Part 7 (1/2)

George seems to be staring past Robin, toward the bed. ”I'm not really awake yet,” he says. ”Why don't I get us some breakfast and coffee?”

”Caffeine. Yes.” Sending George from the apartment is a good idea; he'll probably go to the bagel place near campus, which will give Robin at least a half hour alone, time to get his bearings. And yet: they never ”get breakfast” for each other. The gesture feels loosely romantic, the kind of thing Peter would do for him on lazy Sunday mornings.

Robin slumps on the couch, smoking his last cigarette, wis.h.i.+ng he had asked George to buy another pack. He sips at a gla.s.s of water, wanting an aspirin. He draws his knees to his chest and squints like a cat. The sun streams through the windows; the green leaves on a single visible tree have a damp sheen on them, like oiled flesh. The early-morning storm came and went, as if something he dreamed up. Calvin's call has had the effect of snapping him into heightened alertness, but he is also aware of the dull thump of blood in his head, the effect of last night's high, still lingering in his system. The beer, the pot, the scramble from the cops. The o.r.g.a.s.m. George.

George places the various pieces of the puzzle alongside each other, looking for clues to Ruby's whereabouts. ”Calvin last saw her with a couple of girls. But Ruby's message said she was looking for this boy-”

”Someone she used to know.”

”So maybe,” George continues, ”the girls have something to do with him. Maybe they're friends of his.”

”It's just not like her.”

George shrugs coolly. ”She's changing. Dressing like an undertaker's daughter. Going out with a creep like Calvin, who your mother doesn't approve of. This is just one more thing.”

”Why doesn't she f.u.c.king call me?” Robin hears the edge of anger in his voice, anger at Ruby's behavior, anger at Calvin for foisting this problem on him. There's even perhaps a touch of annoyance at George, at his calm detachment.

”She wouldn't necessarily call you if she's in the middle of some party weekend.”

”But, come on, George. This is Ruby. We tell each other everything.”

He finds himself staring into the empty coffee cup, fixating on the grounds left at the bottom, a dark constellation. He connects the dots, drawing a six-pointed star, a sailboat, a little house with the roof blown half off. He says, ”In Greenlawn, my mother worked at the library with this Irish lady, Josephine, who claimed she could read tea leaves. She'd make you a cup of loose tea, then swirl the dregs around, and then she'd look into the cup with this very weird expression on her face, in a kind of trance, and she'd tell your future.”

”That doesn't sound very reliable.”

”Josephine supposedly predicted my parents' divorce, plus us moving to Manhattan. Maybe she saw the skyline in the tea leaves.”

George reaches across the table for Robin's cup. Looking into it, he snorts, ”You seem to have a pretty vague future.”

”Do you see the sailboat? Maybe it means I'm going to travel.”

”Well, you are. To London.”

”Not by sailboat, I hope.”

George takes a final swig from his own cup. He fiddles the cup clockwise, then counterclockwise, and then p.r.o.nounces, ”I definitely see the outline of two men engaged in s.e.xual activity.”

Robin feels his face warm up. OK, you have to clear the air OK, you have to clear the air, he thinks, though he doesn't have any idea what he might say, doesn't know how to proceed, and so instead he puts on a campy voice and says, ”I feel like a cheap s.l.u.t.”

George manages a smile, but he seems to be waiting for something more.

Robin says, ”We probably shouldn't get in the habit of that.”

George nods slowly, and then pushes his chair back from the table. ”Yeah, you just needed a good rebound f.u.c.k. And I needed to shake Matthias.”

”You're my best friend,” Robin says earnestly.

”And coworker. Speaking of which, I better get going, if I'm going to shower before work.” He lifts an arm and sniffs a pit, fanning away a stench that Robin remembers burrowing into last night on the couch, licking him there.

They both laugh at the gesture, a bit too hard.

George throws away his coffee cup.

Robin watches him leave the room. He makes himself stay put, even as he imagines following George into the bathroom, stripping off his clothes, standing close to him in the shower. Letting the water cover them both.

The next couple hours, alone in the apartment, seem to lengthen eternally. Except for a run to a corner store on Baltimore Ave., where he allows himself a minute of small talk with the old-timer at the register, who seems to be getting used to Robin showing up a couple times a week for Parliaments and Diet c.o.ke, he remains mostly on the couch, expecting a call from Ruby that doesn't come.

She's fine, he tells himself. Just because she doesn't want to phone in her whereabouts to Calvin doesn't mean she's in trouble. Maybe she's just sick of him, needs some s.p.a.ce. George called Calvin a creep, which doesn't seem exactly fair. Yes, Calvin can be hard to deal with, but Robin knows the type well. There have been so many boys like Calvin in Robin's high school and college art cla.s.ses. They're introverted and socially awkward, and they overcompensate with brash p.r.o.nouncements about the only thing they know well: cult movies or comic books or the esoteric details of a science fiction writer's invented world. These boys channel their excitable and off-putting temperaments into creativity, and when their creative projects don't quite succeed, they become more defensive, more opinionated, more sure of their superiority. Robin has endured hot crushes on more than one boy like this. Alton was like that, full of facts about obscure rock bands and musicians you'd never heard of, but never actually starting that post-punk band he claimed was going to be huge huge.

