On the street, I try again to return your call, but there’s just the recorded message: I’m sorry. The person you have reached has not set up a mailbox. Strange.
Your place is not far. It’s probably faster to hoof it than get a cab and crawl through traffic. Anyway, the walk will calm me, clear my head.
The city can be a kind of forest; you can bathe in its sounds if you let yourself go quiet inside. The horns and voices, the rumble of the subway under your feet, there’s a kind of rhythm to it, a peaceful disharmony. There’s a stream, and if you enter it, it carries you—lights changing from don’t walk to walk, people clearing a path. I enter the stream, and it only takes me twenty minutes to walk from the East Village to your place in Chelsea.
By the time I reach your building, I am sure there’s a simple explanation for why you’ve stood me up after I revealed the darkest thing about me. After I whispered it to you in the dark, and you held me. I’m so sorry, you said over and over. And I felt seen, heard, understood.
The clean white entryway to your building has no doorman, just a slick monitor and intercom. Twelve B, the only buzzer without a name beside it, is stiff and white under my finger.
Why should strangers know who lives in 12 B? Just another way people neglect their security, you said.
That’s your job. Security. Selling security systems to companies and individuals. You install cameras and silent alarms, motion detectors. You educate about cybersecurity, set up firewalls, encrypted websites. You’ve told me about the way con artists, criminals, and hackers can worm their way into systems to steal, to sabotage, to subvert. You’re passionate about it. I like people who are passionate about their work. It was one of the first things I liked about you.
No answer. I press the buzzer again.
Finally, “Hello?”
I am taken aback by a female voice, young, cautious. Now, her face swims on the screen. She’s pretty with dark skin and ringlet curls. For a moment I can’t find my voice. Who is she?
“Is—Adam there?” I ask, my throat dry.
She shakes her head. “There’s no one here by that name. Sorry.”
I hear a child’s voice. “Mommy, who is it?” She moves off camera and when she returns, she’s holding a small child—a boy in a red shirt—who reaches out with a chubby hand to the camera, blocking the image with his palm. There’s a caged bird in my chest, wings flapping in panic. Who is this woman? This child?
I clear my throat, collect myself.
“This place belongs to—a friend of mine,” I say. “Is he there?”
I check the buzzer again. This is the right place. I’ve been here twice—once for dinner. Once I spent the night.
After that, we were mainly at my place. In fact, I haven’t been here in months. Your place—it’s cold. I tick back to my time here with you. Couches stiff, bed too hard. No food in the fridge. Your clothes hung like soldiers, filed and pressed, ready to go into battle. No pictures. Even your bathroom—a single deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste, floss. One bar of soap in the shower. Certainly no sign of another woman, a family.
“Is he there?” I ask again when the toddler moves his hand away.
“No,” she says. She’s seems like a nice person, a mom type with a patient voice and understanding eyes. “Oh, this is just a vacation rental. I am here with my family this week. Sorry.”
I don’t know what to say. It’s clear by her wide-open expression that she’s telling the truth, or she’s a very accomplished liar—which most people are not. Again, I glance at the doorway, the buzzer, the intercom. It’s the right place, the place we were together. I’m sure of it.
“Thank you.” Because what else is there to say?
“Good luck finding your friend,” she says, and the screen goes black.
A glance at my phone reveals that there are no more calls, no answer when I try your number again. Another text:
I’m sure there’s a good reason that you stood me up. Call me. I’m not—worried or anything. Not freaking out. At all.
No little dots pulse, telling me that you’re about to answer. Of course, you’ve disabled the read-receipt option on your messages. So, I don’t know if you’ve gotten my message. I feel the throb of unhappiness, such a familiar emotion. The helplessness of a lost connection. People only stay in your life if they want to. So often, they just go away. And there’s really nothing you can do.
I stand helpless on the street, ticking through my options. Wait and see if you show up here? No. Try you again? No. Another call to you and I’ve veered into hysteria. You’ve stood me up. There’s a woman and child in the apartment I thought was yours. It occurs to me, in just this moment, that we have no friends in common, no one that you know who is known to me, as well. There isn’t someone who I could casually call and say: Hey, have you seen Adam?