We spent the next hour going back and forth on our marriages. Sometimes it’s easier with a stranger, not someone close to you. And maybe it’s even easier to do it with someone who’s been a recent stranger, but whom you once loved more than any with whom you once were intimate.
Or maybe it’s none of that, and we just connect.
I would never have imagined having so much fun telling someone that my wife doesn’t love me anymore. But those two hours outside at Max’s Café felt like a life in itself, the birth of something, the promise of forever.
Corny, I know. But fuck it. Nobody else will read this journal. If I want to be corny, I will. Aren’t we all corny in our thoughts? Aren’t we corny with the ones we love? We’re just too afraid to say it to others for fear of embarrassment.
And then the kiss. Had it been up to me to initiate it, I’m not sure it ever would have happened. It was our goodbye after coffee （which turned into a piece of carrot cake, too）， two friends catching up and bidding adieu by your car.
You leaned up and kissed me softly. I wasn’t ready for it. I almost didn’t close my lips before you did it, which would have been awkward. Your lips lingered on mine just long enough to make sure there was no misunderstanding, this wasn’t a friendly peck, it wasn’t a platonic gesture, it wasn’t a “this was so much fun!” goodbye.
No. It wasn’t. My heart was hammering against my chest.
You looked up at me and said—and look, some of this dialogue I’ve had to paraphrase from memory, but this line I will never forget.
You said, “Would you like to see me again?”
You already knew the answer.
7
Vicky
I meet Rambo in the parking lot of the Home Depot off U.S. 30 in Merrillville, Indiana. I didn’t want to talk over the phone or use email. This has to be in person. And I don’t have much time, because I’m meeting Simon for lunch, so I need to head back to Chicago soon.
When he gets out of his beater Chevy, manila file in hand, he says, “Miss Vicky,” as he’s always called me, dating back to when he was a cop and one of my clients in the “entertainment” business, back before I moved to Chicago and met Simon and got straight. Rambo was okay. Never got rough with me. And he paid me, even though as a cop, he probably could have gotten freebies. I always figured one of the reasons I never got busted for solicitation was a cop like him having my back, though he never actually said that to me.
Roger Rampkin is his full name, but everyone calls him Rambo. Not just a play off his name but his Army background before joining the force in Indianapolis, and he’s got some size on him, too. The kind of cop who would scare the shit out of you in an interrogation room.
He retired from the force four years ago, now working as a private detective and doing some “security” work as well. He’s done some work for me in the last few years and proven his worth.
“You clean up nice,” he says.
Not sure I’d say the same for Rambo. The years have not been so kind to him. He has at least twenty more pounds in his midsection, his eyes heavily bagged, his beard more salt than pepper. Less badass-cop now, more mountain-man-crazy.
I take the file from him and hand him an envelope of cash. “Thank you very much, sir.”
He tosses the envelope through the open window of his car onto the front seat and lights a cigarette, offers me one. I decline. I quit smoking when I quit everything else. Smoking was harder to kick than cocaine.
“Tell me why,” he says.
“You’ve never asked why before,” I say.
He blows out smoke. “I’ve always known why before. But I take your point.”
Mind your own business is the point. “That’s a good boy, Rambo.” I wag the folder, noting how light it is. “Not much in there.”
“Not much in there,” he agrees.
“Give me the highlights.”
“The highlights are . . . there’s not much in there. I did a full workup, all over again, like you asked. Every source I could tap. Vicky Lanier was born in Fairmont, West Virginia, went to Fairmont Senior High School, disappeared in 2003 at the age of seventeen and was never heard from again. Declared a missing person, but it was never known if she was a runaway or abducted or murdered. Never showed up on the grid. Never filed a tax return, never got arrested or fingerprinted, never enrolled for school, never opened a bank account, never took out a credit card, never got a W-2 or 1099, never opened a social-media account, never did a single thing after age seventeen.” He looks at me, squinting into the sun.