I lived, ate, slept, chopped wood, and thought constantly about those blueprints. Then one day, I was clearing moss off shingles and it occurred to me that Nick’s dad would’ve had to print them somewhere. There must have been some kind of machine that produced them. I dug around in the shed and found a banker’s box with old pay stubs, with the name of Marc’s employer on them. Kern, Nagamitsu, & Nichols Civil Engineering and Land Surveying.
I should say that I had done my best to avoid anyone I knew on Bainbridge and keep to myself. When I needed groceries, I rode an old ten-speed across the bridge to Poulsbo and filled up my backpack. I was sporting a pretty rangy beard again and went unrecognized whenever I had to go into town. People looking at you, instantly figuring out your place on the totem pole—I didn’t want anything to do with that. Maybe some of Star’s antisocial behavior was coming out of me. But I recognized that I had to get myself respectable if I wanted to launch another investigation and get people to divulge information. I shaved, and as the whiskers fell away I saw the old high school football star, the dot-com drone, older, heavier, the skin around my eyes sagging and wrinkled from years of pained expressions. I had been wrong to think that anyone would remember that kid and bother to formulate an opinion about his grown-up self. I was a complete nobody now.
The office was in a building next to a chiropractor and a day care. A little place with a lobby, a room for drafting, and a room downstairs in back where they kept all the surveying equipment. I just walked in and asked to speak to one of the civil engineers. The receptionist called up Don Nagamitsu, a trim guy with a gray beard and a denim shirt tucked into his Levi’s. I told him I was living on the Fedderly property and had some questions about Marc. We went around the corner to a bakery and Don insisted on buying me coffee. He asked me what I wanted to know. I told him about the blueprints. He sort of laughed and looked out the window.
He told me a story. He said, “We were having a company party in I’d say ’79, ’80. Business was good and Dave Kern, our chief, had just had a hot tub installed on his deck overlooking Seattle. Twelve or so of us, getting drunk, shooting firecrackers off the deck, living it up. So I’m there in the hot tub on my fourth glass of wine. Marc across from me, Star next to him, my wife Sandy beside me. And Marc says, ‘You want to hear something really interesting? Bainbridge and Manhattan are roughly the same size. And you know what’s funny? Before Seattle was Seattle it was called New York Alki. It’s an Indian word that means “by and by.” In other words, sooner or later this place is going to be as big as New York City. I say we regrade the place and build ourselves a Big Apple.’ And you have to understand something about draftsmen. These guys, at least then, were the longhairs. You had your civil engineers like me, guys in blazers and ties, and you had your surveyors—old farts with crew cuts and rain gear coated in mud. The draftsmen were somewhere in between, each and every one of them a character. Whenever someone pulled an office prank, the draftsmen were the prime suspects. I knew a lot of them smoked dope at home but if you were to start instituting drug tests, well, then, no drainage systems or parking lots would ever get built. As long as they kept doing their jobs, I didn’t care what they did in their recreational time. And I liked Marc a heck of a lot. He showed up early, got his work done fast, was always at my desk asking for more. In fact, Sandy and I had invited him and Star and their kid over to our house for dinner a couple times. Good people. I would have forgotten that comment, with me being drunk and it being just one of those things the draftsmen always said. But one night my wife and I went out to dinner or to a Mariners game or something, and I’d forgotten something at the office. Friday night, about eleven o’clock and I walk in and there’s Marc, working at his drafting table, drinking coffee. Those days, nobody worked long hours. Everyone was out of there by five on the dot. My first thought was that he’d messed up something real bad and was busting tail to fix it. When I asked him what the deal was he sort of shrugged sheepishly, stepped away from the table, and told me to take a look.
“He said it was a little side project of his and he apologized for using company paper and pens. I waved him off. Because what I was looking at looked more like art than any sort of drafting I’d ever seen. He had all the sewer and communications worked out, all the tunnels and streets. I didn’t know whether I should get mad or what. It seemed like a weird thing to do but he was on his own time and he was my best draftsman, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. And now you’ve got the blueprints.”
I asked him how Marc had died.
Don said, “He fell, working on that new house of his. There’s a right way to fall and a wrong way. I guess Marc fell the wrong way.”
We were quiet again, then Don asked me if I’d bought the Fedderly property. I told him no, I was just staying there a while. He said he felt bad for Star and how he hoped “she’s finally getting the help she needs.” I took this to mean that she had been institutionalized somewhere, and I got this deadly pang of remorse. Here I was trying to dig up the scoop on Marc’s blueprints but I hadn’t stopped to figure out where Star was. I was a real shit. Don must’ve seen me looking upset because he asked what was wrong. I told him I’d been close to Star and Nick when I was younger and was sad to hear that things had gone so badly for her.
Don asked me my name again. I told him and he mumbled over my last name a bit then sort of went white. Real abruptly he looked at his watch and said he had to make it back to the office for a meeting or something. He couldn’t have gotten out of there any faster. I was still thinking about Star, otherwise I would have been more suspicious about his sudden departure. That day I went to the library and got online and started compiling a list of mental hospitals in the area.
Did you find her?
Of course not. And having no claim to kinship I didn’t have much ground to stand on when I asked these places if she was in residence. It was like searching for the Kirkpatrick Academy all over again. I knew I didn’t have much time. I took the ferry into Seattle, I don’t remember what for, but I do remember looking at people on the streets and thinking how sad it was that they weren’t aware everything was about to end. Still, I envied their ignorance. I wished I’d ended up the guy Nick had told me to be years before, the guy with the career and the wife and the children. It was the children I felt most sad about. I passed a group of them out on a day-care field trip, these toddlers strapped into a big wagon thing, and I had to duck into an alley to cry. I’m sure I looked insane. I was sitting on a bank balance of about three million dollars but I was filthy, a guy who talked to himself in the street. During this time I thought about killing myself a lot, but it never moved from an abstraction into a plan. Because I knew I was meant to be a witness. I woke up in the woods and didn’t know how I’d gotten there. I walked long enough to reach a road and found my way back to Star’s house. I crawled into bed and wept, terrified of what was to come.
How long were you in this condition?