LITMIR.BIZ

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Lily couldn’t soothe her mother into a massage.

      And the next afternoon when she knocked on her mother’s door to ask her to come to the beach, Allison was lying down. “I’ve been to the beach. I don’t want to go anywhere.”

      “You haven’t been to the beach with me. Come.”

      “Leave me alone, will you?” said Allison. “You’re just like your father. Stop forcing me into your pointless regimens.”

      Lily went alone. How could she manage even another day?

      But it’s Hawaii, Hawaii! The rainforests, the volcanoes. What would she prefer, yesterday’s dinner conversation, or the beach by herself? The choice was so clear.

      And so it was the beach by herself, and lunch, and walks through the palms, and the sunsets, and the community pool at the condo.

      Days went by. Concentration drained out of Lily. She was unable to focus long enough to sketch. She kept rendering the same palms over and over. Charcoal was an insult to Hawaii, watercolors did not do justice to Hawaii, and oil paints she did not have, nor a canvas for them. All she had was her charcoal pencils and her sketchbook, and there was nothing to draw in Maui with charcoal except the inside of her mother’s colorless apartment and the numbers 1, 18, 24, 39, 45, 49.

      Andrew had not called to tell her how it was going with Papi. Amy had not called. She had not heard from Joshua.

      For hours during the day, Lily busied her mind with being blighted with the lottery ticket. Cursed.

      Simply, this is what she believed: she believed that the universe showed each of us certain things, that it made certain things open.

      Many people lived a peaceful life with nothing ever happening to them. But into some families other things fell. Some families were afflicted with random tragedies—car accidents, plane accidents, hang gliding accidents, bus crashes, knifings, drownings, scarves getting caught under the wheels of their Rolls Royces, breaking their necks. The lovely girl in the prom dress standing in the dance hall and suddenly a titanium steel pipe from above breaking, falling on her, impaling her through the skull on her prom night! The valedictorian high school graduate headed to Cornell, standing on the street corner in New York City, suddenly finding himself in the middle of a robbery. A stray bullet—the only bullet fired—hitting him, killing him. Lily was not worried about old age or hereditary illness, she was worried about portholes of the universe opening up and demons swallowing her.

      Lily believed that the portholes that allowed random tragedy to fall in were also the portholes that allowed lottery tickets to fall in. Out of control SUVs at state fairs. A sunspot in your eye, and wham, your child is dead. Plane crashes, ten-car collisions, freak lightning storms, fatal infections from a harmless day at the farm, and 1, 18, 24, 39, 45, 49. All from the same place. All leading to the same place—destruction.

      And Lily Quinn prided herself all her life on being exactly the kind of girl who’d never won a single thing. Her karma had been being not just an un-winner, but the anti-winner. In fact, she could be sure that if she picked it, it would never win. She couldn’t win so much as a pack of cigarettes on a free tour of the Philip Morris tobacco factory in North Carolina. She couldn’t win a no-homework weekend when there were only ten entrants and the professor picked three names. She didn’t win the short or the long straw. She didn’t get to lose and clean the toilet, or come up to the headmaster and ask for more gruel, any more than she got to win a prize at a baby shower contest. She played a game at her sister’s shower called, “How well do you know your sister?”—and came in third!

      49—for the year her mother and grandmother came to America.

      45—for the year of the end of the war that changed the world.

      39—for its beginning.

      24—for her age. Last year Lily played 23.

      18—Because it was her favorite number.

      1—because it was the loneliest number.

      She bought herself a lottery ticket every single week for six years, playing the numbers that meant something to her not because she had hope, but because she wanted to reaffirm the order of her quiet universe. Because she truly believed that the Force that let her numbers never be pulled out of a hat at Saturday night’s drawing was the same Force that did not place the titanium rod at her two feet of life.

      Unable to draw or read or focus, Lily concentrated all her efforts on getting a tan. In a secluded part of a small semi-circle of the local beach near Wailea, Lily took off her bikini halter and sunbathed topless, getting a very thorough tan indeed. After almost three weeks her breasts looked positively Brazilian and even her nipples got dark brown.

      In the first week of June, Lily was sitting outside on the patio, home from the beach, thinking about what to do for the rest of her day—for the day was so loooong—when the phone rang. The phone never rang! Lily was so excited, she nearly knocked over a chair getting to it.

      “Hello?” she said in an eager-lover voice.

      “Lilianne Quinn?” said an unfamiliar man’s baritone on the other end.

      “Yes?” she said, much more subdued, in a voice unfamiliar to herself.

      “This is Detective O’Malley of the NYPD. I’m calling about your roommate, Amy McFadden.”

      Excitement was instantly supplanted by something else—worry. “Yes? What’s happened?” From his tone, Lily thought Amy might have been in a car accident.

      “Have you heard from her?”

      “No.” She paused. “I’m here in Hawaii.”

      “Well, I know,” said the detective. “I’m calling you there, aren’t I?”

      That was true. “What’s happened?”

      “She seems to have disappeared.”

      “Oh.” Lily immediately calmed down. “Hmm. Have you checked with her mother?”

      “Her mother is the one who reported her missing, which is why I’m calling you. According to Jan McFadden, Amy hasn’t called home in three weeks. Their repeated attempts to reach her at the apartment have failed. Do you recall the last time you saw her?”

      “I don’t know,” Lily said, deflecting. “I’d have to think about it.”

      There was silence on the other end. “Are you thinking about it now?”

      “Detective, I don’t know. I’ve been here three weeks. I guess I saw her right before I left.”

      “When was that?”

      “I … I can’t remember now.” Dates had been singed out of her head by the Tropic of Cancer sun. “Can I think about it and call you back?”

      “Yes—but quickly.”

      “Or …” Something occurred to Lily. “Do you think I should come back? Is this something you need to speak to me about in person?”

      “I’m not sure. Is it?”

      “Yes, yes, I think I should come back. I’ll be able to give you much more detail.”

      “Well, I appreciate that, Miss Quinn. This seems quite serious.”

      Lily didn’t think so, but then this detective didn’t know Amy.

      “You need me to come back right away? The sooner the better?”

      “Well—”

      “Of course. This is an emergency. I’ll be glad to be of any help. I’ll fly back tonight. Is that soon enough?”

      “Yes, I think that will be fine. I apologize for having you leave Hawaii. You don’t really—”

      “No, no, I do. It’s really no problem. I want to help. Where do I go?”

      “Come

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