to be embarrassed about. Anyway, all we’ve done is what any friend would do. We’ve looked. I’m just sorry nothing’ shown up—yet.”
“Well, don’t trouble yourselves too much. This is no one’ fault but my own. Oh, hello,” he said to Ben, who had just wandered into the kitchen. “And how is your new poem coming along, young man? The one about the sea elephants—”
Anne hit herself on the forehead. “Are you completely mad? Do you live in a dream world?”
“No, I do not. Thank you, Nancy.” (She had just handed him a mug of coffee.) “I simply fail to see, lady wife, why ordinary life has to stop completely just because there’ been a slight setback.”
Anne buried her face in her hands. “This is the end,” she said. “And what are you supposed to do now? Return the advance to the publisher? In that case, we’ll be broke. We’ll have to sell the house.”
“Oh, Anne,” Nancy said, “I’m sure it won’t come to that.”
“And you’re coming up for tenure. Without a book, what are you going to tell the chair? This is supposed to be your breakthrough novel, remember, the one that’ going to make us rich. Good God, it’ the end of everything.”
“Now look,” Nancy said, “there’ no need to be so negative. We’ve hardly begun to look. We just have to be calm and methodical, and Jonah, maybe you need to try to retrace your steps. To work at remembering—to the best of your ability—the last time you were sure you had the notebooks.”
“You had them at the arroyo,” Ben said. “I remember seeing them on the bench.”
“But did I have them when we got up to leave? That’ the question.”
“I think you did.”
“Or at the Chinese restaurant. Does anyone remember seeing them at the Chinese restaurant?”
A vague shaking of heads greeted this question. No one could remember.
“What about yesterday morning, when you were out in the backyard with Ben?”
“That’ right. We sat down in that very odd barbecue pit.”
“But that was before we went to the arroyo,” Ben reminded, “and you had them at the arroyo.”
“Oh, so I did,” Boyd said. “So I did.”
A silence fell. “Well, the police here are very good,” Nancy said after a moment. “I’m sure you can count on them.”
“And when does the Chinese restaurant open?”
“Five, I think.”
She looked at the clock. It was half past noon.
I could tell from her expression that the prospect of having the Boyds on her hands until five, watching the clock, was more than she could stomach. So I said, “Maybe at this point we’d do best to head back over to the arroyo ourselves, and do a more careful search.”
“I don’t know how much ground is left to cover,” Boyd said. “We checked all around the bench where Ben and I sat, not to mention in the garbage cans, and there was nothing.”
“Still, it couldn’t hurt to have a fresh pair of eyes. I don’t have anything. I’m waiting for my car. I’d be glad to help. And I’m sure Ben would too—wouldn’t you, Ben?”
“Why not?”
“Oh, well, if you think that’ a good idea,” said Nancy, the relief in her voice audible, at least to me. “Unless, of course, you’d prefer just to wait here, in which case I could make some lunch . . .”
“No, no,” Anne said. “I think the last thing we want to be doing is just sitting around. I, for one, would rather be on my hands and knees in the bushes, digging.”
I stood. “Well, shall we go, then?”
“We can take the rental car,” Boyd said, standing too. And then the four of us shuffled out the back door.
Nothing turned up at the arroyo. We spent about two hours scouring the bushes around and behind the bench on which Boyd and Ben had sat, and also around several other benches, in case they had gotten the benches mixed up. Anne sifted through every trash can, while Boyd and Ben dug through the carpet of fallen leaves that blanketed the ground. They seemed to work happily together, and not for the last time, I wondered what kind of bond could have united this pair, a successful novelist of middle age and the teenage author of some pretentious verse. Perhaps Boyd really had seen in Ben’ writing a germ of raw talent that he thought worth cultivating. Or perhaps the connection was sentimental, the fruit of a longing, on Boyd’ part, for a son, and Ben’ for a father—understandable, given that at