the normalcy of our old lives, the stupid luxury of believing that Joe would always be there on the other end of a phone line. Luna gave us a focus, a distraction, but one that did not strike me as false. We were not hiding from anything; we were seeking.
Or perhaps it was the trace of what came later that prompted our search for Luna. A shiver of future knowledge that I did not understand, not yet. All I can say is that Caroline and I pursued Luna with a sense of unreasonable purpose. Luna was the answer to a question we did not yet know how to ask.
Day after day I called the Miami phone number given to me by Detective Henry, but it rang and rang. No answering machine, no voice mail, no Luna.
“No, we haven’t heard from her,” the detective said when I called him from New York. “She’s supposed to notify us before she leaves the state.” He paused. “But now that we’ve completed the investigation, I can’t devote any resources to finding her.”
I searched online with Google, visited Myspace and Bebo. The year was 2006, when an escape from the Internet was still entirely possible. The name Luna Hernandez gave me teenagers in Texas and Massachusetts, middle-aged women in Ohio and Arizona; none was the Luna from Joe’s Polaroid.
I called Revel Bar + Restaurant, but the hostess said that Luna Hernandez no longer worked there. How long had it been? I asked.
“Oh, two months?” she said. “Maybe three.” She didn’t know how to reach Luna, and no, she could not give out any personal numbers. “I need to go now, ma’am,” the woman said. “It’s a Saturday night.”
Caroline’s theory was that Luna’s inadvertent role in Joe’s death had provoked in her an inconsolable sadness. “She’s hiding,” Caroline said. “We have to go find her. Remember the Pause?”
In my apartment I was broiling a tuna melt in the toaster oven. In Caroline’s house in Hamden, she was picking the woody needles off a rosemary stalk for the chicken she would roast that night. Both of us with phones pinched between shoulder and ear.
“If someone had wanted to find Noni,” I said.
“They’d go to the gray house,” Caroline finished.
“Okay.” I straightened up. “I’ll go back.”
* * *
And so, three months after that first trip to Miami, I returned alone to search for Luna. I took a cab straight from the airport to the address that Detective Henry had given me. A short, squat apartment building, three stories high, each floor with a small, crowded balcony and windows lit from within. On the second floor, Luna’s floor, I saw slow movement behind a gauzy curtain.
I climbed the stairs and rang the bell. I carried my suitcase in one hand; the coat I had needed in New York was tied around my waist. It was early evening, overcast, the light low and colored the dull pink that in Miami seemed to infuse everything, all the time. Again I rang the bell, and this time a woman answered.
“May I help you?” she said. The door opened directly into a small white kitchen. Behind her I glimpsed a man and a boy seated at a table laid for dinner. Tortillas, a plate of beans, one glass of milk.
Luna Hernandez? No, they had never heard of her.
“When we moved in, the place was empty,” the woman said. “Very clean. The landlord lives in Ohio. We’ve never met him. Just send the checks.” And then she held up a finger. “Oh—but there were some plants on the balcony. Some tomatoes. Beautiful. Just delicious.”
I only nodded; I couldn’t speak. I had been so sure I would find Luna here. I didn’t move from the doorway. I couldn’t even remember the name of the hotel where I was staying. This would be the first of many such moments, a hint of Luna, a near miss, a sense that she was close but never found.
The woman, sensing my distress, said, “Wait here,” and then she was gone, darting from my vision. From his seat in the kitchen, the little boy watched me with wide, gold-colored eyes. The woman returned and handed me a fat red tomato. “See?” she said. “You can eat it, just like an apple. Enjoy.” And then she closed the door.
Back on the ground floor, I stood on the grass outside Luna’s old apartment building. The tomato felt heavy in my hand, overripe. Just below the window was a large shrub awash with