eyebrow whenever I lit up. Subtly, and sweetly, and for my own good. I didn’t especially mind the new regime. I could smoke all I wanted at work, and now houseguests couldn’t accuse me of attempted manslaughter by secondhand smoke, and it just made life easier all around.
I leaned against the rail. The world was silent but for the confidential whispering of trees. The sky was clear and cold above, and midnight blue. I could smell firs and faint wood smoke from a distant hearth fire—likely our neighbors, the Zimmermans. It was good here, I knew that. We had a fancy house. The landscape was rugged, and not much had changed for it in a long time. Birch Crossing was real without being an ass about it: Pickups and SUVs were equally represented, and you could buy a very fancy spatula if you wanted. The Zimmermans were a five- minute drive away, but we’d already had dinner at their house twice. They were a couple of retired history professors from Berkeley, and conversation had not exactly flowed the first time, but the gift of a single-malt on our second visit had oiled the wheels. Both were sprightly for people in their early seventies—Bobbi filled the CD player with everything from Mozart to Sparklehorse, and Ben’s black hair was barely flecked with gray. He and I now chatted affably enough on the street when we met, though I suspected that his wife had the measure of me.
And yet a week ago, I’d been standing right there on the deck when something had happened.
I was watching Amy through the glass doors as she chopped vegetables and supervised a saucepan on the stove. I could smell simmering plum tomatoes and capers and oregano. It was only midafternoon, and there was enough light to appreciate both the view and the house’s good side. Instead of being in the office until after nine, my wife was at her kitchen counter happily making mud pies, and she remained appealing from both left and right and front and back, too. I’d even gotten an idea down that morning, and halfway believed I might produce another book about something or other. The spheres were in alignment, and nine-tenths of the world’s population would have traded places with me in a heartbeat.
Yet for a moment it was as if a cloud drifted across the world. At first I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. Then I realized I had no idea where I was. Not just the name of the town—I couldn’t even remember what state I was in. I couldn’t recall what had happened to me, or when, had no idea of how I’d gotten to this place and time. The house looked unfamiliar, the trees as if they’d been slipped into position when I wasn’t looking. The woman on the other side of the big window was a stranger to me, her movements foreign and unexpected.
Who was she? Why was she standing in there holding a knife? And why was she looking at it as if she couldn’t remember what it was for? The feeling was too pervasive to be described as panic, but I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I blinked, looking around, trying to lock into something tangible. It wasn’t a reaction to the newness of the environment. I’ve traveled a lot, and I’d been sick to death of L.A. I was tired because I hadn’t been sleeping well, but it wasn’t that either, or the usual shadows that came to haunt me. It was not about regrets or guilt. It wasn’t specific.
Everything was wrong. With everything.
Then the cloud passed. It was gone, just like that. Amy looked up and winked at me through the glass, unquestionably the woman I loved. I smiled back, turned to the mountains to finish my smoke. The forest looked the way I had come to expect. Everything was okay again.
Dinner was good, and I listened while Amy went over the structure of her new job. She’s in advertising. Maybe you’re familiar with it. It’s a profession that seeks to make people spend money so that folks they don’t know can buy an even bigger house. In this way it’s somewhat like organized crime, except the hours are longer. I said this to Amy once, suggesting they should tell clients to dispense with ads and demographics and encourage people to buy their wares through direct threats against their person and/or property. She asked me never to say this in front of her colleagues in case they took it seriously.
The revised basis of her employment was important to us because her new position as roving creative director across her company’s empire—with offices in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and back down in L.A.—was what had enabled us to get out of L.A. It was a big change for her, a California girl born and bred, who’d liked being close to the family who still lived in the city where she was born. She had painted her willingness to move as related to the sizable hike in salary, but she’d never really been obsessed with money. I believed instead that she’d done it mainly for my sake, to let me get out of the city, and over dessert I told her I was grateful.
She rolled her eyes and told me not to be a dork, but she accepted the kiss I offered in thanks. And the ones that came afterward.
When I’d finished my cigarette, I pulled the phone out of my pocket to check the time. It was half past eleven. Amy’s job involved many client dinners, especially now, and it was possible she hadn’t even gotten back to her hotel yet. I knew she’d pick up her messages as soon as she could. But I hadn’t heard from her all day, and at that moment I really wanted to.
I was about to try her number again when the phone chirped into life on its own. The words AMY’S CELL popped up on the screen. I smiled, pleased at the coincidence, and put the phone up to my ear.
“Hey,” I said. “Busy, busy?”
But the person on the other end was not my wife.
chapter
FIVE
“Who is this, please?”
The voice was male, rough, loud. Coming from Amy’s number, it was about as wrong as could be.
“It’s Jack,” I said. It sounded dumb. “Who—”
“Is this home?”
“What? Who are you?”
The voice said something that might have been a name but sounded more like a random collection of syllables.
“What?” I repeated. He said it again. Could have been Polish, Russian, Martian. Could have been a coughing fit. There was a lot of noise in the background. Traffic, presumably.
“Is this home?” he barked again.
“What do you mean? What are you doing with—”
The guy had one question, and he was going to keep asking it. “This is number says ‘Home’?”
A light went on in my head. “Yes,” I said, finally getting what he was driving at. “This is the number listed as ‘Home.’ It’s my wife’s phone. But where’s—”
“Find in cab,” the man said.
“Okay. I understand. When did you find it?”
“Fifteen minutes. I call when I get good signal. Phones here not always so good.”
“It belongs to a woman,” I said, loudly and clearly. “Short blond hair, probably wearing a business suit. Have you just driven someone like that?”
“All day,” he said. “All day women like this.”
“This evening?”
“Maybe. Is she there, please? I speak her?”
“No, I’m not in Seattle,” I said. “She is, and you are, but I am not.”
“Oh, okay. So…I don’t know. What you want me?”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Stay on the line.”
I quickly walked downstairs and into Amy’s study. Stuck dead center to the flat screen of her computer was a Post-it note with a hotel name written on it. The Malo, that was it.
All I could hear through the phone was a distant siren. I waited for it to fade.
“The Hotel Malo,” I said. “Do you know it?”
“Of course,” he said. “Downtown.”
“Can you take it there? Can you take the phone to the hotel and hand it in at reception?”
“Is long way,” the man said.
“I’m sure. But take it to reception and get them to call the lady down. Her name is Amy Whalen. You got that?”
