Stupid, stupid—to be so careless with our time, to believe we had so much of it left.
I head into the streets, frantic and desperate now, but unsure of what to do next. He mentioned to me once that he lived on Forsyth—a long row of gray slab buildings owned by the university—so I go that way. But all the buildings look identical. There must be dozens of them, hundreds of individual apartments. I’m tempted to tear through each and every one until I find him, but that would be suicide. After a couple of students give me suspicious glances—I’m sure I look like a disaster, red-faced and wild-eyed and close to hysterical—I duck into a side street. To calm myself I start reciting the elemental prayers: “H is for hydrogen, a weight of one; when fission’s split, as brightly lit, as hot as any sun . . .”
I’m so distracted walking home that I get lost in the tangle of streets leading away from the UP campus. I end up on a narrow one-way street I’ve never seen before and have to backtrack to Monument Square. The Governor is standing there as always, his empty palm outstretched, looking sad and forlorn in the fading evening light, as though he’s a beggar, forever condemned to ask for alms.
But seeing him gives me an idea. I dig in the bottom of my bag for a scrap of paper and a pen, and scrawl out, Let me explain, please. Midnight at the house. 8/17. Then, after checking to make sure that no one is watching me from the few remaining lit windows that overlook the square, I hop up onto the statue’s base and stuff the note into the little cavity in the Governor’s fist. The chance that Alex will think to check there is a million to one. But still, there’s a chance.
That night, as I’m slipping out of the bedroom, I hear rustling behind me. When I turn around, Gracie’s sitting up in bed again, blinking at me, her eyes as reflective as an animal’s. I touch my finger to my lips. She does the same, an unconscious mimic, and I slip out the door.
When I’m on the street I look up once toward the window. For a second I think I see Gracie looking down at me, her face as pale as a moon. But maybe it’s just a trick of the shadows skating silently over the side of the house. When I look again, she’s gone.
The house at 37 Brooks is all dark when I push my way in through the window, and totally silent. He’s not here, I think. He didn’t come—but a piece of me refuses to believe it. He must have come.
I’ve brought a flashlight with me, and I begin a sweep of the house, my second of the day, refusing for superstitious reasons to call out for him. Somehow I can’t stand it. If he doesn’t answer, I’ll be forced, finally, to accept that he never received my note—or, even worse, did receive it but has decided not to come.
In the living room I stop short.
All our things—the blankets, the games, the books—are gone. The warped wooden floor lies bare and exposed under the beam of my flashlight. The furniture sits cold and silent, stripped of all our personal touches, the discarded sweatshirts and half-used bottles of sunscreen. It has been a long time since I’ve been afraid of the house or frightened of walking into its rooms at night, but now a sense of the cavernous empty spaces around me comes back—room after room of tumbling-down things, rotting things, rodents blinking at you from dark spaces—and a deep chill runs through me. Alex must have been here after all, to clean up our stuff.
The message is as clear to me as any note. He’s done with me.
For a moment I even forget to breathe. And then the Coldness comes, a surge of it so strong it hits me in the chest like a physical force, like walking straight into the breakers at the beach. My knees buckle and I go into a crouch, shivering uncontrollably.
He’s gone. A strangled sound works its way out of my throat and breaks the silence around me all at once. Suddenly I’m sobbing loudly into the dark, letting the flashlight fall to the ground and blink out. I fantasize that I’ll cry so much I’ll fill the house and drown, or be carried away on a river of tears to some distant place.
Then I feel a warm hand on the back of my neck, working through a tangle of my hair.
“Lena.”
I turn around and Alex is there, bending over me. I can’t really make out his expression, but in the limited light it looks hard to me, hard and immobile, as though it’s made out of stone. For a second I’m worried that I’m only dreaming him, but then he touches me again and his hand is solid and warm and rough.
“Lena,” he says again, but he doesn’t seem to know what else to say. I scramble to my feet, wiping my face on my forearm.
“You got my note.” I’m trying to gulp back the tears but just succeed in hiccuping several times.
“Note?” Alex repeats.