T
he Morningside campus
of Columbia University features a startlingly picturesque quad nestled between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue on the west and east and 114th Street and 120th Street south and north. You enter by College Walk on 116th Street, and suddenly, like something out of a wardrobe portal to Narnia, you are transported from the aging city, from the purely urban, from Manhattan at its most citified, to an idyllic campus of green and brick and domes and ivy. You feel protected in here, isolated, and maybe, for the four years you spend here as an undergraduate, that’s how it should be.
Esperanza had found a campus directory that told her Francesca Moore lived in a six-person suite in Ruggles Hall. It was seven
A
.M.
The quad was near silent. You needed a student ID to
enter the building, so Myron waited by the door. To blend in, he donned a baseball cap and carried an empty pizza box.
Myron Bolitar, Master of Disguise.
When one kid finally emerged, Myron grabbed the door before it closed. The kid, probably used to deliverymen coming at all hours, didn’t say a word.
Myron Bolitar, Master of Disguise, was inside.
The corridors were eerily quiet. Myron headed to the second floor and found the door to room 217. He’d come this early figuring that Francesca, like any college student, would still be asleep and thus he was sure to find her here and maybe even a little groggy. That might be a good thing. Catch her off guard and all that. Sure, he might disturb her roommates too, but he chalked that up to acceptable collateral damage.
Myron didn’t know what he hoped to find here, but stumbling around blind was a big part of his so-called investigations. You don’t so much painstakingly search for the needle in the haystack as haphazardly leap into various haystacks, barefoot and naked, and then flail wildly and hope that hey, ouch, there’s a needle.
Myron knocked on the door. Nothing. He knocked a little harder. More nothing. He put his hand on the knob and gave it a small turn. The door was unlocked. He debated just going in, but no, a strange adult entering the room of a college co-ed? Not a smart move. When he knocked again, the door finally opened.
“Mr. Bolitar?”
It wasn’t Francesca Moore. It was Clark Baldwin.
“Hey, Clark.”
Clark wore a T-shirt several sizes too large and checkered boxer shorts that even Myron’s dad would consider retro. His
face was pale, his eyes bloodshot. “What are you doing here?” he asked Myron.
“I could ask you the same question.”
“Uh, I go to school here. I live here.”
“Oh,” Myron said. “You and Francesca are roommates?”
“Suitemates, yeah.”
“I didn’t know.”
“No reason you should,” Clark said.
True that.
“There are six of us,” Clark continued, feeling the need to explain or perhaps get his bearings. “Three guys, three girls. It’s the twenty-first century. Co-ed dorms, co-ed rooms, transgender bathrooms, we got it all.”
“Can I come in?” Myron asked.
From behind him, a male voice said, “What’s going on, Clark?”
“Go back to sleep, Matt,” Clark said. “It’s nothing.”
Clark slipped outside into the corridor and closed the door behind him. “Why are you here?”
“I came to talk to Francesca,” Myron said.
Something crossed his face. “What about?”
“About the econ final,” Myron said. “I hear it’s going to be a bitch.”
Clark made a face. “That supposed to be funny?”
“Well, I admit it’s not one of my better lines but—”
“Mom said you and Cousin Win are trying to find Rhys.”
Myron nodded. “We are.”
“But Francesca doesn’t know anything about that.”
Myron spared him the flailing-in-a-haystack metaphor. “She may know more than she thinks she knows.”
Clark shook his head. “She would have told me,” he said.
Patience, Myron thought. If you’re standing in front of a haystack, flail in that one before you move on. Or something like that. In short, stay patient for now with Clark.
“You two must be pretty tight,” Myron said.
“Francesca is my best friend.”
“You grew up together?”
“Yes. But there’s a lot more to it than that.”
A door opened down the corridor. A boy stumbled out as only a college student waking up early can.
“She’s the only one who got it,” Clark continued. “You know what I mean?”
Myron did, but he said, “Pretend I don’t.”
“We were just kids. We were only in fifth grade.”
“I remember. Mr. Hixon’s class.”
“Dixon.”
“Right, sorry. Dixon. Go on.”
