I never saw Joya again. I didn’t talk about her, and I tried not to think her name. Not until I got all that good, free university therapy while I was in school. My Emory counselor was the one who said the way we ended things was not uncommon for kids like us. She said we’d lost enough in our short lives to want to cauterize our wounds before they happened. We burned our connection closed before we felt the holes.
Years ago, I had a client who reminded me of Joya. One of my earlier pro bono girls, a payback to karma on top of Kai’s monthly checks. This one was barely eighteen, built small with milk-chocolate skin and eyes so dark brown they looked pure black from any distance. She’d been Stockholmed into calling her pimp her boyfriend, and she was about to eat a ten-year sentence, covering his ass.
By the time I was done, the pimp did his own time, while my client walked with court-mandated counseling and five years’ probation. She hugged me when it was over, trembling, her body as delicate and small-boned as a sparrow’s. That night, I drank a little too much bourbon, and I called Birdwine. I told him I had a job that billed to me, not the firm, which usually meant it was part of a pro bono case. I gave him Joya’s name.
I should have known better. Hell, I knew the recidivism rates, knew how seldom stories like Joya’s got a happy ending. Statistics said once her mama got back in her old environment, she would find old friends, slip back into old habits, and sink Joya with her. The daughters of crack addicts and prostitutes almost never find their way to dental hygienist school, much less Yale. But Joya was so tough. I hoped. Hoped stupidly and very hard. Hard enough to ask the question.
Birdwine found her fast because she had a sheet. Drugs and prostitution. She’d died in south Atlanta at nineteen, caught in gang crossfire.
He said, “I don’t have a lot of details. A black working girl, it’s not like the paper’s going to spend the inches.” His gruff, blunt voice was suspiciously gentle. “Want me to keep digging?”
There was the briefest silence on the line between us. On my side, it was filled with the most foolish longing; I wanted him to track down the waiter who had served Joya’s celebration dinner at Demy’s Blues-N-Burgers all those years ago. I wanted to know if she and her mama had a good time. I wanted proof that our breakup hadn’t soured her pleasure in seeing her mama’s car pull up or spoiled the taste of those cheese and chive potatoes.
But almost as fast as I could feel it, it was laid to rest. I knew better. I understood firsthand how much it took to mar the joy of someone—the best and dearest someone in the world—coming to get you, just as promised. Whatever happened later, that dinner would have been so good.
I said, “No. Send me a bill.”
“This one’s on me,” he said, and then added, right before he hung up, “Sorry about your friend.”
Either his investigation had been thorough enough to connect us, or he’d simply read me and decided it was personal. Either way, pretty savvy. That was when I decided he was worth working round his binges. I’d since used him for everything that mattered, and I’d never regretted it. Not until now. Not until he emailed me that he’d lost Hana. She was free-falling, lost in the same world that had eaten Joya. I wanted to interrogate Birdwine, dig through his file, see if anything would resonate. But Birdwine was unavailable.
I knew where he was. When Birdwine went missing, it was never a mystery. He always went to the same place: Drunk. Drunk wasn’t on Google maps, and a trip to Drunk took as long as it took.
I was impatient, but not angry. Birdwine was what he was, and anger wouldn’t change it or get me what I wanted any faster. As soon as he surfaced, I would jolly him along and get the information. If that failed, I’d peel it right out of his hide.
Three times a day, before work, at lunch, and after a working dinner at my desk, I went and sat at Birdwine’s place. I didn’t wait in my car, either. The first morning, I’d wormed through the dog door and gotten Birdwine’s spare key out of his office desk. Looper would have eaten the face off any stranger who tried this move, but he was thrilled to see me, thrilled to nap beside me on the sofa, thrilled to breathe in and discover afresh that the world was full of air. Dogs were such easy marks.
The third day of my vigil coincided with one of Julian’s days off from Mellow Mushroom. He appeared at noon for more “internship.” I was slammed, and so I gave him to Verona. Around seven, I sent him to pick up Chinese so I could work through dinner, and I asked if he would stick around and go with me to Birdwine’s.