Lunar Park

Then I called Alvin Mendolsohn’s extension and was surprised when he answered. He spoke coldly to me as we uselessly defined our territory in a very brief discussion that confirmed Aimee Light had not shown up for either of her two scheduled tutorials and also had failed to notify him of her “absentia,” to which he added, “She’s a very impractical young woman,” and then I countered with, “Why—because she’s not doing her thesis on Chaucer?” to which he replied, “Don’t take yourself so seriously,” and then I said, “That’s not an answer, Mendolsohn,” before we both hung up on each other. Needing to be bolder than I felt, I summoned up the nerve to stand in the admissions office, in front of the desk of a blandly good-humored young secretary perched next to a computer, and asked her to look up a student’s name and any contact information regarding how I could reach him since, I admitted regretfully, I had to cancel an appointment. But even in my distracted state I realized, once I’d croaked the word

(if there isn’t a person, how can there be a name?)

“Clayton,” that I didn’t have anything else. He had not supplied a last name. But the campus was small, and I assumed that “Clayton” might be rare enough that he would be easy to track down regardless. The secretary thought it was odd that I didn’t know the last name of one of my students, so I blithely waved a hand around when she inquired about this lapse, the gesture explaining away my absentmindedness, my busy and special life, how unreliable the famous writer was. For some reason, we shared a wooden laugh that momentarily relaxed me. She seemed used to this—the faculty of the college apparently made up of other frantic misfits who forgot the names of their own students. I dazed out, and realized that I was nearing a period in my life when I was seeking assistance from people half my age. I watched the secretary swing toward the computer, her hands sweeping over the keypad.

“Well, I’ll enter the name and we’ll do a search.”

(“I’m a big fan, Mr. Ellis.”)

I spelled the name, correcting her (for some reason, she thought it began with a K, and who knew if it didn’t?), and she typed it in and then tapped a key and sat back.

I could tell from the expression on her face that the screen might as well have been blank.

I was about to lean over and scan the screen with her when she tapped a few more keys.

I realized things were becoming complicated when I noticed her sighing repeatedly.

(You should have never come to Midland County. You should have stayed in New York. Forever.)

“I’m not finding anything with ‘Clayton’ in it,” she said, scrunching her face up.

(“I’m a freshman here.”)

“He said he was a freshman,” I added unhelpfully. “Could you check again?”

“I mean, look, even if you had a last name, Mr. Ellis, nothing would come up in the student directory because there’s no Clayton listed anywhere.”

“This is extremely important.”

“I understand that but there’s no Clayton listed anywhere,” she repeated.

“Please just check one more time.”

The secretary smiled wryly at me—it was actually a sympathetic expression.

“Mr. Ellis . . .”—(and it was maddening that desirable young women were now calling me this)—“the school directory—do you know what that is?—has confirmed that there is no one with the name Clayton—either as a first name or a last name or a middle name—attending this college.”

It wasn’t just the information but her tone that shocked me into silence: I should have known the moment I walked into the admissions office that finding Clayton was a remote and unlikely thing. The secretary’s search had answered something, but another false beginning was opening up. I slowly stepped away from the desk as the secretary continued studying me as if I were dwindling into another world. Since I was not offering any explanation for this waste of time, her face became taut with impatience and then she simply regarded me quizzically and said, “Mr. Ellis, do you feel okay?” But her concern was utterly superficial, even if she genuinely tried to make it seem unintended.

I couldn’t let this challenge diminish me. I had to take this information and do something with it. I now knew—for fact—something about this boy who had called himself Clayton and had appeared in my office and in the front seat of Aimee Light’s car and in my own home and I now knew that he had lied to me, and even worse—I felt with a premonitory shiver—that whatever intentions he had were not fulfilled yet. I was light-headed and my muscles ached from lack of sleep and I hadn’t eaten anything except a cracker smeared with cheese in the Buckley library the night before, and as I walked out of the admissions office I stared at the Commons—the flat center of campus. It had been warm that morning and the air dead and still, but now a breeze caught the rust-colored leaves carpeting the field, revealing the green lawn hidden beneath them. The questions were too myriad (and outlandish) to systematically and rationally contemplate. It was a Tuesday—that was the only fact. I couldn’t stand on the steps of the admissions building—lost and spacing out on a lone, scrawny dog sniffing around the perimeters of Booth House, a kerchief tied around its neck—any longer. I took off in the direction of the student parking lot to see if I could locate either the cream-colored 450 SL or Aimee Light’s BMW. It was the only plan at the moment that could move me out of my stupor. In the distance, the sun glanced off the white dome of the art building and then the sky started darkening. Indian summer vanished rapidly that afternoon.

The student parking lot was situated behind the Barn, and as I walked under the entrance arc of the black ironwood gates a wave of panic-infused nausea flowed through me, then subsided. I recovered and then started scanning the rows of haphazardly parked cars, and the frantic worry returned when I could smell the sea and knew this was the scent of the Pacific thousands of miles away, and clouds were moving swiftly backwards, and crows flew high over the unpaved, dusty parking lot. It seemed as if the temperature was dropping in degrees by the second, and while looking over the roughly two hundred cars that occupied the lot I realized I was suddenly breathing steam. When I thought I saw a flash of white three rows over from where I was standing I started stumbling toward it, my shoes crunching the gravel beneath me.

As I passed a student waxing a Volvo—in that instant—a wind machine was activated.

Freezing air scorched the campus, piercing it.

Piles of dead leaves blanketing everything exploded upward and suddenly formed cones that raced across the ground. My coat flapped wildly behind me as I struggled through the lot. The air rushing forward felt like a knife. The crows were now reeling above me, black and cursing, their shrill cries drowned out by the roar of the wind, and the wind whipped the flag so hard that thwacking sounds echoed out from the pole it was attached to. The wind subsided briefly but then another huge sheet was literally pushing me out of the parking lot, and when I saw students, startled and grimacing, running for cover into buildings, I lowered my head and staggered against the wind, heading for shelter in the campus pub, The Cafe, and stood beneath the awning, where I grabbed a wooden column to support myself, but then gave up, letting the force of the wind slam me against a wall. The wind lashed out with such force that a vending machine I was standing beside toppled over. When I looked up, squinting, I could see the hands on the clock tower swinging like pendulums. You could actually hear the wind snarling.

(I shut my eyes tightly and wrapped my arms protectively around myself and asked mindlessly: what was the wind? And, just as mindlessly, something answered: the dead screaming.)

And in the moment I decided to stop searching for the cars and retreat to The Barn and the safety of the office located there, the wind paused and silence ringed the campus.

My jumbled thoughts:

(The wind forced you out of the parking lot)

(Because it didn’t want you to find a car)

(You learn to move on without the people you love)

(My father hadn’t)

(But the wind stopped: time for a drink)

Shivering, I climbed the creaking staircase leading to my office, adjusting to the warm emptiness of the Barn. I unlocked my office and the moment I stepped over the stories that had been pushed under the door, I realized that the last time I had been here was on Halloween: the day Clayton introduced himself to me, and then I moved to my desk and slumped into a chair by the window overlooking the Commons and almost started crying because on that same day Aimee Light had pretended not to know him. Outside, the dark clouds that had been guarding Midland County were dissipating, the view growing so bright that I could see past the Commons and into the valley below the campus. Horses were grazing in a pasture near a canvas tent, and a yellow tractor was maneuvering through the huge oaks and maples that made up a forest leading into town, and then I saw my father, the crows