“So,” she said, leaning back like he was. “What do I say now?”
He shook his head. “You’re better at this than I am, Bug. I don’t know what you say.”
Now that the game was over, Nell suddenly seemed tired. They both started eating again.
“I didn’t feel like it. St. Paul’s guys are pretty dumb.”
“Dumber than DW guys?”
“No, but the St. Paul’s guys act like animals around girls. Actually, that’s doing animals a disservice. The St. Paul’s guys are totally socially disabled.”
“But Carrie and Sophie still went, right? They’re probably standing in a corner making fun of people. You could be doing that, too. You’re really good at that,” said Cap.
“Okay, here’s the thing—they might be standing in a corner making fun of people, but deep down they really want one of those guys to come over and talk to them, and they make fun of them so they can counteract the possibility that no one will come over and talk to them. So I didn’t want to do that. It’s depressing.”
She had apparently thought this through. She did not seem sad.
“What about Ruthie Morris, does she stand in the corner too?” said Cap.
“Uh, no. Ruthie’s on the dance floor, probably drunk, not wearing a bra.”
“Really? Little Ruthie Morris?”
“Dad, she’s not little anymore. She’s not the brightest bulb on the tree. And there’s a rumor she’s into autoerotic asphyxiation.”
Cap choked on a bite of spring roll and coughed, felt the air squeak around the blockage in his throat.
Nell found this hilarious and laughed. “Do you need the Heimlich?” she said.
Cap shook his head, drank half his beer in one sip, and recovered.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” he said.
“Autoerotic asphyxiation,” she said, matter-of-factly. “When someone likes to get choked during sex.”
“I know what it is,” Cap said, holding his hand up like he was stopping traffic. “How do you know what it is?”
“I saw a Dateline about it.”
“Really? A Dateline?”
“Yes, Dad, not a big deal.”
Not a big deal. Cap didn’t ask any more about the dance, or about braless Ruthie Morris. He pictured poor Chris Morris’s face when and if he ever found out his little girl was into the rough stuff. Then he looked at Nell and was thankful.
Soon they finished eating. Nell put the plates in the dishwasher and went to the living room. Cap wrapped up leftovers, started another beer.
“What movie do you want to watch?” she called to him.
“How about one where someone crosses a mild-mannered guy and then he goes nuts and seeks revenge?”
“Okay.”
Cap put the containers in the fridge and heard the news coming from the other room.
“That doesn’t sound like a mild-mannered guy seeking revenge,” he said.
“There’s Junior,” said Nell.
Now he felt obligated to watch. He stood in front of the TV and saw his old boss on the screen: “All we have to say right now is that these two girls are missing, and if you have any information, call us, email us. You can remain anonymous.”
“What happened?” said Cap.
“Two sisters from Black Creek were kidnapped,” said Nell. She stared at the screen and moved her eyes back and forth like she was reading text. Cap knew her mind was spinning with possibilities.
“Have we seen the parents yet?”
“They showed the mother.”
“Custody dispute. I’m sure daddy has them. That’s what most of these are, Bug. They’re not even putting out an AMBER Alert yet.”
He took the clicker from her and changed the channel. He didn’t want his former boss and co-workers and two kidnapped girls and their devastated mother in his quiet house. He wanted his daughter and his can of beer and a mild-mannered guy seeking revenge. Case closed.
—
In a room in a house in Central California, a girl stood on her hands. She was too old to be called a girl anymore, thirty-three, but she still felt like one. Not in the good way of having her whole life in front of her. In the bad way of being able to see only the edges of things, to peek around the corners when what you wanted was a city planner’s blueprints of the whole block seen from above.
Her old boss in fugitive recovery, Perry, used to call it Little Bad and Big Bad. Little Bad was the teenager on the front porch with a Phillips screwdriver tucked into his pants. Big Bad was his daddy waiting inside with a loaded .38 and a pissed-off pit bull. There was always a worse thing that you couldn’t see, and it was closer than you thought.
She breathed through her nose the way they taught her when she took three months of yoga. She’d quit because she couldn’t do what they asked. Focus on your breathing, they said, stare at a point on the wall, picture a string floating up from the top of your head and your chakras glowing blah blah blah. She got sick quickly of the instructor’s monologue, of the incense, of the women and their personalized mats. At the end when they all would lie on the floor in the corpse pose, she would look at the women around her, mouths open like fish, some actually sleeping with dumb smiles on their relaxed faces. Of the corpses she’d seen, none had looked so peaceful.
The dead were contorted like zombies; they had holes in their heads; they were kids with limp limbs.
So she quit, bought a book and learned on her own. Moved through the poses but didn’t do them all. Practiced the handstand until she could do it. First against the wall, then in the middle of the room. First for two minutes, then five, then ten. Now fifteen minutes in the middle of the room at four or five in the morning when she woke up. Her head was not exactly empty, but this was the time when she felt the most pleasant, the most like the way people on the street looked, she thought. People she saw in the grocery store or the gas station. Pushing babies in strollers or walking in a pair, or just alone hurrying to their cars, tapping away on their phones. Even if they weren’t smiling, even if they were yelling at their kids or worried about being late to work, she thought they had something on her, and she was never going to get it back.
She scissored her legs down and stood up straight. Rolled her head around. She checked the time on her phone. It was 4:28. The sky was navy blue outside. She could hear some birds.
She sat at her desk and opened her laptop, saw she had some new messages. Two junk, a message from her brother, and something she didn’t recognize.
From [email protected]. Subject: Missing Person Inquiry. The message read, “Hello Miss Vega, I read about you in regards to the Ethan Moreno case. I would like to speak to you about your services. My niece’s daughters have disappeared. Please find my contact information below and let me know when is a good time. Sincerely, Maggie Shambley.”
She looked at the street address and went online, typed “girls missing denville pa” and read three articles, saw half a dozen pictures of the missing girls, their mother, the parking lot where they were last seen.