Thin Air

He was motionless. I waited. Finally he spoke. 'No. I can do that. We don't find her soon, I'll take time off,' he said. 'I know how to look.'

I nodded.

'What's her maiden name?' I said.

'St. Claire.'

'She got family somewhere?'

Belson turned and looked straight at me for the first time.

'I don't want to talk about it,' he said.

I nodded. Belson stared out at the people exercising in their variegated spandex. Sometimes I thought it was like golf; people did it so they could wear the clothes. But then I noticed that most people looked funny in the clothes and decided I was wrong. Or most of them knew themselves but slightly. The silence in Henry's office was stifling. I waited. Belson stared.

Finally, I said, 'You don't want to talk about it, Frank, and you don't want me to help you look, how come you came here and told me about it?'

He stared silently for another time, then he spoke without turning.

'Happened to you,' he said. 'Ten, twelve years ago.'

'Susan left for a while,' I said.

'She told you she was going.'

'She left a note,' I said.

Belson stared silently through the window. The exercisers were exercising, and the trainers were training, but I knew Belson wasn't looking at them. He wasn't looking at anything.

'She came back,' he said.

'So to speak,' I said. 'We worked it out.'

'Lisa didn't leave no note,' Belson said.

Anything I could think of to say about that was not encouraging.

'When I find her I'll ask her about that,' he said. He turned finally and looked straight at me. 'Thanks for your time,' he said and went out the office door.

It was dark when the van stopped. She could hear a radio playing somewhere and a dog barking. He got out of the car and came around and opened the van doors. She wriggled into a sitting position. The camera light was bright in her eyes. The camera whirred.

'Look at me, honey,' he said. 'We are home now… No, look this way… turn your head… come on, do not be such a tease.'

Behind him a short man appeared pushing a hand truck with a tarpaulin over his shoulder. The camera continued to whir.

'Just give me a minute… I want to get everything… you don't get it and then later you are sorry… wait until we have children, I'll be behind this camera all the time.'

The whirring stopped. 'Okay, Rico,' he said, 'take her up.'

With a buck knife, Rico cut the rope that anchored her to the floor of the van. He picked up her purse from the floor of the van and hung it over one handle of the hand truck. Then he pushed her flat and rolled her into the tarp. He heaved her onto the hand truck, strapped her to it, and wheeled her away. She could see nothing. The tarpaulin smelled of turpentine and mildew. She heard a door open and felt the hand truck begin to bump up some stairs. She jostled on it like a sack of potatoes. It was what she felt like, a helpless, inert, jostling sack of Lisa. The frame of the hand truck hurt her as it dug into her side. She couldn't complain. She couldn't speak. It was too much. She couldn't bear it. She could feel her breath slipping in and out, feel the sweat soaking her clothing, feel the saliva-soaked gag in her mouth. The hand truck bumped and then slid along smoothly and then began to bump again. She twisted futilely inside her canvas and tried to scream and couldn't.

Chapter 2

That night Susan and I were having an early supper at the East Coast Grill, where our waitress was an attractive blonde who sculpted during the daytime, and supported her habit by waiting tables. The cuisine at East Coast is barbecue, and no one who went there, except Susan, was able to eat wisely or drink in moderation. I made no attempt at either. I ordered spare ribs, beans, coleslaw, a side of watermelon, and extra corn bread, and drank some Rolling Rock beer while they cooked the ribs over the open wood-fired barbecue pit in the back. Susan had a margarita, no salt, while she waited for her tuna steak cooked rare, and a green salad. When the tuna came, she cut two thirds of it off, and put it aside on her bread plate.

'Susan,' I said. 'You have worked heavy labor all day. You are already in better shape than Dame Margot Fonteyn.'

'I should be. Margot Fonteyn is dead,' Susan said. 'We'll bring that home for Pearl. She likes fresh tuna.'

'Why not throw caution to the wind?' I said. 'Have salt with your margarita. Eat all of the tuna.'

'I threw caution to the wind when I took up with you,' she said.

'And wisely so,' I said. 'But why not give yourself a little leeway when you eat?'

'Shut up.'

'Ah ha,' I said. 'I hadn't considered that aspect of it.'