—
That evening, some guy named Amir calls my cell. He tells me there is no record that Daisy is dead, but there is also no record that she is alive. Huh? “Doesn’t mean she’s not a Jane Doe who wound up unmarked in a morgue somewhere. That tends to happen a lot withthese women,” Amir says. These women. He didn’t find any tax or property records, but obviously, she works in a cash business. There is no record that she is a sex offender, but I already knew that, too.These womentend to be victims, not offenders. Nothing on social media. Thanks, Amir. Maybe I should charge twelve hundred dollars an hour. Amir did, however, get a hit on criminal history. Scenarios start to flash in my head. Did things get rough with a john and she had to defend herself? Did she get desperate and rob or hurt someone who deserved to be robbed or hurt? I imagine a scene fromTaxi Driver. “Here is a woman who would not take it anymore. A woman who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a—” Then Amir tells me about the unpaid speeding ticket. “Happened outside Waco in 2010,” he says. “Texas state troopers pulled her over doing nearly a hundred in a sixty.”
A flash of the past. “I remember that speeding ticket.” Daisy had just started dancing at the Landing Strip, working weekends and early shifts, still hoping to stay in school. We had an essay due the next day; I think it was for a Power of Prose freshman seminar. Daisy hadn’t written a word. She’d had a real spiral about this essay because she was trying to apply for financial aid and if she flunked this one, it was over. The ticket pushed Daisy over the edge. I offered to pay it. We both took an Adderall, washing it down with peppermint tea. We played David Bowie and stayed up all night writing. I remember Daisy’s A-plus opening line: “In the summer of 2004, I set out to investigate a man I never knew: my father…”
“That’s it?” I ask. “How can that be all?”
“We’ve run it through the system. She could’ve been arrested under a different identity, a fake name. It would really help if you could get us fingerprints, DNA?”
“I wish. Any idea where she is now?”
Holden is on my hip. I’m heating up baby oatmeal in the microwave.I check to make sure that my phone isn’t in there. Oh, right, I am talking on it. Roman has drinks with his team after work, so it is just me and Holden and Trader Joe’s instant Japchae Korean Glass Noodles & Vegetable Stir Fry.
Amir says the last known address was at a rehab facility in LA, but that was thirteen years ago. LexisNexis did get one possible hit, a couple of references to a high-end escort named Jacki in a Kuala Lumpur newspaper, related to a Malaysian tycoon at the center of a massive financial scandal. “She lives in Malaysia?” Flying to Southeast Asia for a weekend will be a bigger ask.
“No. Last time anyone saw Hu Lee, he was living in New York, with a girl.”
“Sorry, who?”
“Hu, the Malaysian billionaire. He was hiding in New York with a hired girl.”
“Daisy? I mean Jacki, she’s in New York?”
“We can’t say for certain that it’s the same girl, but it’s the only press hit we got.”
Knowing Daisy might be in New York—or that she was, at some point—makes me feel even worse. It’s like hearing that your future husband is at a party, but going to Red Hook during a snowstorm in March just seems like a pain, and you have to go through life knowing that someone else is married to your hunky Australian husband because the F train was running on the G line.
“So what do I do? How do I contact her?” I say, desperation in my voice. Holden is fussy. I swoosh a spoonful of baby oatmeal into his mouth, but it’s too hot. He starts to sob. “Oh, I’m so sorry, koala. Oh no. Baby. Mama is so sorry.” I try to listen to Amir while also worrying that I’ve burned the roof of Holden’s mouth, setting my child up for a life of therapy and avoiding hot foods.
“We’re gonna try a couple of cell numbers that popped up, put word out in certain circles, try to let this Daisy know that you’relooking for her,” Amir says. He tells me to post on social media regularly and keep location sharing on. More crying. “If we find her, we’ll share your exact location. This type of person, she’s not going to be found unless she wants to be. Maybe she hears you’re looking and wants to see you, too? Make it easy for her? Start posting your locations? That way, she won’t feel threatened.”
Holden is cry-convulsing, his lungs performing at least at an eighteen-week level. I try to find his pacifier and tell Amir that I’ve been posting a lot, onJuju Bean.
“Huh? What? I can’t hear you.”
“It’s this app for new moms…”
“You want my advice?” Amir asks.
But after that I can’t hear anything because my baby is screeching like a barn owl during mating season. “I can’t hear you. Hello?!”
The line goes quiet. I hang up. Holden looks up at me; the sides of his mouth curl up, a silent little angel.
—
By the time Roman gets home, I am asleep on the sofa with Bravo on TV. He turns off theHousewives, moves an old copy ofPurple People. He doesn’t even glance at the images, never much of a porn, fake-boobs guy. I crack my eyes. It’s nice to see him.
“Hey, what time is it?” I say, still orienting myself.
“Just gone eight thirty.”
How is it eight thirty? To my body, it feels like it is the middle of the night. To my body, it feels like I downed a handful of barbiturates with Bordeaux. Roman walks into Holden’s nursery. This is his ritual, the thing I know he looks forward to all day. He walks in, kisses Holden’s head, squeezes his thigh rolls. The other night, as I folded onesies, Roman stared into Holden’s crib. “I feel like I’m missing it,” he said. Part of me feels bad that Roman will never know what it feels like to be a marsupial.
“Gigi needs another surgery,” he says, walking into the bathroom. “It’s never-ending.”
“Rome. I’m so sorry. If you need to go…”
He shakes his head and I can see the unease on his face. When Roman goes silent, I know that he is burying something, and he doesn’t want me to dig.
