan.”

“Yeah, and unfortunately I paid a price for it. But I never lost my love for arrowheads.”

We’ve finished our drinks and Damien asks if I want another. Part of me wants to linger. I feel at ease in his presence. But I don’t want to complicate my life any more than necessary at the moment. So I tell him no thank you, that I’d better be heading out, and I slip back into my sweater coat.

As I reach into my purse for my wallet, Damien shakes his head.

“I’ve got this,” he says.

“Well, I definitely owe you then, since you got the last one.”

He brushes my cheek with his lips again.

“Want to go arrowhead hunting some time? Believe it or not, that was one of my obsessions as a kid.”