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“You tried his office?” Carmen appreciated how much he wanted to help her. He was a good person.
“His secretary was at lunch. I’m going to drive over there,” Carmen muttered. “What else can I do?”
“Can I come?” Win looked intent.
“You want to?”
“Yeah.”
She was now running toward her car and he was following her, stride for stride. “Can you get out of work?”
“I’m on lunch break. I’m done with pediatrics for today and the old folks can do without my antics and my pocket change for one afternoon.”
“You’re sure?”
He looked at her as seriously as if she’d asked him to plunge to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean with her. “I’m sure. I’m sure I’m sure.”
Carmen drove. She felt like Starsky and Hutch as they pulled up to the curb and leaped out of the car. He followed her to the elevator and then to the reception desk.
Mrs. Barrie greeted Carmen warmly, and Carmen explained where she was going without breaking her gait. Christina had worked at this same law firm since Carmen was a toddler. Carmen knew her way around the place.
Carmen and Win staked out Irene’s desk, and thankfully, she returned from lunch ten minutes later. “What can I do for you, Carmen?” Irene asked, looking confused. Carmen wore a bandana on her head, do-rag style, and her feet were in flip-flops.
“We need to find David.” Carmen’s intensity was such that Irene seemed to shrink back from her own cubicle. “I think my mom’s gonna have the baby soon,” Carmen explained, “but don’t tell anybody anything yet.”
Irene, good soul that she was, got right with the program.“Oh, my.” Briskly she pulled up the calendar on her computer. Her long fingernails clickety-clicked on the keys until she got to the right day. “Your poor mother. We’ll find him.”
Carmen sometimes got the feeling that everybody rooted for her mother. She was probably like a poster girl for legal secretaries. She’d won the respect and ardor of a handsome young lawyer without even meaning to.
“He has a meeting in Trenton this afternoon. He’s renting a car there and driving to Philadelphia. He’s supposed to stay in a hotel in Philly tonight. He has a meeting scheduled there tomorrow morning and then he comes home. And wait.” She studied her notes a little more closely. “He told me he was hoping to stop off and visit his mother in Downingtown on his way to Philly.”
Carmen was thinking. “Do you know the number of the meeting place in Trenton?”
“Yes.” Irene looked it up and called it. She went through several people and several bits and pieces of conversation before she hung up. “He left already.”
“Oh.” Carmen chewed her thumbnail. “How about the car rental place?”
“Yes.” Irene called them, too. She listened for a bit and put her hand over the receiver. “He rented the car and left about twenty-five minutes ago.”
“Shit,” Carmen mumbled. She walked in a small circle. She realized Win was watching her carefully. But she was too preoccupied to be self-conscious or even to consider all the ways in which she was diverging from Good Carmen.
“Do you have David’s mother’s number?”
Irene winced. “I don’t think I do.” She riffled through her Rolodex and then scrolled through her computerized version. “No, I’m sorry.”
“The address?” Carmen asked without much hope.
Irene shook her head. “I don’t know David’s stepfather’s name, do you?”
Carmen should have known it. She had certainly heard it before. But in her efforts to tune out most of the things David said, she’d tuned out this potentially helpful bit of information.
“We should leave a message at the hotel in Philadelphia just in case,” Win suggested.
Irene nodded and did it. “He hasn’t checked in yet, but they’ll have him call as soon as he does.”
Carmen’s brain was working fast. “Can you call the rental car company again?” she asked.
Irene did it without asking questions. Carmen held out her hand for the phone. “Can I talk?”
“Sure.” Irene handed it over.
Carmen talked to a representative for a few minutes. As soon as she hung up she looked at Win and Irene brightly. “I have something. They can’t get hold of David in his car, but they can tell us where the car is.”
“Really?” Win looked impressed.
“Yeah. And like I always say, thank the Lord for satellite systems.” She laughed at herself. “I don’t really go around saying that.”
Win smiled at her, also clearly relieved that they had a lead. “How far is Downingtown?” he asked.
Irene shrugged. “I think about an hour and a half.”
Win and Carmen looked at each other. “So let’s go,” Win said.
“You think so?” Carmen asked, suddenly nervous about the extent to which she’d embroiled an innocent guy in her drama. “You sure you want to come with me?”
His eyes told her she should take this for granted. “I’m sure I want to come with you.”
Of course she found it in the last place she looked. If she hadn’t found it, she’d still be looking.
—Susannah Brown
Lena walked into her father’s study with expectations so low, she would have been happily surprised if he’d taken a paperweight from his desk and thrown it at her.
He was thumbing through a stack of papers on his desk. He was listening to Paul Simon. It was one of about three CDs he ever listened to, and he always struck Lena as slightly tin-eared and immigrant in his appreciation. The song was perky and polished, something about a camera that took bright color pictures. To Lena the song was like an A-plus paper, a math problem where you showed your work, a form fully filled out. But it didn’t sound to her like music. She liked her colors dingier.
Her father looked up at her over his half-glasses. He turned the music off.
“Do you mind if I make a drawing of you?” Lena had practiced saying this in her head so many times, the words had long ago lost their ordinary feel and had begun to taste funny in her mouth.
He waved her to the empty seat across from his desk. He was prepared for this. Lena’s mother had no doubt warned and mollified him.
Lena’s paper was already clipped to her drawing board and her charcoal was squeezed into her clammy hand. She hadn’t come in willing to take no for an answer. She sat down. “You don’t need to do anything special.” She’d practiced saying that, too.
He nodded absently. He didn’t need to be asked twice. He was already back to his papers. But she noticed he kept his face angled straighter now, only his eyes cast down. The lenses of his glasses glinted, but his eyes within them appeared shut from where she sat.
She watched him for a long time before she began to draw. She made herself do this. She didn’t care if it made him uncomfortable.
For a while she saw what she expected. She could have drawn his angry face with not only his eyes closed but with hers closed too. This was how she pictured him, and this is how he looked. She saw what she felt, and what she felt was his anger. She had certainly suffered for it. Why else was she here?
She knew what she felt. But what did she see?
She began to wonder. With drawing, you were always pitting your feelings and expectations against what the cold light offered your optic nerves. Like the first time you tried to mix colors to paint water. You thought you’d be using a lot of blue and maybe green. But if you made yourself see, you ended up with a lot more gray and brown and white, and even weird unexpected colors like yellow and red. And if you tried to paint it again, it would all be different. You couldn’t paint the same water twice.
