Daniel had gone still.
"And I just— I don't know if going to the police is the right way to do this." Gavin paused but Daniel only stared at him, a hard unreadable gaze, so he continued, foundering now, "As I was saying to your colleague, I have no idea how to go about finding her. She could be with her mother. I'm just afraid she's—"
"You went to New York," Daniel said. An unpleasant smile was pulling at his mouth. " Right after we graduated high school."
"Yeah, I did. I got into Columbia."
"My most recent ex-wife's from New York," Daniel said. "She introduced me to the New York Star a while back. I still read it online sometimes when I can't sleep. It's no Times, as I'm sure you were painfully aware for the duration of your career there, but it's actually not a bad publication, all in all. Bit of a fabulist, aren't you?"
"Daniel, I—"
"Look, Gavin, it's nice to see you again. But seeing as how you lost your last job because you invent people, I'm having a little trouble with this phantom-kid story."
"She exists," Gavin said. He had realized, too late, that Daniel didn't like him, but he couldn't think of a reason. It made no sense— hadn't they always been friendly? He was trying to recall if they'd had a falling-out all those years ago. He couldn't remember one. "Don't you remember when Anna left town? This was just after we graduated high school, right before I went to New York. I think she was pregnant with my kid."
"You lose your job, life's not going so good, you get a little confused. It's a stress response. Look, I see it pretty often. I'm not entirely unsympathetic, but the thing is, I don't have a whole lot of time for this kind of thing. You know how fucked up this place is now? Nothing like when we were kids. We grew up in paradise, Gavin, comparatively speaking."
"It never felt like paradise to me."
"That's just because you got heatstroke every ten minutes. Place was pretty nice for everyone else. Look, I got this case on my desk now, I shouldn't be telling you this—" he folded his hands together on the table—"a thirteen-year-old trades her baby brother for a bag of Oxycontin and then runs away from home. Unbelievable, right? And yes, we got the baby back, but this is what we're dealing with down here. So listen, great to see you, and I hope you've been keeping up the trumpet—" he was standing now—"but all I ask, Gavin, is that you not waste my time with your invisible people."
"Daniel, she's not some figment—"
"You know, there's something my dad used to say to me, Gavin. He said, 'You start telling lies, son, no one ever believes you after that. It's like diving into a lake, and your clothes are never dry again.' So you're telling me this story about a phantom kid, but the thing is, Gavin, your clothes are all wet." He opened the door to the room. Gavin was at a loss for words, a little shaky, still trying to reconcile this man with the scrawny kid who'd played bass beside him in high school, trying to understand. "You've already done a swan dive, as far as I'm concerned."
H e c r o s s e d out the question mark after Sasha buying baby clothes at the mall in his notebook, and set the stolen glass dog on the windowsill. It was the only adornment in the square white room. He liked the way the light struck it. Under The Lola Quartet he wrote the names of the members besides him— Daniel Smith (bass), Sasha Lyon (drums), Jack Baranovsky (piano/saxophone)—considered a moment, and went to the kitchen to search for a phone book.
There were ten Baranovskys in the city of Sebastian and none of them were Jack, but he remembered Jack's childhood address and found it in the directory, the third Baranovsky from the top. He called Jack's mother. Jack still lived in Sebastian, she told him. She gave him an address on Mortimer Street.
"Perhaps it'll be good for him to see you," she said.
It took him some time to find Jack's house. It was in one of the oldest parts of the suburbs, a run-down district near Sebastian's empty downtown core. The streets here were set in a grid, small houses crowded together behind unmown lawns. The end-of-afternoon light cast the street in a beautiful glow but the disintegration was obvious. There were rooftops with tarps over them, camping trailers parked in driveways with children sitting on their steps. Gavin slowed the car, counting off numbers.
The house at 1196 Mortimer was set back from the street on a weed-choked lot, the front lawn half— taken over by exuberant palm fronds. There were broken bottles in the weeds by the driveway. The cement steps and the walkway were cracked. He rang the doorbell and waited for what seemed like a long time. The neighborhood was quiet. He heard cicadas and crickets and frogs, distant voices, a car. The smell of a barbecue in someone's yard. There was a flutter of movement in a curtained window across the street.
The girl who opened the door was young, perhaps thirteen years old. There was something unkempt about her, neglected, glassy eyes and unbrushed hair. She needed a bath. She was very pretty, but she had the look of a girl for whom beauty had been a mixed blessing.
"Hello," he said. "Is Jack Baranovsky here?"
It seemed to take a moment for the question to travel through the air between them. When it reached her she blinked and nodded slowly.
"Can I come in? He's a friend of mine."
The delay was shorter this time. "Okay," she said. She stepped aside, and when he walked in he almost gagged. The smell of the house was mold, mostly, but also someone had spilled beer on a carpet. The air was still and hot.
"Do you know where Jack is?"
"There," she said. She made a vague motion toward the back of the house.
The room he found at the end of the hallway was a kitchen, but it also seemed to be serving as a living room and a library. An overstuffed sofa took up half the room, books stacked precariously on the grimy linoleum all around it. The countertop by the stove was a mess of takeout containers, flies moving lazily above them. But here at least was a little more air, a sliding glass door open to an overgrown backyard.
The man reading on the sofa looked up, and for a moment Gavin didn't recognize him. He was unshaven and his eyes were red. He badly needed a haircut. His clothes hung off him, and Gavin understood why his mother had sounded so sad on the phone.
"Jack."
"Hello," Jack said. He put his book down. There was no recognition in his eyes, but the sight of a man he didn't recognize in his kitchen didn't seem to trouble him.
" Gavin Sasaki. High school. The Lola Quartet."
"Oh, wow. Gavin." His face lit up like a child's. "Hey, sit down. I don't get that many visitors. It's so nice of you to come."
"Hey, of course." There was a shifting movement of cockroaches along the edges of the room. "I'm back in Florida for a while, thought I'd look you up. How've you been?"
"Oh, I'm good," Jack said. He was beaming. "I'm good, you know, just staying with a friend for a while."
"So you don't live here?"