On the street he saw a car that looked like Guterak’s, but it sped away from the curb. Remy watched cabs slide down the avenue toward midtown, and wondered if he had enough cash for one. He pulled his wallet out to see how much money he had, and he saw the edge of his “Don’t Hurt Anyone/Grow Up” card. He slid the card out, read it, and slid it back into his wallet. And that was the first time it crossed his mind that there might be another way to consider this problem, that there might, in some way, be two Remys, one he knew and the other he didn’t, and that these two men might be as different as-
HE WAITED as the old man was helped off the bus, which bore lettering on its side reading Englewood Senior Services. The driver, who had a shelf of long hair in back, nodded and spoke to the man in his loud senior citizen voice. “How’d you do today, Mr. Addich? You win all that money?”
“I always win all the money,” the old man said. He was small and impeccably dressed, in a suit without a tie. He clung to a black day planner as big as a motel room Bible. “I’m a winner!”
“What about them old ladies? You hittin’ any of those ladies, Mr. Addich?”
“I would never hit a lady. Unless she hit me first.” The old man winked.
This made the driver laugh as he got back on the bus. The doors closed, the bus began to pull away, and Mr. Addich made his way toward his son’s suburban house.
“Mr. Addich?” Remy climbed out of his car and hurried across the street. “Excuse me. Are you Gerald Addich?”
The old man turned slowly and looked at Remy without recognition. “Yes. Who are you?” The old man was all ears, two big handles divided by a spit of gray curly hair that lapped onto his forehead. His mouth was a pinched hole. He spoke with a gravelly third-generation Irish borough accent. “What can I do for you?”
Remy walked up to the man. “Do you know me?”
He took a moment. “I don’t believe so, no. But if I had to guess I’d say you look like a cop.”
“I’m the guy who found your planner downtown,” Remy said.
“Oh, thank you,” he said. “That was nice of you to return it. I’d be lost without this thing.” He turned back toward his house.
“Your son said you weren’t downtown that day…”
The old man turned back and cocked his head, as if he didn’t understand.
“So I was wondering how it got down there.”
The old man said nothing.
“See,” Remy said and he tried to laugh nonchalantly, “the funny thing is that your day planner had a meeting listed on that day… with me, or a meeting with someone with my name.”
Addich looked down at the planner in his hands. “What’s your name?”
“Remy. Brian Remy.”
“I’ve never heard of you,” the man said. “So I don’t know how I could have had a meeting with you-”
“Could I just look in there?” Remy asked, pointing to the planner.
“In here?” Mr. Addich held up his day planner.
Just then, the door opened and Tony Addich came out, in suit pants, a white tank top and socks. “Come on, Dad. It’s almost dinnertime. We’re having salmon.”
“I’m sorry, I have to go,” Gerald Addich said to Remy. “We’re having fish.” He stared at Remy for a moment before moving toward the house.
Tony Addich came out and helped the old man up the sidewalk. “Leave him alone,” he said over his shoulder, through gritted teeth. “He can’t help you.”
REMY STOOD on the second floor of what appeared to be an old warehouse, in front of a heavy door, a kind of roughed metal, brushed and polished until it gleamed like a rocket. He looked around, then opened the door and stepped in the entryway of a huge loft apartment, unfurnished and mostly unfinished: exposed bricks and beams, joists and pipes hanging above stained wood floors, the whole thing feeling cold and exposed, lacking the civility and cover provided by basic drywall and carpet. “Hello?” he called out. “Anyone here?”
“In here,” came a man’s voice. Remy made his way through a long narrow living room, rough brick on the opposite wall and two big windows at the far end of the room. A small kitchen was on the right, with an angled slate counter lined with corrugated aluminum and a metal hood resting above a gas stove and oven. A young couple was standing next to the stairs, the man in faded jeans and a ski cap, the woman in form-fitting black pants. They both had the kind of windswept blond hair that made Remy think of places in Colorado he’d never actually seen.
“ – not that I think holding out for a six-burner is worth losing this place,” the woman was saying. Then she and her husband both looked up at Remy.
“Oh, hey,” the windswept man said. “She’s up there.”
“Up there?” Remy asked, looking at the open staircase.
“Yeah, man,” he said, “she was showing us this apartment and she got a phone call about something and she just lost it, man.”
“She didn’t seem right even before that,” the woman said to her husband.
“She was fine,” the man snapped, as if they’d been arguing the point. “But after the phone call she seemed really… spooked.”
“She locked herself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out,” the woman said.
“We didn’t know what to do,” said the husband. “We told her through the door that we were going to call the agency, and that’s when she said she was going to call someone else instead. I’m assuming that was you?”
“I assume so,” Remy said. He started up the staircase, which was lined with cast iron poles topped with what looked like bowling pins. Remy stepped closer and looked upstairs, where he saw a mural painted on the ceiling, a kind of sunspot, dark in the center with yellow drips of flame leading away.
“Excuse me,” said the man. Remy turned and looked down at him, leaning on the railing in the kitchen. “Listen, we’re kind of… we’re worried about losing this place. If she’s okay, do you think you could tell her that we want to move on it before someone else gets it?”
“Okay,” Remy said.
He walked up the stairs and found her in the bathroom, sitting in the dark against the counter, still holding her cell phone. “April?” Remy turned on the light. He stared at the phone in her hand, wondering if Nicole had called her and said something. His stomach felt tight, as if it were folding up on itself.
“You think, at first,” she said, distantly, “that it’s a kind of penance you’re being forced to pay. You think that after you’ve suffered long enough, that the people you’ve lost can just… come back.” April’s eyes drifted down. “But they don’t. They never come back. That’s the trick. They die all over again for you, every few months.”
Remy removed his coat and tried to put it over her shoulders but she held up her hand.
“I dream about them… sometimes. I keep expecting them to say something profound or comforting. But they’re too busy to talk. They’re running around, late for things, and they won’t even meet my eyes. And I think… what’s the rush? You’re dead. Where could you possibly have to be?”
She looked up and met his eyes. “There’s something I probably should have told you. The reason I don’t like to talk about Derek. Do you remember the night we met at the bar and I told you all about him?”
Remy nodded, even though he didn’t.
“I said that when he died, I hadn’t spoken to him in four months…” she trailed off. “Well… that wasn’t entirely true. I don’t know why I lied about it… I guess I wanted you – or maybe me – to believe that I totally was over him.”