This history is not a tragedy, despite its gore and its finale, and neither is it a comedy, although there is something funny, Gwen knew, about a lifeboat drifting in a bay, the prevailing current immune to whatever thrashings they gave it with their planks. At the time the story takes place, it likely would have been classified as a human interest story, on the grounds that humans would be interested in it. Phil Needle imagined pitching his morning, the story of what he decided to wear when he rose, foggy and thirsty, to plead for his daughter’s return on the radio. He wavered between shaving and not shaving, torn between looking presentable and authentically panicked, and in the time he spent wavering at the mirror he lost the time to shave. He let himself out and took to the streets in his rented car. (His real vehicle was still in short-term parking and would soon be chained to a yellow truck and dragged through the streets to the city’s municipal vaults, joining his wife’s towed car, for ransom.)
KUSA was in a transitory part of town, where Marina met Old Mason, on the edges of a vast park that once had been a military base and was, at the time this story takes place, something else. Highway 101 veered nearby, and to the north was the beach where people took their dogs, and a harbor where small yachts, including at one time (though never again)
Outside the Box
, awaited their well-fed owners. The offices were located in a small complex of shady buildings with a cart outside selling strong coffee. Phil Needle had never been to KUSA and had plotted his route out on his device. It got him there a little early, but he did not get himself a coffee. It would look unseemly to arrive, a stricken father, with a paper cup, steaming and foamy on the top. He bystanded for a minute or two, watching nothing in the fog, and then just went inside, up two flights of stairs to a glass door with the call letters,
KUSA
, stenciled on them, a kind of door Phil Needle longed to have for Phil Needle Productions. He had missed the elevator, or there wasn’t one. He tried the door and then made a face to the girl at the desk and the door buzzed and he tried it again and walked in.
“I’m—”
“Yes, Phil Needle, we’ve been expecting you.”
“I know it’s not eight yet.”
“Yes, well, we were expecting you at seven thirty.”
“What?”
“We were expecting—”
“Allan told me eight.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. You’re here.”
“But I could have been here—”
“Yes, well, let me get our producer. We’ve moved from morning news to the zoo hour, so it’s a little—it doesn’t matter. We’re happy to help, of course. We were, I was so sorry to hear, I should have said first thing.”
“Thank you.”
“Is there anything—do you want coffee?”
“No, actually yes, thank you.”
She left. Her name was Ellen, said the thing on the desk, but then came a woman Phil Needle did not want to see.
“Phil.”
“Um, wow.”
“
Wow
what?”
“I didn’t know you worked here.”
“The guys didn’t tell you?” she said. “Dr. Croc got me this job.”
“Really?”
“He’s been kind of a mentor to me,” she said. “A resource. Phil, I’m so sorry to hear about your daughter.”
Dear Renée, I have nothing to say to you at this time.
“We have a slot for you to talk live, Phil, and we’ll record it and replay your message on the hour. We’ll give our toll-free number at the end and relay any messages to you, of course, and to the police. Are you interested in a reward?”
“What? Gwen.”
“
Offering
a reward, I mean,” Renée said, and clicked her pen—
off on off on off on
—in a way Phil Needle had forgotten about and was annoyed by again. “The police always say it isn’t worth it for the crazies it attracts, but I don’t know if you know that we found Casey Rittola last year.”
“Who? Yes. No.”
“The reward helped. So maybe you want to.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” Phil Needle said from nowhere, and took a cup of coffee from the other girl. It would surely be possible to get such a sum.
(Alma Levine was standing in her apartment, staring at that exact sum laid out on the bed while a man made tea in her kitchen.)
“Good, and there’s just one more thing. A song?”
“What?”
“If Gwen had a favorite song, something we could tie it to. I mean, if she doesn’t or you don’t know, okay, but if it were something, I know it sounds awful, that KUSA might play. We can cross-pollinate this way.”
“You’re a good producer,” Phil Needle said, as slowly as he realized it. “That’s—that’s a smart idea.”
“I’ve had good teachers.”
Off on off on off on off on.
She hadn’t meant
him
, of course.
“I am sorry I fired you, Renée.”
“I
quit
,” Renée reminded him gently, “a long time ago. Do you have a—”
“The Tortuga song, she loves that.” He remembered suddenly, slowly, the tickets to the show. Of
course
that was where she went. Call the police. After his broadcast. He would write this down so he wouldn’t forget, on his hand, except his hand was holding a cup of coffee.
“Which one?”
“The one she likes, I don’t know. Thump thump thump.”
“I think I know what you mean,” she said. She leaned forward at an odd angle, like she was about to sip from Phil Needle’s cup. “We’re going to find her.”
“Okay,” he said. The radio started playing a commercial for back-to-school supplies.
“I hear you were at RADIO when you found out.”
“Yes.”
“How was it this year?”
“Failure,” Phil Needle said, because why not say such a thing?
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “You’re a good producer, too.”
Phil Needle didn’t believe that either. “I should have been home with her,” he said.
“Nonsense,” she said. “I have three myself. They always say that rabbits are the most powerful influence on children’s lives, but once they hit teenager it’s their friends.”
Parents
, was what she said. “Okay,” he said.
“I’m going to put you in the booth,” she said. “You’ll have a few minutes to collect yourself. There’s paper there if you haven’t written it down.”
“What?”
Renée put her hand on his hand on the coffee. “What you’re going to say,” she said. “Have some more coffee, Phil.”