There on the couch, Robin goes back to Calvin's script. He reads aloud the lines he would be saying, were he to take the part of Carter: ”I'm excited by your t.i.ts.... Every guy who stares at your t.i.ts is like apunch in my face.... That top you're wearing makes your t.i.ts look great.” He laughs. He's never spoken to a girl this way, crudely, about her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Then his laughter catches in his throat: Does Calvin think about Ruby this way? Does he say things to her like this? Maybe that's why she's not so eager to call him back. Maybe he's a pig.

But Carter also says, ”I've seen his world-famous d.i.c.k,” and ”Do you think I'm jealous of his d.i.c.k?” and ”You think you can intimidate me because my c.o.c.k is smaller. Think again.”

Robin skips ahead to the last scene. Carter is standing in front of the bathroom mirror, holding a ”straight razor” in one hand and ”staring at the soft exposed flesh of his wrist.” Suicide is the implication, and then the film ends. He sets the script aside, as confused by the character as Calvin seems to be about himself.

Where is Ruby? Has she gotten herself into some dodgy situation with a strange guy, or with girls who hang out at boardwalk nightclubs getting into bar brawls? He finds himself imagining a call from a hospital, ”Your sister was found...”

A sense of menace takes hold. What if she is simply...gone? Disappeared. Vanished. He hears his mother scream, sees her collapse, like last time, when the news came that Jackson had flatlined, when he himself was so young and still had to find the strength to hold her up, support the weight of her grief. He sees his father weeping, his reserve breaking apart, anger melting into tears. He remembers that day all too clearly. It was his own fourteenth birthday, and they had just eaten cake and opened presents when the hospital called. It would be a perfectly cruel twist of fate if Ruby came into harm's way on Jackson's birthday, Jackson like a curse hanging over the two of them, something they can't shake, because they were there, they saw him fall. And he feels it again, that sensation: the air is being forced from his throat. Reflexively, he starts prodding at his neck, investigating his glands as if they've started to swell up. He makes himself stop. Don't start spiraling. Don't start spiraling.

Ruby isn't dead. She hasn't disappeared, not for good. It would be too much for any of them to bear. He exhales from deep within, steadying himself, extinguis.h.i.+ng unwelcome memories the way you snuff out a candle before leaving a room, so you don't risk burning the place down.

When someone goes missing, you either search for her, or you wait it out.

The idea of a ”search” is hard to pull into focus.

But the waiting is unbearable.

At one o'clock, right on time, Dorothy calls. She sounds surprised that he's picked up. ”I thought you were working today.”

”No, I don't work on Sundays.”

”Hmm. Your sister said something about...” Dorothy cuts off her sentence with a cluck. He can't quite glean the subtext, though there's something she's not saying. He hears her clattering in the kitchen: utensils sc.r.a.ping metal, water running, the shutting of a cupboard door. More and more, Dorothy cooks. She's come a long way from her unhappy kitchen experiments in Greenlawn, when she was forever boiling vegetables into mush or burning lasagna in the oven. Now she concocts elaborate dishes, recipes clipped from the New York Times Magazine New York Times Magazine and saved in three-ring binders. What does she do with all this food, when she's so often alone? It's true that she's grown plump, curvy in a way she never was, but she must be throwing food away all the time. Or giving it away. For years, an elderly couple upstairs, the Finkels, accepted Dorothy's creations, thanking her profusely with ”You shouldn't have” and then inviting her in for a litany of medical complaints and grievances against their own faraway children. Then Mr. Finkel died and Mrs. Finkel was put in a home by one of those children, so Dorothy, Robin guesses, is making extra food for no one. and saved in three-ring binders. What does she do with all this food, when she's so often alone? It's true that she's grown plump, curvy in a way she never was, but she must be throwing food away all the time. Or giving it away. For years, an elderly couple upstairs, the Finkels, accepted Dorothy's creations, thanking her profusely with ”You shouldn't have” and then inviting her in for a litany of medical complaints and grievances against their own faraway children. Then Mr. Finkel died and Mrs. Finkel was put in a home by one of those children, so Dorothy, Robin guesses, is making extra food for no one.

”I'm just chilling out,” he says.

”Chilling out,” she parrots, as if forced to bear the weight of this slang.

”George is at work.”

”George! When am I going to see him again? How is he?”

”He's fine.” Last night, he ordered me around while I jacked off. Last night, he ordered me around while I jacked off.

The clattering stops, and Dorothy seems to turn her attention to him at last. ”Something's troubling you, isn't it?”