Jake lived for a few years alone in the condo, occasionally allowing himself a fantasy in which Alice, tired of living by herself, asked to return. But he knew, down deep, that their relationship was over, had been over before she ever moved out. Nearing sixty, he decided to retire early from the bank. His mortgage was paid off, and he bought a used, forty-six-foot cabin cruiser. He sublet his condo and took the boat down to Florida, where he decided that he didn’t like boating as much as he thought he would. He docked the boat in the Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, and got a job renting beach chairs and umbrellas at the Atlantic Club. His hair had been thinning for a few years, and he’d been keeping it long to conceal the loss, but down in Florida he got a buzz cut and grew a mustache. It transformed him, and he told himself he was a new person, a retiree who deserved some enjoyment in the remainder of his life. From his concrete bunker where the chairs and umbrellas were kept, he could see out onto a strip of packed beach. There was the occasional teenage girl, but most of the clients of the Atlantic Club were middle-aged or older, and none of them, not even the occasional enthusiastic widow, could begin to erase the memory of Alice Moss.
He’d been in Florida three years when the Atlantic Club let him go. They told him that they thought he should enjoy more leisure time in his retirement years, but he pressed them for the real reason, and was told that one of the guests had complained that he’d been staring at her thirteen-year-old daughter. He left without a fuss, finally sold the cruiser, and rented a cheap one-bedroom apartment in North Lauderdale. He bought a personal computer and, through various message boards, made contact with a slew of other men all interested in younger women, teenage girls mostly. He even messaged with some older women who were interested in younger boys. At least he thought he was chatting to women. You never really knew on the Internet. He spent an enormous amount of time on the computer, but in the end it turned out to be an empty enterprise. He’d been looking for someone more like him, someone who felt that being with someone younger, teaching them all you knew, was the way to a better, larger life. It wasn’t all about sex, it was about generosity, about the sharing of one’s life force. No one really understood him. The other men just wanted to share pictures, and talk about the beauty of teen girls. No one understood what Jake understood—that what he’d briefly found with Alice was akin to the fountain of youth, and that you could pass it along. Emma Codd had gifted it to him, and he had gifted it to Alice.
He still had the pictures of Alice. They were his prized possession, and he’d handled them so many times throughout the years that they’d gone thin and ragged on the edges. He kept them flat and protected in the pages of a hardcover copy of Moby-Dick on his bedside table. Sometimes he wondered if the pictures were a way back into Alice’s life. She’d probably forgotten all about them. Maybe he could get in touch, remind her of their existence, maybe ask if she’d like to come down and visit him sometime in Florida. It would be blackmail, he realized, but it would be worth losing the pictures if he could just spend a little more time with her. He thought about it a lot, but it was only a fantasy. When he did finally get in touch with her, via her work e-mail, he just asked her questions about her life. She was getting married, she told him. Another older man, and one with a young son. She still lived in Kennewick. They e-mailed back and forth, Alice’s responses so rote and formal, it was as though they had never meant anything to each other.
Years passed, and Jake began to feel old. He became sexually involved with a teenage girl, a runaway from Miami named Valeria who spent a week with him in his apartment until one day a man showed up at the door, claiming to be the girl’s brother (they looked nothing alike) and demanding a thousand dollars or he’d go to the police. He claimed Valeria was fifteen years old, even though she’d told Jake she was seventeen. He’d paid up, reluctantly and shamefully. The incident haunted him for several months—Jake deciding to leave Florida altogether—until he spotted the “brother” entering a nearby apartment complex. Jake began to watch him regularly, discovered his name was Edgar Leon, and determined that he lived alone. One night, after staking out the Jacaranda Estates for several hours, Jake followed Edgar up to his second-floor apartment, knocking on the door one minute after Edgar entered. It was two in the morning. He worried that Edgar, because of the time of night, would be armed when he came to the door, but he wasn’t. He was shirtless and yawning and opened the door wide. Jake’s first strike with his cosh put Edgar on the floor. Jake straddled him and repeatedly hit Edgar in the head until it was clear he was dead.
Jake felt better about himself after killing that cut-rate pimp. And he felt better about staying in Florida. He heard from his real estate agent in Maine that a long-term renter had just moved out of the Kennewick Beach condo he still owned, and Jake decided to sell. He was about to let the agent know when he got an e-mail from Alice, now going by Alice Ackerson, and with a new e-mail address.
The e-mail was short, just two perfect sentences: Jake, you ever think about returning to Kennewick? It would be nice to have an old friend here. Alice
The e-mail was a thrilling surprise; he’d assumed that he never would hear from her again. So he’d returned to Maine—an easy decision to make—and moved back into his old condo. He was shocked to discover that the carpeting was dirty, two windowpanes were cracked, and the wood of the balcony had rotted. Still, he was near Alice again. They met in a diner the day after he’d arrived. She was older, a little softer, but otherwise unchanged. He couldn’t help seeing himself through her eyes, though. The completely bald head, the skin damage, the white mustache. He didn’t mind so much; he knew that he hadn’t been summoned by Alice to resume their love affair. It was enough that, for whatever reason, he was needed.
“I was wondering if you could do me a favor, Jake,” Alice asked, as soon as they were settled in a booth.
“Of course, anything.”
She asked him if he’d volunteer to help out in her husband’s used bookstore. She said it was because he needed help—he worked nonstop—but the more they talked the more it became clear to Jake that Alice wanted someone to keep an eye on her husband.
“He’s found someone younger, in New York,” she said, her voice flat.
“How do you know?”
“I saw the messages on his phone, and then suddenly they stopped appearing. He must have another way of getting in touch with her now, probably something in the store. You could help me find out if it’s still going on.”
“Okay,” Jake had said. “But are we pretending we don’t know each other?”
“That would be for the best. Give him a different name, he’ll never know.”
“What if people around here recognize me?”
“They won’t, Jake. You look totally different.”
She’d been right. He hadn’t been recognized by anyone, nor had he seen anyone he recognized. The bank had been two towns over, and the patrons from there didn’t seem to frequent Ackerson’s Rare Books. He went by John Richards now, and he liked the new identity. He liked Bill, too, for what it was worth, even though he did eventually find proof that he was involved with someone in New York. It turned out they’d been sending private messages through the store’s rarely used Twitter account.