When order is returned, I set about with the real work—the only work that might bring Alice and me back together.
Online, I do a search. I locate a small island off the coast of Ireland. Rathlin. I chart a course. I buy a series of airline tickets, far too expensive, then grab my passport from the safe, throw things into a suitcase, and call a cab.
On the way to the airport, I power on my phone. The P is there again, blinking. A text message from an unknown number links to SFGate. On the home page, buried between the opening of a new restaurant and a tenants’ rights dispute, is the headline “Local Musician Missing.” I shudder, my thumb hovering over the headline.
I click through to the article.
Former Ladder bassist Eric Wilson was reported missing on Monday night after his car was found abandoned at Ocean Beach. He was last seen early Sunday morning after a memorial show at Bottom of the Hill for former bandmate Damian Lee. A search has been under way at Kelly’s Cove, where Wilson often surfs.
The article lists each of his bands and albums. And because the Ladder album was his most successful, it mentions Alice by name. There is a comment from one of his biology students, who had no idea he was a musician, and one from a former bandmate, who had no idea he was a professor. There is a video of Ladder performing twelve years ago, Alice at his side. I don’t watch it. His parents and sister have flown in from Boston to help with the search. I nervously read the article two more times, as if more details might magically appear. But there is nothing.
Should I feel sad that he is missing? Should I feel anything other than relief?
I think of Eliot and Aileen. What had JoAnne said? “They just disappear without a trace.”
88
At the airport, flights are backed up due to weather on the East Coast. I find myself hopping across the country. SFO to Denver to O’Hare to EWR to Gatwick to Northern Ireland. When I finally arrive in Belfast, hungry and stiff, I’m not sure what day it is. I’m desperate for news of Alice. Is she in a dark cell or a bright one? Is she handcuffed? Is she being interrogated? What is her punishment? Does she have a good attorney?
The line at customs feels endless. Businesspeople in suits all seem in a hurry to get to some important meeting. A customs agent with a spattering of freckles takes a long look at my passport, then back up at my face. “Difficult flight, then, sir?”
“Long.”
She looks back at the passport. “That’s a fine Irish name you’ve got.”
It’s true. My family is Irish. We ended up in San Francisco four generations ago when my great-great-grandfather, a streetcar driver with a drinking problem, killed a woman in this very city. He fled to the United States on a steamer to avoid prison. Until now I’ve never been here. I guess you could say I’m finally returning to the scene of the crime. Maybe it’s still part of me, that genetic predisposition for murder.
The freckled border guard flips my passport to the final page, and then with a definitive thud leaves a large red stamp. “Welcome home,” she says.
I find an ATM and take out a wad of cash. Outside, I step into a taxi and head toward the train station. I take off my watch to sync it to the local time. Before putting it back on, I turn it over to read the simple inscription: TO JAKE—WITH ALL MY LOVE. ALICE.
My brain is spinning, my body exhausted. The morning bustle, the congestion, and the traffic don’t help. At the station, I realize that getting to my destination will be more complicated than I had expected. A train will only take me part of the way, if I could even get a train. But the station is blocked by a picket line, more than a dozen workers holding signs declaring, OFFICIAL DISPUTE.
I walk over to the hotel Malmaison. The receptionist is a puffy guy in a wrinkled suit. I ask about the train and he responds with a long, convoluted explanation. As far as I can understand, I’m in Northern Ireland at a bad time. The buses are on strike, the trains are on strike, and there is apparently some major soccer tournament just getting started.
“Do you like football?” he asks.
“Um…”
“Neither do I. If you wait until noon, I can give you a ride as far as Armoy.” He hands me a paper that appears to be a ticket of some sort. “Free English breakfast, if you want.” He points toward a sad, cavernous room that looks like an abandoned elementary school cafeteria. Immediately, a waiter is on me, insisting on pouring some weird brown tea. I thank him, then head up to the buffet with a plastic plate.
There are bowls of sweaty eggs, skinny sausages, and a few unidentifiable casseroles, piles of thin white toast. I force down two boxes of something called Fruity Sugar Surprise soaked in skim milk. I watch the tourists, soccer fans, and English honeymooners—mostly young, glowingly happy—juggling cameras, maps, and umbrellas. I envy them.
At noon the guy from the reception desk taps my shoulder. We climb into a car so small our arms touch every time he has to shift gears.
He talks all the way to Armoy, though I only catch about half of it. He’s going to his ex-wife’s house to pick up his son to take him to a birthday party. The son is ten and they haven’t seen each other in a month. He says he would’ve driven me all the way to Ballycastle if he weren’t already late. His ex-wife will be angry, the kid will be mopey, he has to hurry.
Armoy is a nothing town, just a blip on the road. It’s ten kilometers to Ballycastle, he tells me. He suggests a taxi if I can find one, but I tell him I’m going to try walking. He starts laughing. “This is Northern fucking Ireland—it’ll rain four times before you get there, and that’s the easy part. The wind alone may fucking blow you back to Belfast.”
Out front of his ex-wife’s house, we go our separate ways. I walk twenty or thirty feet, but I turn back and peer through the hedge to see him walking up to the door. The ex-wife answers, a pretty woman who looks bone-tired. Of life, maybe; of him, certainly. Even from a distance, I can sense the sad, complicated ball of love and hate that she presents him with at the front door. The kid, tall and lanky, tremendously dumb haircut, darts outside to hug him, and I turn away.