20
We get back to Ben’s house and he unpacks his stuff, and we both spend a half hour shining a flashlight around the walls and watching Pete and Repeat chase the beam. It’s possibly the most fun I’ve had in months.
Ben makes a list of the clubs that Meg most often hung out in. None of them will get going until around eleven, and they’ll stay happening until four in the morning. We pound shots of espresso at his neighborhood café before setting off in his Jetta.
The first club is that one in Fremont I met Ben at. He introduces me to a group of groovy-looking girls in cute dresses and cool shoes—Meg people. They’re all about a decade older, but that wouldn’t have stopped her. When Ben explains who I am, one of the women embraces me in a spontaneous hug. Then she holds me at arm’s length and says: “You’ll get through it. I know it seems like you won’t, but you will.” Without asking anything more, I get that she, too, has been through this, has been left behind, and it makes me feel less alone.
None of these women knows anything about Meg going to the health center; most didn’t even know she went to college. If Meg didn’t tell them even this, chances are she didn’t tell them about the Final Solution. I don’t bring it up.
We go to another club. We’re barely past the bouncer when a girl with blonde choppy hair flings herself into Ben’s arms. “Where have you been?” she demands. “I’ve texted you, like, a hundred times.”
Ben doesn’t hug her back, just sort of taps her uncomfortably on the shoulder, and after a minute, she takes a few steps back, jutting her lip into a fake pout. Then she spots me.
“Hey, Clem,” Ben says. He seems tired. “I’ve been on tour.”
“Tour, huh? That’s what you’re calling it now,” she says, still looking at me.
“Hey. I’m Cody.”
“Cody’s a friend of Meg’s,” Ben adds. “Did you know Meg Garcia?”
Clem swivels toward Ben now. “Seriously? Are you, like, organizing a sorority for your castoffs? Can we, like, all wear matching outfits?” She rolls her eyes and pouts for real now. Then she makes a disgusted pff sound before flouncing off, giving Ben the finger as she goes.
“Sorry about that,” Ben says. To his shoes.
“Why should you be sorry?”
“She was . . . It was a while ago . . .” he begins, but I wave my hands to stop him.
“You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
He starts to open his mouth as if to say more, but then he spots a guy with thick horn-rimmed glasses and the most elaborate pompadour I’ve ever seen. He’s standing with a girl with short bangs and bright red lipstick. “That’s Hidecki,” Ben says. “He knew Meg pretty well.”
Ben introduces us and we talk for a bit, but neither Hidecki nor the girl he’s with know anything about Meg or the health center. After a while, I run out of questions, and Hidecki asks about the cats.
“You know about the cats?”
The girl he’s with tells me that Hidecki donated a hundred dollars to their rehabilitation fund. “So he feels invested,” she says.
“A hundred dollars,” I say. “You must like cats.”
“I liked Meg,” he corrects. “She also saved me at least that much money when she fixed my amplifier.”
“She fixed your amp?”
He nods. “Swapped the volume pot and showed me how to do it. I was skeptical, but she knew how to handle a soldering gun.”
“Yeah. She did,” I say. “And the cats are fine. Ben adopted them, actually.”
“Ben?” He gives Ben a look I wouldn’t exactly describe as friendly.
“Yeah. Even has pictures on his phone. Ben, show him your pictures.”
“Another time,” Ben says tersely. “We should hit some more clubs.”
We go to three more places. I meet all these people who knew Meg. Who miss Meg. But no one knows about the health center. I get some names and email addresses of other people she was friendly with. By four in the morning, we have no direct leads but a bunch of contacts to follow up on. I’m so tired, my legs feel like they might collapse from under me, and the whites of Ben’s eyes are redder than Stoner Richard’s after a few bowls. I suggest we call it a night.
When we get back to his house, he leads me to his bedroom. I stop in the hallway outside of it, like it’s radioactive in there. He looks at me. “You crash in here. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“That’s okay. I’ll take the couch,” I reply.
“It’s more comfortable here. And quiet.”
I wince. “Sorry, Ben, but there’s, like, a petri dish of half of Seattle’s female population on your sheets.”
“It’s not like that, Cody.”
I scoff. “Really?”
“Clem was a while—oh, forget it. I’ll just change the sheets for you.”
“I’m fine to take the couch.”
“Let me change the damn sheets, Cody.” I can’t blame him for being pissed. It is five in the morning, and he did just come back from an eight-night tour of sleeping on floors and in vans. But even so, he makes the bed, plumping the pillows and pulling down the comforter in one corner so it looks all inviting.
I snuggle into the pillows. The cats scramble to the foot of the bed and tuck in there, their nightly spot, I gather.
I hear Ben brush his teeth, and then I hear the floorboards creaking under his feet. He stops in his doorway, and for a second I’m scared he’s going to come in and for a second I’m scared I might want him to. But he just stands there.
“Good night, Cody.”
“Good night, Ben.”