The Lies That Bind(40)

And then, just as Jasmine and I decide to leave to get a much needed drink, I see him. His face. His gorgeous eyes.

“Oh my God, Jasmine,” I say as I feel my knees start to buckle under me. “It’s him.”

“Where?” she says, scanning the crowd, her expression hopeful.

I realize that she has misunderstood, that she thinks he is actually here, in the flesh.

“No. Not like that,” I say, shaking my head, pointing up at the flyer of Grant’s face, taped to the arch. In the photo, he is grinning in a bar, holding up a shot glass, of all things. The word MISSING is handwritten in neat capital letters beneath his photo, along with his full name and age. GRANT SMITH, 30. Below that is a 917 contact number and a plea to “call with any information.”

    “That’s him?” she says, looking shocked, then quickly composing herself.

I nod, feeling certain that I’m about to pass out.

“Jesus,” she says under her breath, putting her arm around me, then easing me to the ground right as my legs start to give way completely.

“Honey…honey, look at me,” she says, sitting cross-legged in front of me, her hands cupping my cheeks. She lifts my chin, forcing me to make eye contact. “This could be a good thing.”

“How?” I say, my voice shaking.

“Because…this is a lead,” she says, looking back up at the flyer, then pulling her notebook from her messenger bag. She turns to a fresh page and writes the phone number with her mechanical pencil, underlining it so hard that the point breaks. She clicks for a fresh point, but has nothing else to write.

“A lead?” I say. “This isn’t a lead. It’s further proof of…of…a dead end.”

The word dead rings in my ears.

“You don’t know that…maybe he’s been found….”

“Found? Found how? And where?”

“I don’t know. Found in a hospital or something…We need to call the number,” she says, but very tellingly, makes no move for her cellphone.

I hug my knees as hard as I can, then drop my forehead between them, the way people do to keep from fainting.

“No. He would have called me. He would’ve found a way to call me,” I say, my voice muffled.

“He can’t call you if he’s badly injured…or…or in a coma,” Jasmine says, as I marvel at how dire the world is when the idea of being in a coma is good news.

    “Or dead,” I say.

“Cecily, honey, this flyer changes nothing,” she says, rising to her feet. She brushes dust off the seat of her white jeans, then walks a few paces over to the picture of Grant. I watch as she carefully peels back the tape from two sides of the flyer. She carries it to me, then puts it in my hands. I look at him, hit by two waves. One of love, the other of pure horror that his beautiful face is among the faces of this tragedy.

“What do you mean it changes nothing?” I say, my voice frantic. “It confirms he’s missing.”

“It confirms he was missing….But it’s not like whoever hung this thing is going to come back and take it down if—when—he’s found,” she says. Jasmine is not a bullshitter, so I know that she is clearly trying to convince herself, too.

I stare at her for a long beat before I shake my head and say, “Come on, Jasmine. They’re not finding anyone.”

“But people can live a long time without food or water….Remember those coal miners in West Virginia…and that baby—what was her name? Jessica? The one who fell down the well?” Her voice sounds panicked and desperate. “They rescued that baby. And those miners. All of those people.”

“Yes, but they’re not pulling people out of that rubble. You’ve seen the photos….It’s all ash and debris….Those people were cremated out there.”

I let out a sob as Jasmine closes her eyes. “He could still be at a hospital—”

I cut her off and say, “No. You’ve been to the hospitals…and the blood banks….All that blood and nobody needs a drop….You either got out of those burning buildings—or you didn’t. You know that. I know that. Everyone knows that.”

“But it’s only been thirty-six hours, Cecily,” she says. “It’s still chaos down there. There have to be some survivors. A few. Even one. Have faith that he’s that one. Have faith in a miracle.”

    I look at her, thinking that’s the funny thing about faith. Either you have it—or you don’t. And with this one flyer, this one black-and-white photograph of Grant holding up a shot glass, my faith has been extinguished, just like so many of the candles blowing out around us.





I eventually get up off the sidewalk.

I can’t bear the thought of going home alone—or home at all—so Jasmine and I take the subway to the Upper East Side, where she lives. She shares an apartment with a roommate who is stuck in Chicago, where’s she’s been for work; all flights are still grounded. On the way to her apartment, we stop by a liquor store for a bottle of wine, then huddle together on folding chairs on her concrete-slab balcony overlooking the East River. It’s too dark to really make it out, but I stare in its direction anyway, remembering that Matthew once told me it’s not actually a river, but a “saltwater tidal strait” that travels in both directions, depending on the time of day. I tell Jasmine this now, adding that the Hudson isn’t a river, either, but an estuary, a factoid I also learned compliments of Matthew.