Clark swallowed and rubbed his chin. “So we’re just little kids. Francesca and I were friends, I guess, but we didn’t hang out or anything. You know what that age is like, right?”
Myron nodded. “Boys hung out with boys, girls with girls.”
“Right. But then everything . . . I mean, both our little brothers just”—Clark snapped his fingers—“vanished. Like that. Do you not get what that did to us?”
Myron wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical or not. The corridor had the stale stench of spilled beer and academic worry. There was a bulletin board overloaded with flyers, meetings for all kinds of groups and clubs, everything from badminton to belly dancing, from feminist thought to flute choir. There were clubs
with names Myron didn’t understand, like Orchesis or Gayaa or Taal, and what was the Venom Step Team?
“For a while, after your brother disappears, you stay home from school,” Clark said, his voice faraway. “I don’t remember how long anymore. Was it a week, a month? I can’t remember. But eventually you have to go back, and when you do, everyone looks at you like you’re some kind of alien. Your friends. Your teachers. Everyone. Then you go home from school, and it’s even worse. Your parents are falling apart. They’re extra clingy because now they’re scared of losing you too. So you come home and you try to escape to your room, but when you do, you walk right past his room. Every day. You move on—and yet you never move on. You try to forget, but that makes it worse. You try to get out from the shadow, but then you see your mother’s sad face and it knocks you back down again.”
Clark lowered his head.
And meanwhile, Myron thought, you’re just a kid.
Myron wasn’t sure it was the right move, but in the end, he put a hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Thank you,” Myron said.
“For what?”
“For sharing that. It must have been a nightmare.”
“It was,” Clark said, “but that’s my point. She made it better.”
“Francesca?”
Clark nodded. “I had someone who didn’t just
say
they got it. I had someone who understood completely.”
“Because she was going through the same thing.”
“Right.”
“And,” Myron said, “vice versa. She had someone too.”
“Yeah, I guess. You get it, right?”
A friendship bonded in tragedy—maybe the strongest kind of all. “Of course.”
“I came out to Francesca before anyone, even my parents, but of course, she already knew. We could talk about anything.”
“You were lucky to have her.”
“You have no idea, Mr. Bolitar.”
Myron took his time with the next question. “And now that her brother is back?”
Clark said nothing.
“Now that her brother is back and yours isn’t,” Myron continued. “Has your relationship changed?”
His voice was soft. “Francesca is not here.”
“Where is she?”
“Back home, I guess.”
“I thought you drove her in last night.”
“Who told you that?” he half snapped. Then: “Oh, right. Your nephew. He was at the house.”
Myron waited.
“See, there was a party at the DKA house. I know it sounds stupid, what with finding her brother and all. She’s been really confused lately. On edge. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she’s ecstatic. She couldn’t even let Patrick out of her sight. At first anyway. But now maybe it’s getting claustrophobic, you know what I mean?”
“Sure,” Myron said. “That’s natural.”
“So she texted me to come get her.”
“And you drove her there?”
“Yeah. We went to the party. It was a little out of control, but
nothing we hadn’t seen before. We drank. Maybe too much, I don’t know. Anyway, at some point, she started freaking out.”
“Freaking out how?”
“She started crying. I asked her what’s wrong. She just shook her head. I tried to comfort her. I took her outside, you know, to get a little fresh air. She just cried harder.”
“Did she say anything?”
“She just kept sobbing it wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair.”
“What wasn’t fair?”
Clark shrugged. “That she got her brother back and I didn’t.”
Silence. Then: “What did you say?”
“I told her I was happy for her. I told her that Patrick coming home was good news, that we can still find my brother too. But she just kept sobbing. Then she said she needed to see her brother. She just wanted to make sure it was real or something. Like maybe she dreamt Patrick was back. I get that, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“I used to have dreams like that all the time. Rhys would be home and it was like he was never gone or whatever. So I said I would drive her, but next thing I know an Uber pulled up. She got in and said she would call me soon.”
“Has she?”
“No. But it was only a few hours ago. I’m telling you, Mr. Bolitar. She doesn’t know anything.”
* * *
There was no point in heading
to the Moore house to question Francesca. Nancy or Hunter would just call a halt to it. Besides, Myron had other plans.
