For as much as I don’t like Mrs. Budny, John I do. He’s like a grandpa, like my grandpa who died when I was six years old, with his shock of white hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and his denture smile. “You asked for a new lock,” John says to me, and it’s snappy the way I say, “No, I didn’t,” though I don’t mean to be snappy with John. I like John way too much to be snappy.
John’s answer is immediate, as well. “Then it must have been the other one,” he says, his left hand moving up and down around his face. “The one with the hair.”
I know right away what he means. He’s referring to Esther’s hair, distinct and prominent, unmistakable, a conversation piece. The day my parents loaded up a U-Haul and helped move my twenty-nine cardboard boxes and me into the city apartment they were consternated by Esther’s hair to say the least. It appalled them. In suburban America, people had blond hair or brown hair or red hair, but never some sort of odd combination of two or three. But Esther did, this piecemeal hair color that changed like paint swatches, brown to mocha to tawny to sand. My mother pulled me aside by the arm and begged, “Are you sure you want to do this? It’s not too late to change your mind,” while keeping one eye on Esther all the time.
I was sure. I wanted to do this.
But now, of course, I’m wondering if I should have been a little more judicious, a little less sure.
I ask John again if he’s certain Esther requested to have the locks changed and he says yes, he is certain. He even shows me the paperwork to prove it, an order by Mrs. Budny to change the locks in unit 304. The date of the request is three days ago. Three days ago Esther got on her phone and called Mrs. Budny’s office to request our locks be changed.
Why, Esther, why?
But I don’t have to think on this too long. The answer comes to me before John fires up his electric screwdriver and starts removing the old dead bolt from the steel door. I’ve been a bad roommate and Esther wants me gone. She wants to replace me with Megan or Meg from Portage Park, or someone akin to Meg. Someone who pays the rent on time, who helps finance the utilities, who doesn’t leave the lights on all the time, who doesn’t talk in her sleep.
Before I leave, I snatch a spare key from John’s extended hand. I’m sure that wasn’t in Esther’s plan. And then I take a cab out to Lincoln Square and head to the police district station, a light brick building that spans an entire city block, surrounded by flags and parked police cars, the white Crown Victorias with their red lettering and a blue stripe along the side. We Serve and Protect, it says.
I don’t know if I should be here, but nevertheless, I am.
I stand outside for a good ten minutes or more, wondering if I really want to step foot inside the police station. Esther is missing, yes, maybe. But also maybe not. I could wait it out, give it a few more days to see if she comes home. The 311 operator more or less told me, anyway, that there wasn’t a whole lot the police department could do, whether or not I filed a report. People are allowed to up and disappear if they want to, she’d said. There’s nothing illegal about that. Other than putting Esther’s name into some sort of database, I wasn’t certain there was much they could do.
But what if filing a police report helps bring Esther home? Then it’s totally worth it.
On the other hand, what if Esther doesn’t want me to file a report? What if she’d rather I just leave her alone?
And so I’m really in quite the conundrum as I stand there, back pressed to the light bricks, wondering what to do: file a missing-persons report or no.
In the end I do. I file the report.
I meet with an officer and provide the basics for which he asks, including a physical description of Esther and the particulars into her quote-unquote disappearance. I’m sparse on the details, leaving out many things of which I assume Esther would rather not be made public knowledge, such as the fact that she’s been meeting with a psychologist. I provide a photo, one I find on my cell, an image of Esther and me together at our neighborhood’s Midsommarfest, a summer street festival, listening to live music and feasting on ears of corn, as behind us, the setting sun glinted off the buildings, turning the world to gold. We asked a passerby to take the photo, some dude who could hardly stop salivating over Esther long enough to snap the picture. She had corn in her teeth, melted butter on her chin and hands, and yet he, like I, thought she was beautiful. She is beautiful. Magnetic, really, the kind of individual who draws people with her idiosyncratic hair and heterochromatic eyes—whether or not they’re a sham. But more than her hair and her eyes and her impossibly flawless skin is her kindness, that tendency of hers to make people feel special whether or not they’re as ordinary as, well, as ordinary as me.
I pass the photo along to the officer and even he takes a second look and says, “Pretty girl,” and I say that she is, and I’m half certain we both blush.
The report will be filed; someone will be in touch. Esther isn’t met with the same regard as, say, a four-year-old girl who’s gone missing. I’m not sure quite what I expect: a search team to line up before me with orange vests and search-and-rescue dogs; squad cars; helicopters; volunteers on horseback wandering the streets of Chicago with a rope tracker, calling out her name in tandem. I guess this is what I hoped would happen, but none of it does. Instead, he tells me I could hang up posters, ask around town, consider hiring a PI. The officer also says, with an unsmiling face, that they’ll likely need to search our residence. I assure him I’ve looked; she’s not there. He gives me a look reminiscent of my little sister’s looks—as if he’s Einstein and I’m a giant ignoramus—and then again says that someone will be in touch. I say okay, before heading on to work, not quite sure whether I accomplished something, or made things even worse.
Alex
Morning begins like every other day: waking up at the crack of dawn, chugging down a Mountain Dew, slipping past a passed-out Pops on my way to work. My mind tries to make sense of the footsteps that followed me home last night in vain. Was someone there—and if so, then who?—or was it simply my brain playing a trick on me, a figment of the imagination? I don’t know. Already this morning I’m predicting how the day at the café will go, and I’m dreading every single minute of it, from Priddy harassing me for my persistent tardiness, to me, wriggling out of the sandy jacket and getting down to work, washing mounds of dishes left behind by cooks in the sink, the water so hot it scalds my hands. Red and Braids bellyaching about the meagerness of their tips. Broken dishes. Spilled food. Eight hours of feeling like a loser.
My only hope as I lumber along the restive shores of Lake Michigan on the way to greet Priddy is that Pearl will be there, sitting at the window of the café, eyes again on the office of Dr. Giles. This is the only thing that gets me through the monotonous, repetitive trek to work, through the dismal prospect of the next eight hours on my feet, scurrying around the café, gathering other people’s used forks and knives in my hand. Washing their dishes. Wiping spilled food off the tables and floors. Day after day after day, knowing in the back of my mind that this will never end.
I continue on along the lake, past the stationary carousel, and head into town.