“I tore down the stupid map. It didn’t even have roads on it, so how did I know where to stick the pin?”
He unwound a long bumpy brown scarf that I hadn’t seen before and hung up his parka on our communal coatrack. “?‘Tore it down’ sounds a little hostile.”
I confessed that it was a little hostile.
He sat down, busied himself turning on his computer. “Hostile toward what’s-his-name, the hiker?”
“Stuart.”
“Something happen?”
“Only that he’s not picking up and he’s not calling me.”
“Is that so unusual?”
“It’s unusual in a crisis! I left him a message using that exact word—crisis!”
“And you know it’s unusual because you’ve had other crises since he left?”
Just doubts, I thought, crises of confidence. “Not really,” I said. “And I’m trying to keep a level head because there’s always the possibility he’s getting no bars on his phone. Or he’s dead.”
Nick’s answer was delayed; he was working his cell phone, thumbing it with authority, frowning over whatever new compelling images it rendered.
“What?” I asked, after long enough.
“Your boyfriend’s not dead. He’s in Illinois.”
I asked, “Are you on Facebook?”
“Instagram. He loves it.”
“You follow him?”
“You don’t have to follow people to see their posts. But I do now. Don’t you?”
“I thought I did. He must have a new user name for the trip. I thought he’d stopped posting.”
“It’s ‘At Fund Stuart Levine.’ That’s what I’m seeing.”
“Do I want to see it?” I asked.
“Maybe you should.”
I knew what that meant. Even if it was a knife to the heart, I should see the evidence for my own enlightenment. He walked the phone over to my desk.
“There are three new ones,” Nick instructed. “All since yesterday.”
This is what I saw: Stuart looking too happy at a bar. His companion was a man who appeared to be a Native American, with a long black braid, ethnicky headband, and oppressed frown. The next, taken an hour earlier, was minus Stuart, just the architecturally interesting Wild West saloon doors of Wiffy’s Place. And minutes earlier: Stuart getting out of a compact car, saluting its occupants. This one had a caption. “Thanks for the lift, Ashley, Katelin (sp?) and Kristy!!!”
I read the three names aloud, then asked Nick, “How old can an Ashley, Katelin, and Kristy be?”
“Young. And I thought he was walking across the country, not hitchhiking.”
“Sometimes, if his feet hurt, or it’s bad weather, or the air quality is poor, he sticks out his thumb.” I handed the phone back. “At least I know he’s not dead.”
“And that’s good enough?”
“It wasn’t good enough this weekend,” I confessed.
“So he doesn’t even know about this shit storm at work?”
I shook my head. I could see he was searching for a Stuart rebuke that wouldn’t go too far, that wouldn’t call my judgment into question. Eventually, he asked, “Do you think he reads his comments?”
Unless it’s from me, I thought. “I have no idea,” I said.
When Nick began typing, I asked what he was doing.
He read aloud. “Douche bag, exclamation point. Faith is worried about you. Call her for fuck’s sake.”
I let out a yelp of protest.
He said, “Nah. I wrote, ‘Dude! Faith is worried about you. Call her!’?”
“Do you think he’s a douche bag?”
“Only if you do.”
Writing while nursing two separate abandonment anxieties took all my powers of concentration. I managed another note. Yaddy yaddy yah, counterfeit enthusiasm, manufactured gratitude over measly amounts on my best notecards—the school crest engraved rather than embossed—because they were YAFTD: Young Alum First-time Donor.
My office landline and cell phone were still silent twenty minutes after Nick had asked Stuart to call me.
“I have a meeting at ten,” I heard him say.
I looked up. “One that concerns me?”
He said, “It could. It’s with Dickenson. But it’s been on the calendar for weeks.”
I hadn’t yet found a way to tell Nick about my parents’ mission to Mrs. Hepworth’s house and the alleged fix, but now was the time. I took a sip of my tepid coffee and began with “I may be okay. Workwise, I mean.”
“I did notice you were still slaving away on your prize-winning notes.”
I was mildly distracted from my confession by his use of “prize-winning” and thanked him for the compliment.
“You were saying . . . ?”
“My parents . . . well, my brother, too . . . they took matters into their own hands by visiting and sweet-talking Mrs. Hepworth into making things right.”
Eyes narrowed, thinking if not plotting, Nick asked, “Do you have her phone number?”
“I’m not calling her!”
“Not you. Me.”
“To say what?”
“Wanna listen?”
I did and I didn’t.
Nick said, “I’m a talent. You should listen.”
Next thing I knew, he was hitting buttons rather breezily. And then I heard “Mrs. Hepworth! It’s Nick Franconi, from Everton Country Day, a colleague of Faith Frankel’s.” Then he was nodding rather strenuously, clearly for my benefit, a signal that she was . . . what? Pleased? Not sounding batty?
“Nicholas Franconi,” he repeated. “I’m director of Major Gifts, and I heard you gave us a whopper!”
This was not the tone I was expecting. My arms were now folded on my blotter and my inflamed face was pressed into them.
“I agree! She is a lovely young lady! In every way. And I understand that you met her parents.” When I looked up, he winked at me.
“The reason I’m calling—and I hope I’m not disturbing you—is that Faith is hard at work this morning over in her office”—another wink—“and I’m assuming I have you to thank for her uninterrupted service.”