His dad was waiting in the yard when Myron pulled up. The two men headed out for breakfast at Eppes Essen, a “Jewish-style” (according to the brochure) deli and restaurant on the other side of town. Myron and Dad both ordered the same thing—Eppes’s famed Sloppy Joe sandwich. Many of you associate Sloppy Joes with that ground possible-meat thingie in school cafeterias. This was not that. Eppes Essen makes the authentic Sloppy Joes, momentous triple-decker sandwiches with rye bread, Russian dressing, coleslaw, and at least three meats—in this case, turkey, pastrami, corned beef.
Dad stared down at his plate and then nodded his appreciation. “If God made a sandwich.”
“That should be Eppes’s slogan,” Myron agreed.
They finished, paid the check, and drove to the high school just as the boys’ basketball team ran out for warm-ups. Mickey was in the middle of the pack. The home team was playing its archrival, Millburn High.
“Remember the game you had against them junior year?” Dad asked.
Myron smiled. “Oh yeah.” With Myron’s team up by only one point, Millburn had an easy fast-break layup to win it with two seconds remaining. The Millburn player cruised in, ready to score the game winner, when Myron, trailing the play, somehow leapt over the guy and pinned the ball onto the backboard as time ran out. The Millburn players screamed for goaltending—hard to tell if it was or wasn’t—but the ref didn’t make the call. To this day, if Myron ran across one of the Millburn guys who’d played in that game, they would still good-naturedly complain about that no-call.
Ah, basketball.
The gym had a healthy crowd for the rivalry. Some people pointed and whispered as Myron walked by. Welcome to Minor-League Local Celebrity. A few came over and said hello—old teachers, old neighbors, those guys in every town who hang out at games even when their kids aren’t playing anymore.
From near the foul line, Mickey spotted them and gave a quick wave. Dad—or in Mickey’s case, Grandpa—waved back. Dad started to make his way up the stands. He always took the back row. He didn’t want to be the center of attention. Dad never yelled, never called out, never “coached,” never rode referees, never moaned, never complained. He might clap. When he got really excited during a big game, when Myron would hit a big shot, he might say, “Nice pass, Bob,” or something like that, deflecting the praise. Dad never cheered for his own son. It simply wasn’t done.
“If I have to cheer for you to know I’m proud,” Dad once told Myron, “then I’m doing something wrong.”
Never one to miss a moment of nostalgia, Myron flashed back to those long-ago days when he would warm up on a court like this and look across the gym and watch his dad take the steps of the bleachers two at a time. Not today, of course. Today Dad’s movements were more hesitant and shuffle-like. He took frequent breaks. He grimaced and got out of breath. Myron put his hand out to help him, but his dad shook it off.
“I feel great,” he said. “It’s just the knee.”
But he didn’t look great. “Okay, Dad.”
They sat in the top row, just the two of them.
“I like it up here,” Dad said.
Myron nodded.
“Myron?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m fine.”
“I know.”
“Your mother and I are getting older; that’s all.”
And that’s the problem, Myron wanted to say. He got it—to everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn, the earth revolves, life cycles—but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
The horn buzzed. The players stopped warming up and headed to their benches. The guy on the microphone began, as every New Jersey high school basketball game must, by reading the state’s sportsmanship policy:
“‘There will be no tolerance for negative statements or actions between opposing players and coaches. This includes taunting, baiting, berating opponents, “trash-talking,” or actions which ridicule or cause embarrassment to them. Any verbal, written, or physical conduct related to race, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or religion shall not be tolerated, could subject the violator to ejection, and may result in penalties being assessed against your team. If such comments are heard, a penalty will be assessed immediately. We have been instructed not to issue warnings. It is your responsibility to remind your team of this policy.’”
“A necessary evil,” Dad said. Then, motioning to the spot where the fathers sat, he added, “It doesn’t stop those jackasses.”
Mickey’s short tenure at the high school had not been without controversy. He was back on the team, however unlikely that had seemed a few weeks back, but there were some residual bad feelings. Myron saw among those vocal dads his old nemesis and former high school teammate Eddie Taylor, now the chief of police in town. Taylor hadn’t seen Myron yet, but he glared hard at Mickey.