“Well,” Fiona said. She didn’t want to let herself get too excited. A man who lived in an apartment like this, she thought, might eat those for dinner. But then she remembered that Kurt had always been a health nut, that the Hosanna Collective believed in biblical grains. He might have left the cult, but it would be odd to rediscover chocolate cereal in your forties. She opened the refrigerator, and although there wasn’t much, it was health food: plain yogurt, bottled green drinks, what seemed to be the French version of Tofurkey.
“Expires next spring,” Arnaud said, still looking at the box. “It can’t be so old. That’s good, yeah?”
The cereal did reignite some small hope, but she didn’t want to admit it.
Arnaud took more photos. Fiona sensed it was for show. What good would a picture of the sink do?
As they left, she fought the impulse to leave something deliberately askew, to bump a lamp or scrawl a question mark on the wall.
“We were never here,” Arnaud said. He turned the lock and closed the door behind them. “Goodbye, Kurt Pearce’s flat.”
* * *
—
Fiona wandered the Marais a long time, feeling awkwardly American here where there weren’t as many tourists. She showed Claire’s photo, with slightly renewed optimism, to waiters, to shopkeepers.
She showed it to a scraggy-haired man waiting on a corner with a long, narrow box. He turned out to be a Brit, and she was fairly sure he was stoned.
He looked at the picture a long time, and then he said, “Not everyone wants to be found.”
Fiona walked away insulted, and didn’t feel like talking to anyone else.
She circled back too close to Kurt’s apartment. Here was the place she’d had the whiskey earlier; she stopped to use the bathroom, feeling she had more right to do so here than elsewhere.
When she emerged, she hoped she’d see the fighting couple out on the street. Really, she hoped she’d see just the woman, alone, leaning against a window and crying. Fiona would wrap her up, take her back to Richard’s. She could save one woman, even if it was the wrong woman.
But the street was—as she’d known it would be—empty.
1986
Sunday was the day. Charlie would be working, even if he’d taken Friday off; Out Loud published on Mondays, which meant the paper was put to bed late Sunday night.
Early Sunday morning, Kurt’s father picked him up for hockey practice. He greeted Yale stiffly and whispered something to Cecily. The ex was a big man, big with both fat and muscle, in possession of a remarkably uncharming Irish accent. Yale could see the man in Kurt’s upturned nose, wide mouth. He wondered if it was best, in this situation, to come across gay (as in, not involved with Cecily) or straight (lest the man get deranged ideas about Yale’s interest in the eleven-year-old). He tried to act natural, which was probably on the gay side.
He did his laundry in the building’s basement, and then he took the El into the city. His feet, Cecily was right, were slowly dying in those shoes, even with socks. There was slush today on all the sidewalks, and in no time it had soaked through.
It was one o’clock. He walked, with the numb determination he imagined assassins felt, down Belmont, through the door next to the taco place, up the flight of stairs that led to a dentist and an insurance agency and the Out Loud offices. Dwight, who worked out front, looked up and waved. Nothing amiss.
Charlie was in his office talking with Gloria. Yale walked in as he’d done a hundred times and sat in the chair by the door. Gloria gave a little wave and kept talking, didn’t seem to notice that Charlie had stiffened. Yale felt like a ghost, visible only to one person. Only Charlie saw this specter at the door. Only Charlie felt the chill.
Gloria said, “You want me to come back?”
And Yale said, “Keep going! I’m happy to wait.” As if he were dropping off Charlie’s sandwich.
He hadn’t seen Charlie’s face since he’d left for Door County. The last time he’d looked at Charlie, it had been with complete trust.
Charlie hurried Gloria out, said they should meet after layout was done. He shut the door behind her. He said, quietly, “Jesus, Yale.” He looked everywhere but into Yale’s eyes.
Yale knew his own silence was a kind of power. He stayed in the chair, arms crossed. There were at least five