Day Eighty-Six #2
Lally closed the video file. Maybe she would return to watch the rest of it some other time, but that was enough for tonight.
Instead, she opened her bag and retrieved the Missing flyers she had taken from her meeting with Harlan, which she had neatly folded in half before placing them in a side pocket.
She smoothed them on the duvet, which was itchy on her bare legs, hoping against hope that hers was not one of the rooms featured in her former friend’s side hustle.
She studied the three faces. Harlan was right.
One person missing was sad, three (four including Norman) meant something was up.
She zeroed in on the poster with the kindest face, a young man with skin darker than hers.
He had piercing brown eyes, and a smile that was perfect precisely because it was crooked.
In the photo he looked…happy. Unlike someone Lally imagined would run away—he resembled Norman in that regard.
The telephone number on the flyer was for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office.
She did not want to involve the cops—she wasn’t even certain anything was wrong.
But underneath that, in faint pencil, a second number was handwritten.
Lally glanced at the clock. It was just after eight in California, late, but not too late to call.
But should she? Yes, she figured. Yes, perhaps she should.
As always, it took a woman to get things done.
Lally checked the tub again, then ran the faucet for a minute to see if that would get the water to recede.
She considered reaching her hand in to see if something was blocking the drain, but the thought of touching a wet clump of someone else’s hair stopped her cold.
She called the front desk but hung up before anyone could answer; really she just wanted to hide.
There probably wasn’t a maintenance person on call at this time of night anyway, the solution most likely meant switching rooms, and she couldn’t bear to speak to the manager again, let alone get back in her clothes.
She thought about calling Jesse directly, bypassing Harlan to see if there was additional news.
Instead, she picked up her cell phone and slowly, carefully, deliberately dialed the number in pencil on the flyer.
Lally didn’t expect anyone to actually answer; in fact, she was downright surprised when a woman did.
Exhausted as she was, just the sound of an outgoing call was comforting and she would have been happy to listen to the soft purr of the telephone’s ring until sleep ultimately came.
Startled, she blurted that she didn’t have any information about the person on the flyer—she didn’t want to dish out false hope, but wondered if there was someone she could speak to about the man in the poster.
“You could speak to me,” the voice replied; the woman sounded almost as tired as Lally felt.
Given that the flyer was sun-faded and the paper weathered, the woman was more likely than not as surprised to hear Lally’s voice as Lally was to hear hers, which was shaky, but with a certain resolve.
Either her loved one had come home, or the case had long grown cold.
Lally wondered how many cranks she had been forced to talk to when the poster was new, lookie-loos determined to pry.
“I’m so sorry to bother you, it’s just I have no one to talk to. No one, that is, who would understand.” Lally took a deep breath, needed her diaphragm to expel the words. “I think my brother is missing.”
There was a long silence during which Lally regretted many things. Not waiting for the front desk to answer for instance, not being in a new room in a hot shower. A shuffling sound on the other end of the receiver got her attention. She hoped the woman wasn’t about to hang up.
“Where does he live, dear?”
Relief. “My brother? Joshua Tree.”
“My River lived in Twentynine Palms.”
Lally wondered who counted the palms. (The same people who did Thousand Oaks?
Certainly for an arborist that was a worse assignment.) And if there were indeed twenty-nine.
What happened when one died, or a new one sprouted?
Did the town reincorporate as Thirty Palms?
Thirty-One? Of course, she couldn’t say any of that without sounding like a lunatic, so instead she said simply, “That’s close. ”
“How long has he been gone?”
Lally didn’t know exactly. “Two months? Maybe more. Longer since the last time I heard from him.”
There was an awkward moment of silence where Lally now was tempted to hang up. “You did the right thing calling me, dear.”
Lally was so relieved she wasn’t bothering this woman, she burst into tears. Or maybe it had nothing to do with this woman. Maybe she had been holding so much inside her, a simple act of kindness was all it took to make the dam burst. Instead of scaring the woman, it drew her in closer.
In barely a whisper Lally asked, “Would it be possible for us to meet?”
Once they had made concrete plans for a visit and said their good-nights, Lally surveyed the stagnant water in the tub one last time to assess her options for cleaning herself before bed; the prognosis was dim.
There was no avoiding her uniform; she would have to put it back on to switch rooms. She lowered the robe in the hotel mirror and imagined how different her life would be if she were a mother, how different her body would be if she had carried a child.
She had always been thin, something that was often thought of as desirable.
But thin isn’t strong, and she yearned for a body that was up for new hardships.
“Do you know what’s going on?” Lally had asked the woman before they ended their call. She hinted at the other flyers that were posted in the vicinity. It was too much of a coincidence. There had to be some meaning behind it all.
The woman was firm. “No, dear, I do not.”
It was a question she could ask again as she stared at herself in the mirror.
“Do you know what’s going on?” She was aging, for one.
Bodies. So unremarkably mortal. She didn’t mind getting older.
She didn’t much fear dying. You make peace with that when you choose a life in the sky.
It would be different if she had a child, but now, on her own as she was, living forever seemed like a chore.
She just wished she believed more strongly that she’d be reunited with Robbie.
Or Norman, if that was the case. There had to be more to life than running all the time from it.
When she crawled into bed she sent an email to her supervisor.
Unwilling to give her notice just yet (nothing so final should be done on a whim or when this exhausted), she put in for a few days off to give her time to think and get her priorities straight.
Only after she hit send did she realize it read I hope this email finds you in a well.