The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

I feel pretty pleased with myself for trying the image search, I’m not going to lie. So it’s a real letdown when it doesn’t work.

I spent the rest of that night dubbing in The xx to Most. There’s a wonderful yearning quality to that band, so even though it’s pretty old, I wanted to use it anyway. One of the people in my documentary is an old guy, Charles, who I found playing chess in the park. His face is incredible. Deep lines, like troughs on either side of his mouth. Sunburned to the color of mahogany. He’s in a knitted wool hat even though it’s July. What he wants most is to fly on the Concorde, which is impossible since the Concorde doesn’t exist anymore, except for the one you can visit on the pier next to Intrepid. But the way he talks about it, the speed, the pointed nose . . . Charles thinks about flying on the Concorde every day. He hunches over the chessboard in the park, winning twenty dollars a game, and in his ears all he hears is a sonic boom of the impossible. I edit and edit, earbuds in, and it’s not until I pull the earbuds out of my ears and hear the sleepy chirping of sparrows in the ginkgo trees outside my window that I realize it’s five in the morning.

“Oh my God.” I moan.

I lean back in my desk chair and rub my forehead with my fingers.

Eastlin hasn’t come home. I consider texting him to make sure he’s okay, but then I remind myself that Eastlin is totally ripped and is probably safer cruising guys in clubs than I would be trying to buy a pierogi at Veselka by myself. Whatever, I text him anyway, a quick Everything cool? And then I loll my head on the back of my desk chair, staring at the ceiling.

Divots. Acoustical tile. God, I’m so tired.

That form. Tyler.

That girl.

How in the hell am I going to find that girl?

I pull out my phone again and stare at it for a long minute, thumbing through different apps. When my thumb hovers over Twitter, I feel a lurch in my chest.

Maddie.

Maddie probably knows the hipster-curls girl. Right? Maddie said she goes to that palm reader all the time. To sleep, she said. Which is a weird thing to say, now that I think about it. Maybe she was joking.

I chew the inside of my cheek, thinking.

I haven’t messaged Maddie back, and it’s been a week. It’s not that I didn’t want to. I did want to. A lot. I just couldn’t think of something funny to say. I fully intended to text her back within a couple of hours, as soon as I could think of something good. I thought of just saying Hey, but that didn’t seem good enough. Then before I realized that was happening, three days had gone by, and then five, and then it was just way too much time and I felt like an asshole. This always happens to me. I put off something that I want to do because I want it to be really awesome, and I’m afraid of getting it wrong. I want it to be awesome so bad that I mess everything up by waiting.

I consider texting her a photo of something, and look around my dorm room. What, I’m going to text her a picture of Eastlin’s skinny jeans in a heap on the floor? Yeah, no.

I can’t ask Maddie.

But thinking about Maddie reminds me how Maddie found out who I was.

I see you, Wes.

I see you.

“Okay,” I say aloud to myself. “That’s what I’ll do.”

? ? ?

After three hours of fitful sleep on my face I finally drag myself out of bed and over to Tisch. I’m already waiting for the elevator when I notice that I’m still wearing the same clothes as yesterday. In fact, it occurs to me that I’m not 100 percent sure when I last changed them. Or showered. I eye the security guy who checks our IDs, and when he’s distracted by his copy of the Post I take a surreptitious sniff of my armpit.

Oh, man. It’s bad.

“Morning, Wes,” says a voice while my nose is still in my T-shirt collar.