The dog's eyes, meanwhile, are following some distraction outside the window: the red sedan, drifting slowly down the street between the rows of motionless cars. Its windows have fogged, but Nathan can make out the father-and-son shapes of the driver and passenger sipping at paper cups of coffee, struggling with wrapped doughnuts. Blurry-eyed-they must be tired-they pass on, slowing as they drive by Claire's. One seems to be peering into Errol's car and writing something down. Then they drift away, turn the corner, satisfied for the moment, it seems, to have merely taken the temperature of the situation.
Quickly Nathan lifts his head. The living room curtain has fallen. Or has it? Maybe it was a draft? He remembers old number 11, those big windows with their shaky panes and chalky glazing; the breath of the day threading through, hot or cold, even in the stillest weather. But the curtain settles, and now Baron's behavior has begun to interest him. The dog has caught something-maybe a fly, hatched obviously in the warmth of the garaged car-but instead of swallowing, he seems to hold it on his tongue, playing it in his teeth, as if to present it to Nathan alive, fetched for the master to devour himself. Nathan feels a surge of paternal pride, and he is happy for his hunting dog, all that mass of purebred instinct finally coming to use. Utility. How that must feel.
Nathan reaches over and gives the dog a good scratch behind the ears. Baron, his grimace easily mistaken for a smile, clamps his long teeth, jailing the insect, and swallows.
Errol Santos is standing in the doorway, squinting worriedly upward, hugging himself against the cold. Halfway down the stoop he picks up Claire's Times, unfolds it, then, obviously seeing something he doesn't like, releases it, dropping it in the snow. Nathan watches him drive away as his own little cube of environment swells with a throaty ballad and the tall-lights on the Chevrolet recede to mere punctuations in the early morning.
Baron, whimpering now punches at the glass, ripping loose squeals and farts. Nathan opens his door and the dog hurdles him, bolts into the day, snout to its first solid ground in ten hours. Proudly, he lifts his leg and pisses a hard stream across the driver door. "Jesus christ," Nathan moans, then snatches the dog by the collar and drags him to a dead tree stump where he prances reluctantly, as though with something else in mind. Sad and self-conscious, Baron eyes Nathan, who obligingly turns as the dog squats, strains, and finishes up with a little downward dab. Nathan stands peering at the steaming, gleaming pile, obsessing on it like a drunk, then kicks it under the wheel of the next car, dragging the toe of his shoe along the sidewalk. "In," he cornmands, pointing the way toward the open car door.
A little wobbly but steady on his feet, following the faint blue shadow the light behind him casts down on the walk, Nathan heads for Claire's door. He shakes the paper free of the snow. There on the front page of the Metro section, just beneath the fold, is Isabel, Isabel young and silly, not the Isabel he knows. A three-inch column continues inside deep alongside the seam separating Sports from National Weather where beach volleyball is the new rage and the Yankees are contemplating an off-season deal and a quadriplegic ex-lineman for the jets preaches legislation against licensed aggression. Then Nathan's eyes flit across his own name, his father's, Errol Santos's. He turns the page where a kidnap victim demands retribution. Meanwhile, in Croatia. Meanwhile, at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center where the Riverside Drive jogger. In Mexico City, meanwhile. Meanwhile, Nathan doesn't fold the paper but rolls it into a tube, panicky, he pats himself down for his phone, flipping it open and presses buttons. Messages, messages, where did they go? Tell me I am alive. Tell me I will live.
Halfway to calling his own 900 number he disconnects. How strange that would be, to be billed a hundred dollars by none other than yourself. Whom would you owe? Whom would you pay? And if you didn't? If you ignored the billing, as you always do, driving it to the brink, waiting for the collection agencies to send the registered letter, to serve the subpoena-could you be defendant and plaintiff in the same case, Stein vs. Stein, in which the defendant, Nathaniel Stein, rightfully billed $99.99 for the legitimate use of phone number 1-900-945-5343, commonly known as 1-900-W-I-L-L-D-I-E, owes owner of said number, Nathaniel Stein? So fine. He's making, what, twenty grand, forty? He can afford to be merciful just this one time, let himself off the hook, forgive the debt.
A single clap of thunder explodes midair just behind, over the river. The slate beneath Nathan's feet gives a little jolt. Holding out his hand for the rain, he peers up at a sea-green sky. Smears of black smoke descend behind the buildings.
The heavy, well-oiled door still makes no noise as it swings open. Unhurriedly, meticulously, Nathan lifts his face to Claire, who is cinching tight a robe he remembers from winters past. She looks radiant, youthful, even angelic. Though not stunning. Those slightly jumbled teeth, a flaw that always gave her imperious beauty its vulnerability, a way in. The long red hair wispy and electric. Nothing has abandoned her over the years, not her simple hairdo, not the crimp in the corners of a mouth that still seems ready in equal measure to smile or frown.
"Don't look at me like that," she says.
"I'm sorry."
Claire lifts her head with wonder up to the spindly trees. "I don't think I ever heard you say that."
"Yes, you did. I just didn't mean it."
She hesitates but he makes no move. He and his little blast of honesty have confused her.
She holds out her hand: "My paper?"
Nathan tosses it into a trash can. "Everything's terrible. You wouldn't want to know. Surprised to see me?"
But Claire just stares. She's sniffed out danger, poised to leap. That long body, perfectly still-she's all kinetic potential.
Trying to calm her, Nathan replies with that particular smile of his, the one that can agree with you or fight you, depending on the depth of your disbelief.
She sighs wearily, and her free hand, palm upward, involuntarily indicates the air, as if in irritation, or an unconscious plea. "No," she says. "I'm not surprised. Nothing you do would surprise me. You just missed Errol."
"I'm sorry."
"There it is again."
"But I saw him last night," Nathan says.
"Did you. He said afternoon. He didn't mention anything about last night."
Another explosion, double, nearer. Black clouds like swarms of bees crisscross at a low elevation.
"They're saying it's going to be the storm of the century," she says. "You'd better come in."
Claire leans into the trash and picks out the paper, then heads with it into the dark of the hallway, leaving the door open behind her.
Inside, at the sudden change in temperature, the shift in pressure, every nook in the apartment nudges a remembered cranny in his brain; every chink in the wall snags on the irregularities in his mind. But willfully he won't remember, until he sits at the old table and runs a finger along its worn edge. "We used to love these early mornings," he says. His voice, though not his hand, is steady now. But feeling something on his tongue he wouldn't like to actually say, he swallows hard, tamping it back down.
She is staring at the paper. "You never think these things happen to someone you know."
"Which thing?"
Claire's eyes widen with alarm. "But you know, don't you?"
"The Riverside jogger?"
“-dead, Nathan. They found her, Isabel, out on-"