How long had he been upstairs? Maybe twenty minutes. Maybe thirty. He wondered if he could’ve fallen asleep on the bed, if it was 2 a.m. now. But no, not unless his watch had stopped. It was only 5:45.
He was being ridiculous, and they were out in the backyard. Places like this had backyards. He walked through the empty kitchen, through a book-lined den. There was the door, but it was dead-bolted. He cupped his hand to the glass: a striped canopy, a heap of dead leaves, the moon. No people.
Yale turned and started shouting: “Hello! Richard! Guys! Hello!”
He went to the front door—also, bizarrely, dead-bolted—and fumbled till it opened. There was no one on the dark street.
The foggy, ridiculous idea came to him that the world had ended, that some apocalypse had swept through and forgotten only him. He laughed at himself, but at the same time: He saw no bobbing heads in neighbors’ windows. There were lights in the houses opposite, but then the lights were on here too. At the end of the block, the traffic signal turned from green to yellow to red. He heard the vague rush of cars far away, but that could have been wind, couldn’t it? Or even the lake. Yale hoped for a siren, a horn, a dog, an airplane across the night sky. Nothing.
He went back inside and closed the door. He yelled again: “You guys!” And he felt now that a trick was being played, that they might jump out and laugh. But this was a memorial, wasn’t it? It wasn’t the tenth grade. People weren’t always looking for ways to hurt him.
He found his own reflection in Richard’s TV. He was still here, still visible.
On the back of a chair was a blue windbreaker he recognized as Asher Glass’s. The pockets were empty.
He should leave. But where would he even go?
Cigarette butts filled the ashtrays. None were half smoked, none smashed out in haste. Copies of some of Nico’s comics had been laid out on the end tables, the bar, but now they were scattered—probably more a product of the party than its end—and Yale plucked one off the floor. A drag queen named Martina Luther Kink. A silly punch line about having a dream.
He walked through every room on the ground floor, opening every door—pantry, coat closet, vacuum closet—until he was greeted with a wall of cold air and descending cement steps. He found the light switch and made his way down. Laundry machines, boxes, two rusty bikes.
He climbed back up and then all the way to the third floor—a study, a little weight room, some storage—and then down to the second again and opened everything. Ornate mahogany bureaus, canopy beds. A master bedroom, all white and green. If this had been the wife’s work, it wasn’t so bad. A Diane Arbus print on the wall, the one of the boy with the hand grenade.
A telephone sat next to Richard’s bed, and Yale grabbed it with relief. He listened to the tone—reassuring—and slowly dialed his own number. No answer.
He needed to hear a voice, any human voice, and so he got the dial tone back and called Information.
“Name and city please,” the woman said.
“Hello?” He wanted to make sure she wasn’t a recording.
“This is Information. Do you know the name of the person you wish to call?”
“Yes, it’s—Marcus. Nico Marcus, on North Clark in Chicago.” He spelled the names.
“I have an N. Marcus on North Clark. Would you like me to connect you?”
“No—no thank you.”
“Stay on the line for the number.”
Yale hung up.
He circled the house one more time and went, finally, to the front door. He called to no one: “I’m leaving! I’m going!”
And stepped out into the dark.
2015
When they started across the Atlantic, the guy in the window seat jerked awake. He’d been asleep since O’Hare, and Fiona had tried to distract herself by lusting after him. The inflight magazine had been open on her lap for an hour, and all she’d done was tightly roll the corner of the crossword page again and again. The guy had the body of a rock climber, and the clothes and hair and beard (messy, all three, the hair chin-length and curly, the shorts stained with blue ink) to match. He’d slept with his forehead against the seat in front, and when he sat up and looked around, dazed, Fiona realized she hadn’t seen his face earlier. She’d invented a face for him, so that this one—while handsome and weathered—seemed wrong. She’d already known from the muscles of his bare legs, the meat of his arms, that he was too young for her. Early thirties.
He pulled his backpack from under his feet and went through the contents. He had the window seat, Fiona the aisle. He felt his pockets, felt the seat around him. He went through the backpack again, removing things: rolled-up socks, plastic bag with toothpaste and Scope, a small journal. He turned to Fiona and said, “Hey, I buy a drink?” She wasn’t sure she’d heard right. He might have been offering to buy her a cocktail, but this was an urgent question, not a flirtatious one.
She said, “I’m sorry?”
“Did I buy any drinks? On this flight?” His speech was slightly slurred.
“Oh. You’ve been asleep.”
“Fuck,” he said, and leaned his head back so far his Adam’s apple pointed at the ceiling.
“Something wrong?”
“I left my wallet at the bar.” He whispered it, as if saying it aloud would make it true. “At O’Hare.”
“Your whole wallet?”
“Big, leather thing. You haven’t seen it, have you?” He peered, suddenly inspired, into his magazine pouch, and then into Fiona’s. “Fuck. I got my passport at least, but fuck.”
She was horrified for him. This was the kind of thing she would have done herself in her wild days. Left her purse at some club, found herself on the wrong side of the city with no way home.
“Should we call the flight attendant?”
“Nothing she can do.” He shook his head, bewildered, his curls hitting his beard. He let out a short, bitter laugh. “Fucking alcoholism, man. Fuck me. Fuck.”
She couldn’t tell if he was joking. What alcoholic spoke about it so openly? But at the same time, would you say it if it weren’t true?
She said, “Do you have friends in Paris who can help?”
“There’s someone I’m supposed to stay with for the weekend. I don’t think she’s gonna put me up longer than that.”
And suddenly it hit Fiona: This was a scam. This was his sob story. She was supposed to look at him with maternal concern, to hand him a hundred bucks and say, “Perhaps this will help.” If she were his age, he’d have tried to seduce her on top of it.