Phil Needle sipped gratefully as he was led. Coffee and
food
, was really what he wanted. If she were gone forever, he would never be able to put honey on toast again without thinking of her stomping down the stairs—he would have to sell the condo—to grab it every morning. It was always the same, Gwen thought. He always put on too much butter, and too much honey. She was hungry, but not hungry enough to be homesick.
“What do we have to eat?”
“Not yet,” Amber said. “It’s only been, like, an hour.”
“The wench is right,” Errol said. “Let’s not eat our seed corn.”
Gwen did not know what seed corn was. She splashed another oar. It did not seem that anything they did had any bearing on where they were going, but through the fog she felt the fuzzy warmth and glare of the sun, almost right behind them. They were going west, at least. All progress was incremental. It seemed to Gwen, from the occasional noise to her left—portside—that they might be too close to shore, but it was too foggy to tell. Off the starboard side, there was a shadow that might have been Alcatraz, trailing them like a detective, and here and there the bottom of the Golden Gate Bridge would peek out from the shifting walls of fog, as if it were on a flickering screen. Gwen thought of the cameras in the drugstore and felt caught again. Was it really possible they could make it to the bridge? And then, and then?
“It’s open,” Errol said. He scratched again at the dirty bandage Gwen had fashioned. They would raid another yacht, Gwen thought, maybe two miles from the harbor, and conscript a doctor into service. He would have supplies with him, and would be handsome and ruthless. “I’m too warm, help me get this off me.”
“What’s open?” she asked him instead.
“That,” he said, pointing just off the bow.
“The sea?”
“Sure, the open sea.” He coughed once but did not take his eyes off the surface. The oars rippled the water. “I know you,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You’re my—my—my—”
“Yes.”
“You’re my grommet.”
“And you’re my captain,” Gwen said soothingly. “My old sea dog.”
Errol smiled, with a sad shrug. Gwen watched him look at his watch. It was still, to him, probably two thirty, to everyone else maybe eight
a.m
. The bridge rippled closer, and Gwen wondered if there were people up there, if anyone would be looking down at them as they headed out for their exodus. “This is our last chance to send a message home,” she said.
“Message in a bottle,” Amber said, “if we have another ginger ale quick. I could forge it. It could be from anybody.”
“I’d want to write it myself,” Gwen said.
“You’re thinking about Nathan Glasserman.”
“Am not.”
“
Verily.
”
“Verily
not.
Well, not
just.
”
“Your parents.”
“They used to take walks across the bridge sometimes. We all did. So I was just thinking.”
“What would you write them?”
“They’re worried, I guess.”
Amber smiled. “
And
?
”
“
And
,” Gwen said, “I’m never going to see them again,” although this didn’t feel true. Somehow, no matter what happened at sea, surely she would live to scowl at her parents once more.
“So what would you say?” Amber asked.
Gwen tried to think.
“
I
would say, ‘Fuck you for not making me learn how to swim,
’
” Amber said.
“You can’t swim?”
“I told you.”
“I don’t think so.” Gwen could not picture not swimming. What could that look like, just falling in the water, straight down?
“Yes,” Amber said. “Maybe you didn’t hear.”
“Like when I said about Nathan,” Gwen said, “instead of his brother.” They smiled unhappily at each other, and then Gwen leaned over and kissed Amber on the mouth, something she’d wanted to do. It was romantic, but it didn’t last forever. “So if you fall,” she said at last, pretending it was a normal world, “overboard, I mean—”
“Throw me a rope,” Amber said quickly. “We still have rope, I think.”
“I can’t swim either,” Errol said. “Never learned.”
“In the
Navy
?”
“Two tugs on the rope means pull me in,” Errol said. Gwen moved the rope out of his reach.
“How about, no matter how many times I pull on the rope, pull me in?” Amber said.
“Definitely,” Gwen said.
“When that time comes,” Amber said. “Swimming won’t help, right?”
“I don’t know,” Gwen said. She didn’t want to talk about it,
that time
. She rested her plank for a minute and turned on the radio. A beat emerged, familiar and angry.
“Cool,” Amber said, leaning into the speaker. There was a foam cover over the microphone, yellowish and dusty like a dead parrot, and the glass walls of the KUSA booth hadn’t been cleaned. Why had it come to this? There was a way it had gone, and now the way, Phil Needle saw, was this bad booth, wrong. How was he to know, when he should show up, how he could do better? It wasn’t as if he had heard a voice, telling him the right thing to do, that he had ignored. He put on his headphones.
“Phil, will you say something into the mic? We need to check levels.”
“Check levels,” he said.
“Keep talking,” Renée said. “You know the drill. You’re a radio person.”
“I’m a radio person,” he said dumbly.
“Are you okay, Phil? I mean, considering?”
“Yes,” Phil Needle said, and then he considered. “Yes.”
“Do you need more time?”
“Yes. No. No.”
“Okay, stand by.”
“Standing by,” Phil Needle said.
“The commercial’s winding up. I’ll tell you when to start talking.”
Phil Needle tried to think.
The commercial wound up. They were already at it with back-to-school, when it was July—no, June still.
Leave us alone
, Gwen thought,
why don’t you all leave us alone?
Her angry fingers moved the dial and then she fell back in surprise, dropping her plank into the water. It did not float but drifted straight down, a ghostly rectangle fading quickly to the water’s gray. It was the voice on the radio that had startled her. It was the voice of her father.