I thanked Vera, who gave me one more crooked grin, shook my hand, and left. I stayed put, nursing my drink and thinking.
I hadn’t fared much better yesterday, when I’d spent most of the morning trying to put some meat on the bones of David’s story. He hadn’t made it easy.
“It isn’t enough to know I met her on-line?” he’d said. “What do you need the particulars for?”
“Gee, I don’t know, David- maybe on the off chance they could help me locate her.”
“I don’t see how.”
“You don’t need to see how. That’s what you hired me for.”
“ ‘Hired’ is the key word there- it means you work for me.”
We went around like that for a while and finally David relented. He was sullen at first but eventually a note of pride crept into his voice, and I realized he was quietly pleased with his shrewdness.
He could quote Wren’s posting on MetroMatchPoint. com, the dating website he’d used to find her, almost word for word. “Slim, leggy redhead, twenties, healthy, tasteful, and discreet, seeks professional man 35? 55 for casual meeting. Manhattan only, downtown preferred.” He’d sent a note to the e-mail address in the ad, and had established what he called his “ground rules.”
“Half the people on these sites who claim to be women, aren’t- so before I waste any time, I get a photo.” I didn’t quite gulp.
“Tell me you haven’t been mailing your picture around the web, David.”
He gave me a get real look. “For chrissakes, no. I get photos from them; I don’t send anything out.”
“A little lopsided, isn’t it? What if the other party doesn’t agree?”
“So be it.” David shrugged. “If she won’t play by my rules, I move on.”
“And how do you know the photos you get are for real? What’s to stop someone sending you a picture of someone else entirely?”
“It happens, but that’s why I insist on a first meeting at Third Uncle.” I knew the place; it was a cafГ© on Charlton Street, off Varick. “It has that huge front window and you can see everyone in the place from the sidewalk. If I like the view, I go inside and take a closer look. If I don’t, I just keep walking.” The voice of authority.
“So you’ve never been fooled?”
He squinted at me. “Fooled how?”
“You didn’t see The Crying Game?”
“Jesus,” David said. His face wrinkled in disgust. “You think this is some kind of joke?”
“No joke, David. It’s a big city, and full of all sorts of people.”
“Fuck you. I know the difference between a man and a woman.”
“Whatever. Exactly how many of these look-sees have you gone on anyway?”
His face went blank and his voice dead flat. “You have more questions about Wren, or not?” he asked.
“Let’s hear those messages,” I said.
David blanched. “I deleted the ones she left on my office voicemail and at home,” he said, and he pressed some keys on his tiny phone. “But I saved the ones on my cell.” He held the phone to his ear and then passed it to me. His hand was shaking a little as he did it. In a moment I understood why.
There were three messages and they were brief but operatic. Wren’s voice was quiet, educated, and medium-deep, and when it wasn’t steeped in anger or bile or plain craziness, it was pleasant, if a little tired sounding. The first one was the least strident.
“David- it is David, isn’t it? — it’s Wren calling. It’s been so long, David, and I missed you over the holidays. I thought of calling you at home, but then I thought that might be awkward with Stephanie, so I left you a message at the office. When I didn’t hear back I thought you might be taking a break from work, and not checking your voicemail. I imagine you could use a vacation, considering how busy you must be at Klein amp; Sons- your new job and all. Are you traveling? Are you someplace warm? I wish I could join you in the sun, David. I want to see you. Write me soon.”
If you didn’t know the context, there was something only slightly creepy in the way she kept repeating David’s name, and in her neediness. The volume went up in the second message, and so did the harpy quotient.
“It’s been two days and I haven’t heard from you. I know you’re in town, David- you were at that benefit last night, you and Stephanie. You suddenly seem to have so much time for her, David, and none at all for me. I never thought you would be cruel in this way, or so rude. But I won’t be ignored, David- and I won’t be disrespected. I want to see you, and if I don’t, I’ll keep calling. And who knows what number I’ll dial…or who will answer? Maybe your big brother or one of your other partners. Maybe your bitch wife.” Her voice was charged with venom at the end, and traveled through anguished, indignant, and imperious to get there. The third message had apparently been left after one of Wren’s phone conversations with David.
“You’re not picking up anymore, David? Well, fine- don’t. You were such a rude bastard when we spoke this morning- so nasty and cold- I’m not sure I want to talk to you just now anyway. I know you like talking dirty, but this was different, David. This was…brutal and coarse and not sexy at all. Tell me, do you talk that way to Stephanie? Does she like it? I’ll have to remember to ask.” There was a frightening slyness in Wren’s voice, and something almost triumphal too. She was in control and relishing her power.
The message ended and I looked at the cell phone display. “The call comes through as private,” I said, and handed the phone to David.
“Otherwise I would’ve looked her up myself,” he’d muttered. It wasn’t long after that he’d left, still white-faced.
I tossed Vera’s cup and my own into the trash, stepped out into the frost and glare, and headed west on Houston. An icy wind was blowing off the East River and it bullied me along in its rush to Jersey. Cold as it was, it felt good to be out in the air, good to walk. I hadn’t run since Thursday, and at some point over the weekend, a thick, logy feeling had settled behind my eyes and a plank of dull pain had fastened itself to my forehead. I felt slow and half hungover, and my failure yesterday to find hide or hair or the smallest feather of Wren on the MetroMatchPoint website had only reinforced my sense of being slightly stupid.
The e-mail address Wren used for her correspondence had led me nowhere. Like the one David used, it was provided free of charge by one of the big web search sites and was untraceable without a subpoena or a court order. We weren’t to that point yet, and in any event there was no reason to believe that Wren had been any more truthful in the information she’d provided to establish her account than my brother had been in establishing his own.
David had given me the keywords he’d used to find Wren’s posting on MetroMatchPoint: age 25? 35; Manhattan; white; and the all-important casual and discreet. The search criteria had helped me cull a thousand women-seeking-men entries down to fewer than a hundred, but even so the list seemed endless. And, after the first couple of dozen, endlessly grim.
Some tried for sexy or funny, but their authors lacked the skill to carry it off in twenty-five words or less, and they came across as crude or incoherent or both. Most of the postings, though, aspired to nothing more than businesslike: a listing of the advertiser’s alleged physical attributes, and those she sought in a partner; a few words on specific restrictions or inclinations; and an e-mail address. These were no doubt useful as transactional devices, but the aggregate effect was one of grinding loneliness, and a bleak and relentless hunger. I’d tweaked and twisted David’s search criteria but found nothing remotely like Wren’s posting, and after three hours I’d called it a day.
A plastic shopping bag blew past me, and so did three pages of a Chinese newspaper and a Mexican takeout menu and a hundred or so cigarette butts- and so, eventually, did my headache. By the time I crossed Sullivan Street, my ears were numb but my brain was full of chilly oxygen.
It was late for breakfast and too early for lunch and I could see through the big window that David had found so useful that Third Uncle was nearly empty. There were a couple of skinny girls behind the steel counter, ministering to the espresso machines, and a pair of drowsy dilettantes paging listlessly through the Times at a steel-topped table up front, and no one else in the black-and-white-tiled room. I went inside and my face burned in the sudden warmth.