I gripped the receiver. For a second, when he answered, I just pressed the plastic hard against my ear. I was so overcome with thankfulness that (a) he existed, and (b) he was nearby, and (c) he actually picked up.

Hi, I said. It’s Rose. Edelstein, I added.

Rose, he said. I know your voice. Come on. I’m really glad you called. Listen-

George, I said. It’s not about today.

I handled it awkwardly, he said. I just; I mean-

George, I said, louder.

He must’ve heard the jangle in my voice, because he stopped.

What? he said. What is it? Is Joe okay?

I stared through the window of the next-door liquor store, past the low shelves of candy bars to the clerk standing behind the counter. He had wavy black hair, and was resting on the expensive glowing bottles at his back, reading a Forbes.

Can you come out? I said. I’m at the Jons.

Where?

On Vermont, I said.

Is he okay?

I didn’t answer. My throat had filled.

I don’t know, I said, after a minute. I’ll call my dad too. I’m at the Jons, I said again, watching as the clerk rubbed his eye and turned a page of his magazine, folding and tucking it behind the others.

Did he disappear again? George asked.

Yes, I said, low.

The grocery store door slid open and a couple in their twenties exited, in biker gear, his arm looped around her waist. She was stirring her straw around the bottom of a slushie.

George made a hmm sound, into the phone. Then he said not to worry, we’d been through this before, it would be all right, and that he’d be over right away.

Half an hour, okay? he said.

What’s wrong? I heard a woman’s voice ask him, from the background corners of his room.

I’ll be here, I said, dimly. In the phone booth, I said. Like Superman.

Then I called my mother and left a message on the workshop machine telling her to come home, and I called my father and spoke with his secretary. Is he there? I asked. It’s about my brother. Tell him to call his daughter, I said.

He’s almost done for the day, she said. Are you home?

No, I said. I’m at the grocery store. I peered at the pay phone’s number, written in faint pen by someone’s hand on a thin strip of rectangular paper, attached under glass to the chrome body of the phone. It was a dinosaur, this phone. Everything about it, including the fragile shaky pen markings of a human hand, seemed destined for extinction.

Just tell him to come to Bedford Gardens, I said. He’ll understand.

Then I hung up, and swiveled my body to face the parking lot, waiting.

To see someone you love, in a bad setting, is one of the great barometers of gratitude. Pasadena is twenty minutes east of Los Feliz, more with traffic, more on Fridays, and the parking lot of the Jons filled and emptied about five more times before George arrived, each car spilling out stranger after stranger with a need for groceries. A willowy woman with long gray hair. A compact man in a three-piece blue suit. A shaggy guy with tons of piercings. All wrong. With every unfamiliarly shaped person that drove up, my jitteriness increased. I wanted, desperately, to match up my memory with the parking lot’s contents, and every new combination of nose, eyes, and mouth that stepped out was an affront to that hunger. If I’d even seen a neighbor, or my old flute teacher, or the lady who sold us bread at the bakery, I would’ve run out of the booth and hugged them. It’s me, Rose, Rose, I would say. Rose.

I sat very still, in my glass booth. Hands folded in my lap. A mildew smell drifted over from the yellowing pages of the phone book. When, finally, George drove up in an old gray VW Bug, his hair matted, glasses on, stubble on his cheeks, wearing old jeans and sandals and a T-shirt, at first I just watched him park, putting on the parking brake, opening the door, and I let the relief wash over me, because I knew how he was supposed to look and there he was, real, looking exactly like that.

Hey, I said, standing, waving from the phone booth. He walked over with a stride of seriousness. We hugged. This, the gift of the steelworkers and the wire operators who had installed the poles that crossed the city. He smelled of fresh-cut apples, and sureness, and my head rested into the nook of his neck. After a minute, he pulled back, hands grasping my shoulders, and asked me what happened. I didn’t know how to answer, so I just said that my dad was on the way and Joseph had vanished-that I’d seen him and he seemed off and I’d gone for the phone to make a call and ten seconds later, when I’d returned, he was gone. George nodded, listening. We left his car parked in the lot and exited the store area to walk over to the apartment building. When the light at Vermont turned green, we stepped into the street and George grabbed my hand and the ghosts of our younger selves crossed with us.

31

By the time we arrived at the front entrance of Bedford Gardens, my father was angling his car into a narrow parallel spot on the street. His office wasn’t far, and it was past the worst traffic time now, so he’d just taken Sunset west as soon as his secretary passed along the message. Once the car was set evenly between bumpers, he unfolded himself out of it, in his usual lawyer suit, navy blue with faint gray stripes, and that black-and-gray hair, as imposing as ever. He wiped his forehead down as if to pat his thinking into place, nodded a hello to George and then came up and hugged me tightly, closer than usual, his hands broad paddles on my back.

It’ll be okay, he said, when he saw my face.

Gone, I said, stupidly.

He peered up the stairs, into Bedford Gardens. From street level, all the lights in the building seemed to be out.

He’s not there, I said.

How about this, said Dad, patting for his wallet. Let’s grab some food first. And you can tell us what you know. We’ve been through this before. Beth said you sounded awful on the phone, he said. He looked at me closely, eyebrows low. You don’t look great, he said. Did he hurt himself? he asked.

No, I said. No blood.

Drugs?

No drugs, I said.

But my voice was so quiet and faltering that I walked shoulder to shoulder between the two of them, up the blocks, as if they were bodyguards protecting me from the elements of street and store. I was still wearing the same T-shirt and jeans I had worn to school, and I had no sweater, so, halfway up the walk, my father took off his suit jacket and handed it over without a word.

We passed diners, and book buyers, and smokers, and moviegoers.

At the doorway of a French cafe near Franklin, we turned as a trio and entered. It was a small place with an uninviting stone facade, but inside, the room was warmly lit, with deep-red walls and a dangling gilded dimmed chandelier and menus so tall I could hide my head behind them. At the back counter, several people wound around stools sipping from half-glasses of wine for the weekend wine-tasting, as advertised on the large chalkboard over the bar. The three of us settled into a booth.

Sit, Dad said. He got up and spoke to a waiter, who brought us each a glass of water. Dad pushed his over to me. Drink, he said. George waited, hands folded, across the booth. It was as if the two of them had decided telepathically not to ask me anything until we were settled. Dad returned to the waiter and whispered more. He strode back and forth between the two sides of the room with ease. I admired that stride; it was like he folded space in two with it. I rarely saw him so focused on a task like this: this father of the checklists and the special skill, the one who had made the stool, so many years ago.

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