‘You were going to ask Savannah out for a drink,’ Logan reminded her.
‘I know,’ said Amy. ‘But she gives me the heebie-jeebies. She didn’t want to even let me in the door! It was like she was their carer.’ Logan had forgotten that you could never rely on Amy to stick to a plan.
‘To be fair, she does make excellent minestrone,’ Amy had said. ‘Simon and I had two bowls each.’
Simon, it transpired, was Amy’s flatmate, and for some unexplained reason he had been at their parents’ house too. Simon was going to help Amy do a ‘deep dive’ on Savannah.
‘A full-on background check,’ Amy told Logan. ‘Like the FBI would do.’
‘Right,’ said Logan.
‘Because he’s an accountant.’
‘How does that help?’ said Logan.
‘He’s very thorough,’ Amy said, and then she’d chuckled suggestively and Logan had hung up and called Brooke, who said not to waste any more time with Amy and that she herself had begun preparing a ‘dossier’ on Savannah weeks ago and she’d come back to Logan with some proper information soon. She said the word ‘dossier’ with a lot of satisfaction.
Troy hadn’t returned anyone’s calls and for all anyone knew might have been out of the country, so he was no help. In the meantime, their mother had taken Savannah shopping last week and bought her a whole new wardrobe, which was upsetting for Amy and Brooke, not because they wanted to go shopping with their mother – they couldn’t think of anything worse – but what with Savannah’s incessant baking and her tiny feet, the girl was clearly intent upon transforming herself into their mother’s ‘dream daughter’。
‘Let’s role-play some active and passive listening,’ said Logan to his class. He didn’t ask for volunteers. He chose Brian, an Irish automotive worker who had lost his job of thirty years when Holden closed its doors, and Jun, a bright, bubbly hairdresser who wanted her boss’s job because her boss was ‘a real b-i-t-c-h’。
‘Tell Jun a story, Brian,’ said Logan. ‘About anything. And, Jun, I want you to be a passive listener.’
Brian launched into a story about a grossly unfair parking ticket, which Jun found impossible to listen to passively, because she’d been booked at the exact same intersection near the college （so had Logan）。 Brian’s Irish accent became more pronounced the more excited and upset he became and Logan was reminded of Savannah’s similarly Irish-accented boyfriend, sitting up in bed, reaching for his spectacles, the terror on his face.
He stopped dead and banged the whiteboard marker against his palm.
The source of truth. Or at least another version of the truth.
He’d go talk to the little Irish fucker.
*
Later that afternoon Logan stood at the apartment building where Savannah had lived with her boyfriend. He remembered the apartment number because his birthday was on the twenty-fourth so he’d always had a fondness for the number.
‘Hello?’ said an Irish-accented voice.
‘Hello?’ Logan panicked. He hadn’t thought it through! But the man said instantly, impatiently, ‘Come on up. Second floor.’
The security buzzer went and in his relief, Logan pushed the glass door so hard it crashed against the wall with a bang.
When he got to the apartment he saw that the door had been propped open with a battered old sneaker.
Logan tentatively pushed open the door.
‘Hello?’
Nothing. He could hear music playing from somewhere inside. Norah Jones. It was like the guy was doing everything possible to make himself look benign.
Savannah had mentioned his name but Logan was struggling to remember it. Something bland and one syllable.
He looked at the abstract painting leaning against the wall. It was god-awful. Indira would love it. He remembered when he and Troy first came here, Savannah had said the boyfriend was the artist. He studied the signature. Did it possibly say David? Was that the bloke’s name? Dave? Dave.
‘Dave?’ he called out.
A voice called over the music, ‘Yeah! Thank you! Just leave it anywhere.’
He walked into the dining room. It was like walking onto a building site, albeit one with Norah Jones crooning from a speaker. A giant paint-stained tarpaulin protected the carpet. The unpacked removalist’s boxes had been stacked in a corner and the coffee table had been tipped on its side and propped up against the wall. Dave – he assumed his name was Dave – stood in front of a giant easel. He was in the process of squeezing paint from a tube onto a piece of cardboard he was using as a palette. He wore a mechanic’s blue boilersuit. There was a blob of paint on his glasses, another on his earlobe. The canvas he was working on featured swirls of queasy yellow similar to the colour of Logan’s kitchen. The mood in the apartment was industrious and joyful. This was someone completely lost in something they loved to do, and Logan found himself feeling envious. He’d once lost himself in tennis, and then only sex and television. Now there was only television left.