LITMIR.BIZ

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and—

      Lily felt so unbearably awkward she wanted magic powers that would let her fall through the sidewalk and down into the firepit of hell. On a Friday night she runs into Spencer, grins like an idiot, and now the smile is cemented on her face, and she doesn’t know where to look, and how in the devil’s name is he going to introduce her, a lumbering oaf—

      Spencer said, “Mary, this is Lilianne.”

      That’s all he said. Lily shook hands with Mary, who smiled politely, so well-mannered, so groomed, like a smart poodle.

      “Nice to see you,” said Lily, detaching herself. “Listen, gotta go, sorry,” waving and running into Dagostino’s to hide in the frozen food section. Oh, God!

      After an unreasonable time in the French Fries and the Lean Cuisines, she left the store, and meandered back home, so absent-minded she nearly walked through Tompkins Park.

      She was disgraced. She couldn’t think straight. She bumped into Spencer while by herself on a Friday night! What kind of a loser was she, roaming the streets of New York at midnight on a Friday? She was loser number six, that’s what kind, Amy knew six deadbeats, of which Lily was the last.

      But also … while alone on a Friday night, she accidentally and surprisingly—even to herself—felt joy at seeing Spencer, a familiar face, a familiar person, and less joy when she realized he was not alone.

      It was days later when Lily finally calmed down long enough to resign herself to the slight aching left by the memory of the female arm through his male arm. But not because … no, not at all because … it was nothing like that, he was too old and not her type, and she was too young and not his, obviously. She knew herself, she knew she was telling the truth—there was nothing untoward in her aching. It wasn’t because of him in the particular. It was seeing the warm female flesh through warm familiar male flesh—the companionship of coupledom that wounded Lily. They were all around her, she realized belatedly—on Friday nights, couples, arm in arm, walking through Greenwich Village in the summer, happy to be alive. And even Spencer, harassed, glum, overworked Spencer, who almost didn’t seem like he was a man, and yet, decidedly—a man! Not a detective, not a cop, not a professional, but a man, walking with a woman, who was touching him, and he was not objecting. That was the aching in Lily. The wanting of the wanting to feel. The envy and piercing sadness at the realization that someone, who she thought was her kindred spirit in this—who she also didn’t think felt—felt.

      Rachel, ever at the ready as a matchmaker, promptly fixed Lily up on three dates, crash and burn all. One barely spoke English, here from Morocco on a student visa wanting to become a professional basketball player—this at barely six feet tall. Even Lily had more sense.

      One was a senior management accountant with Deloit. He was thirty-one, short and square, but wore clothes that were too hip for him, and drove a flashy car and hung out in bars trying to pick up younger girls. He spent the entire dinner advising her to change her choice of future profession from “something in art” to something more sensible, and take a course to become middle management for a large brokerage firm. (“That’s where the money and the security is.”) Lily was surprised to find herself thinking how different Spencer seemed from this man, how sturdy and un-middle-aged, even though there was something slightly grave about Spencer, as if he walked around carrying the feeling that life had already passed him by.

      The last one was a mixed-race kid from Coney Island, who was adorable, but was obviously on drugs from beginning of the date to the end, and possibly went into the men’s room to take another hit of whatever he was on (coke? heroin?) during their dinner on bar stools at a cheesy Mexican take-out in Clinton Hill. He was disjointed and could not focus on anything she was saying, which admittedly wasn’t much. But was he ever cute!

      Lily asked Rachel not to set her up on any more dates. Rachel thought she was being too picky. “You’ve built a wall around yourself, a forcefield, and you’re not letting anyone near.”

      “Thank you, doctor.”

      “You can’t let Joshua have so much power over you, Lil.”

      “He doesn’t have any power over me,” Lily protested.

      But Paul, who had heard about their exchange, called the following day. “He has all the power. You gave it to him during your relationship, and you’re giving it to him still. Keep going out with the boys, be happy.”

      Lily had gone out with the boys, but how could she be happy?

      She felt something slipping away from her, but didn’t know how to fix it because she didn’t know what it was.

      Just to show what kind of power he had over her, Joshua called, hemmed and hawed, asked a few perfunctory questions, and then asked for his TV back. Apparently Dennis’s broke. He came over for five tongue-tied minutes and took his TV! He asked Lily to open the door for him, and she crossed her arms and refused.

      Paul stopped calling her Harlequin. She missed that. He stopped calling her as often. She missed that, too. He said he was busy, Rachel said she was busy—to think that Lily would care if Rachel was busy! But she did care, she did. Lily couldn’t help feeling a prickle of judgment coming from Paul and from Rachel, characterized by their uncharacteristic and displeasing aloofness—judging Lily for losing Amy and not knowing where she put her.

      Spencer told her the yearbook had proved to be a dead end: Paul could not recall a single one of Amy’s other friends, not even visually. He pointed to three that looked familiar, but upon being checked out, they all turned out to be alive and well, and teaching or mothering on Long Island. Amy’s mother was also drawing a blank. The rest of Amy’s friends she could not recall, but Paul she knew well. Amy’s friendship with Paul was really, really well corroborated.

      Chris Harkman remained behind the desk, plowing through Lily’s phone records. Despite thorough checking, Harkman could not find a smoking gun in the phone numbers. 90% of the calls were placed by Lily to her siblings and grandmother. In April, calls were placed to an upstate New York number. That damn Shona, still repeating like a bad taste in Lily’s mouth! Amy’s phone calls included ones placed to Paul, Rachel, Copa, to ask for shift switches, and that was all. Spencer said to Lily that Amy’s use of the phone seemed just like her ID on the dresser and her lack of mementoes from her two years on the road—all suspect because they were so circumspect. She was so careful, that Amy. “There is something I’m overlooking,” Spencer said. “I’m sure of it. I just don’t know what it is.” Amy left no clues behind because Amy meant to leave no clues behind. But did Amy mean to vaporize? Or was that the unplanned thing? One thing was certain: after May 14, and until Lily returned on June 4, there were no phone calls placed from the girls’ apartment. Wherever Amy was, she was no longer in the apartment after May 14.

      After being seen with a grown-up woman on his arm, Spencer turned professional with Lily, careful and circumspect himself. The two of them would stand at the precinct, or at Noho Star, chat for a few minutes about yearbooks and phone records, and then he would be on his way. He stopped coming around or calling nearly as often—maybe twice a week, Lily would hear from him, about Amy. She missed him a little bit, missed something calming about him, something supportive, and sensible, and true.

      New York, the city of dreams, the city of nightmares. New York for the poor, for the rich, for the homeless, for the multi-aboded, New York for the eight million people who roamed within. New York when it rained, they all went into the bookstores, and when the sun shone they sat on the grass in Central Park with their books. They complained that it was too noisy, too overpriced, too amphetamine-charged, too multicultural, too dusty. They all lived single in the great city, and when they got married and had children, many left. Lily’s friends, Erin and Michael, he a 24/7-admitted workaholic stockbroker for Shearson Lehman, moved out of New York when they had kids. They moved to New Jersey. They bought a high-rise apartment in the Palisades so Erin could look at New York whenever she wanted. He didn’t have to look, spending all his days there, in the World Financial Center, making millions, losing millions, clogging his arteries with stress and bad coffee.

      But

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