Lost Girls

''Just one of those cheap, rickety-as-all-get-out sort of vacation cottages. You know the ones? Nothing much at all. It's always a little embarrassing, isn't it? The things you wish for when you're young.''

''I wonder if we could--''

''And then comes the real world. Flattening everything in its path, handing out the just deserts. So I end up living alone in a bachelor apartment in the ghost town down the road, teaching literature to students who can't read the back of a hockey card. This is what happens to children's dreams, Mr. Crane.''

''That's too bad, Thom. It really is. But for the time being I'm just wondering about you and the girls and the lake.''

''The girls.''

''That's right. Did you take them up there that Thursday?''

''They always talked about it.''

''Going for a drive?''

''About the lake.'' He sweeps his knuckles over his lips. ''They liked stories.''

''That's fine. But what I'm looking for here is a sequence of events starting, oh, I don't know, say, from the beginning, and going to the end. To your drive to the lake, if there was a drive to the lake.''

''A regular water rat, that's what my mother called me. I was such a good swimmer.''

''How about the girls? Were they good swimmers too?''

He presses his lips together so tightly, they disappear altogether except for the bloodless white crease they leave halfway between nose and chin.

''There's not much . . .''

''Not what?''

''. . . not much I can say without . . .''

Then the tears again, a splashing deluge that falls onto his face but affects no other part of his body. No shaking shoulders or trembling lips. It's as though they arrive on their own for reasons that are either unknown to him or so well known he has ceased to supplement them with any other expression.

''Please, Mr. Tripp,'' I say, pushing back the impatience rising in my voice. ''It's apparent that you're under a great deal of stress. But frankly so am I, and you're not helping very much. If I'm to act for you, there are some things I need to know. At the moment I don't have much: girls went missing on Thursday, May the twelfth; a fruitless search over the course of the following weeks; warrant issued for your apartment and car a couple weeks later that yielded cutout catalog pictures of girls in pajamas on your bedroom wall, muddy pants in the laundry hamper, muddy shoes at the door, and a few bloodstains in the backseat. Two months later you're under arrest. There's an outline of a story there, and certainly a whole number of potential inferences, but I think it needs some fleshing out, so to speak. Don't you?''

Sarcasm may not be the best approach under the circumstances, but the truth is I'm finding Tripp more recalcitrant than the usual. Clients are rarely forthcoming at first and even more rarely articulate, but if this guy's la-laland routine is as intentional as I suspect it is, I have to let him know I'm not convinced. So I sit for a time with pen poised over notepad and wait. Count to thirty in my head and wait some more, although I lower my eyes for the next thirty because I have the feeling that if I got into a staring match with this guy I'd lose. And in the end he wins anyway.

''Okay, Thom. Let's try just yes or no. Did you drive the girls anywhere that Thursday?''

''It's not me you want to ask.''

''There's nobody else to ask, is there?''

''They always told me what to do.''

''And they told you to drive them to Lake St. Christopher, is that it? They wanted to go?''

''I don't know what they wanted. I just . . .''

''Just took them there?''

''Always talking about it. 'What about the lake, Mr. Tripp?' Those two! 'Tell us about the lake.' I had a choice about it at first. And then after a while it didn't matter.''

His voice isn't a whisper, doesn't travel as whispers do, but is so soft I strain for every word.

''There are some things you can't fight, Mr. Crane.''

''By 'things' I take it you mean 'urges'?''

''I mean the will of others.''

''Are you telling me--are you trying to tell me that there's another party involved here? If so, I need you to tell me now. Give me a name.''

The tears have been stemmed once more, but Tripp's head now hangs down to meet his chest and his arms have fallen inward so that he takes up as little space as he can, as though he would pull his entire body up into himself and disappear if he could.

''Whoever it is, you can't help them now,'' I continue, keeping my voice even. ''It's time to think of yourself, Thomas. And I can help you--we can help each other--if you just give me a name.''

He wriggles his shoulders as though invisibly bound. An audible smacking of eyelids sounding out an unreadable code.

''Can you hear them?'' he whispers.

''I can hear you and me and an inmate barking for a smoke down the hall. What else are you referring to?''

''They change.''

''Change?''

''From one to another.''

''Well, that's the basic structure of conversation, isn't it? An exchange between more than--''

''They talk to each other.''

''Mr. Tripp. Are you trying to suggest to me your suitability for the defense of insanity? If this is your plan, you need not pretend with me. I'm your lawyer. It's essential that you realize we have shared interests. Now, if you prefer the idea of lifelong hospitalization to the possibility of lifelong incarceration, you just tell me how you'd like me to go about it, and we'll--''

''I can hear her!''

Tripp pulls himself up, leans across the table, and hisses this at me, his face a mask of goggle-eyed desperation. Hands gripping the edges of the table hard enough to turn his knuckles an instant white, shoulders braced as though in anticipation of a physical blow from behind. And now bigger than I thought, as though another, larger man were swelling within his skin. Pushing out bands of vein across his forehead, slithering pulses down his neck.

There's something about this new turn to his performance that gives me serious pause. An urgency I didn't recognize at first, a sharp edge that could cut through whatever lay before him. Fear. But a fear that could be translated into other extremes. And just as these possibilities begin to cloud together around him he retreats into the depths of his chair, his eyes returning to their usual appearance as two undercooked eggs.

''Her?'' I ask. ''And what 'her' would we be speaking of?''

''I don't care if you believe me.''

''Nor do I, Mr. Tripp.''

I stick my bare notepad back into my briefcase and rise to knock for the guard.

''I urge you to consider the seriousness of your situation,'' I say to his back from the safe distance of the door. ''Perhaps the next time we speak you'll have come to appreciate the fact that I'm on your side. That I'm the only one on your side.''

The guard's rubber soles squeaking down the hall to let me out.

''A strange one, I told ya,'' the leprechaun guard says as he walks me to the front doors, but seeing as I have to agree I end up not saying a word.