Absent Friends

When he's done, Vicky says, Tom, you saved Jack's life.

Tom says, Me and Jack would've both got squished if Jimmy wasn't so crazy, standing right there in front of the cars.

Jimmy just shakes his head. Jimmy's thinking about the way time stopped, Jimmy's thinking about the sizzling under his skin.

Marian looks at Jimmy and almost smiles, but then she looks at Sally. Sally's smiling, because Tom and Jack and Jimmy were very brave and went on a big adventure for her, just like three princes in a fairy tale. But it's a sad smile, because she still doesn't have Tiger back.

No one ever finds Tiger. Tiger's gone.

Four days after the trip across Hylan Boulevard (now legendary, and involving, in the telling, buses, convertibles, and a huge semi like the one Jimmy's dad used to drive before he married Jimmy's mom; no one mentions the cat) Markie, who hasn't crossed any big streets or gotten home late to dinner, comes to Sally's house with a box. The box has holes in the sides and on the top that Markie poked with a pencil. When he hands the box to Sally, she almost drops it because it sort of moves around by itself.

I'm sorry I couldn't find Tiger for you, Markie says. I tried and tried. I wanted to be the one who found him.

I know, says Sally. You looked very hard. It's okay.

Sally takes the top off the box, and there's a white kitten inside, all fuzzy, with big blue eyes looking up at her. It opens its mouth and makes a tiny peep, like a bird.

My aunt's cat had kittens, Markie tells Sally. She said it was okay to give you one.

Sally looks at Markie. She picks up the kitten, and it purrs and tries to crawl into the place where her elbow bends.

But, says Markie, but she didn't have any gray and black ones.

That's okay, says Sally. That's okay. She strokes the kitten and smiles at Markie and says to him, White's my favorite color.

And when Eddie Spano starts asking Sally out, Sally won't date him, but she says no in some kind of way that doesn't piss him off. The guys keep an eye on her, but they find out she doesn't need that. Everyone's impressed, but that's Sally, no one's ever pissed off at Sally, not even Eddie Spano. So Sally marries Markie, and they invite everyone to the wedding, including Eddie, and everyone comes.

Sally's happy.

LAURA'S STORY

Chapter 5

Secrets No One Knew

October 31, 2001

Laura was sitting at Harry's desk.

The big soft chair with a pattern like a Persian carpet was where she'd started. But when Laura was in the big chair, Harry was at his desk; that was how it had always been, since she had begun to take space in Harry's life, since she had made space for him in hers. Sitting there, Laura couldn't shake the feeling that Harry was about to walk out of the kitchen, the bedroom, the bathroom, to ruffle her hair, go over and pull up the creaky old desk chair, and sit down to his work. She couldn't concentrate, waiting for Harry.

Her other usual spot was Harry's bed. That was out of the question.

So she sat at Harry's desk, his few files piled neatly on the left side, notebooks on the right. Two pin-sharp pencils rested eraser to eraser against the ridge on Harry's keyboard. More than once, when his syncopated clicking stopped, Laura had looked over to see Harry picking up one of those pencils, bringing it toward the blue monitor screen as though to correct a mistake, a bad thought, in the white copy glowing there. The pencil would hover, Laura never sure if it was threatening the newer technology—behave, because there's still me—or reassuring it— I've got your back. Then he would drop the pencil into the ridge again and go on typing until he hit the next bump in the road.

Laura had always meant to ask Harry how the pencil and the screen felt about each other. Always meant to.

Soon she would have to start going through Harry's files, and the notebooks, and the computer, too, though she wasn't expecting much. Harry threw things out. This was a habit from his early days, the days his Pulitzers came from, three of them lined up on the wall, all a little crooked with vibration and neglect. “That one,” Harry had confided last spring, pointing an accusatory finger at the plaque in the middle, “is for a six-piece team story. Eight reporters. I wrote the fourth piece. It doesn't really count.” Laura had reached out and straightened the one that didn't count and then the others. She didn't think they'd been straightened since.

Those plaques had been won and hung years ago, before Harry had developed an intimate relationship with gin. In the newsroom Laura had seen young reporters lift their eyebrows, shrug as Harry stood at the shredder, feeding it page after page of notes for stories that would be lucky to see the inside of Section Two. She never knew if Harry saw the eyebrow-lifters, or if he cared, until the day her first front-page story ran—below the fold, but it was her first—and he had grabbed her, kissed her, and murmured romantically in her ear, “Now shred your notes.”

Laughing, giddy at her success, she reminded him that that sort of paranoia seemed to be out of fashion at the Tribune. Harry, one arm around her waist, had pointed to one of the eyebrow-lifters hard at work across the room. “That bozo,” he said mildly, speaking as if he and Laura were at the zoo and he knew an interesting fact about a creature, “doesn't shred his notes. That's all right; he'll never write anything worth a subpoena. You, my little oyster, will. Keep the quotes, to protect the Tribune's ass. Destroy all else.” He looked at her gravely. “The great and powerful Oz has spoken.”

Laura had spent the rest of that afternoon sorting and shredding her notes.