He took a step forward just as Michelle did, and they began to kiss.
7
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 9:25 P.M.
Ethan had ignored the text from Ashley, saying she was back from visiting her parents and did he want to grab a drink. Instead, he’d sent a text to Hannah, begging her to come over to his place. He hadn’t heard back.
While he waited for the burrito to heat up in the microwave, he cracked open a Shiner Bock. As far as he knew, Ashley and Hannah, despite living together, weren’t particularly good friends. That didn’t mean that Ashley was going to be okay with the fact that he used to sleep with her and now he was exclusively sleeping with her housemate. But maybe she wouldn’t mind too much. He thought of calling his oldest friend Marcus and asking him if he thought it was possible to pull off the roommate switch, but he could already hear Marcus’s mocking laughter.
While waiting to hear from Hannah （God, he loved her aloofness）， he did some deeper Google searches of the names that had been on the list he’d handed over to the FBI earlier in the day. One of the names had been Caroline Geddes, and he wondered if it was the same Caroline Geddes who was an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Michigan. There was a picture of her, dark hair pulled back off a wide forehead, and with a half-smile on her face that looked—what was the word?—secretive, maybe. Ethan felt a click of recognition looking at her. Not that he’d met her before necessarily, but that he somehow knew her already.
Her faculty page included an email, and he sent her a quick message:
Caroline, Did you get a strange list with your name on it? If you didn’t, please ignore this awkward email. If you did, my name was on the list as well and I don’t know why. Email me. Ethan Dart
He closed his laptop, not expecting to get an email back anytime soon, and went and crouched in front of his record collection, looking for something to listen to. What was he in the mood for? He picked Joni Mitchell, playing side two of The Hissing of Summer Lawns, and when he rechecked his emails he was surprised he already had a response from Caroline.
Yes, that was me. An FBI agent nonchalantly took it away and wouldn’t answer any of my questions. What about you?
He wrote back:
Same. Something must be up. Should we be worried? I feel more curious.
Caroline:
I’m curious, too. Also a little worried. Did you know any of the other names on the list?
Ethan:
I didn’t, no, and I looked them all up. Nothing rang a bell, but when I saw your faculty page … you seemed familiar to me. Don’t know why.
Caroline:
Familiar meaning we might know each other? Your name doesn’t ring a bell for me.
Ethan:
Really? I’m a famous musician.
Caroline:
Are you actually?
Ethan:
No, but I want to be, I guess. I’m aspiring. And now I’m embarrassed that I even made the stupid joke in the first place. Let’s talk about something else? Where did you grow up?
They emailed back and forth for an hour, comparing biographies, trying to figure out if there was some connection between them. Except for their age—they were both in their middle thirties—they discovered that they had almost nothing in common. All they’d come up with was the fact that they both had had grandparents from the Boston area in Massachusetts.
Ethan wrote:
Maybe what connects us is that nothing connects us. It feels almost strange that we can’t find anything.
She wrote:
You write songs. I like songs. I don’t suppose that counts.
Ethan:
Well, you probably wouldn’t like my songs. But you critique poetry, and I like poetry.
Caroline:
Liking poetry is far rarer than liking songs. What poets do you like?
Ethan thought for a moment, trying to construct a fast list that would impress her, then asked himself why he was trying to do that. Instead, he decided to just be honest.
Off the top of my head: John Berryman, Frank O’Hara, Weldon Kees, Robert Lowell. Also, a bunch of people you probably wouldn’t consider poets: Joni Mitchell, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, James McMurtry, Willy Vlautin.
After sending that last email Ethan didn’t hear back right away, and he wondered if his poetry selections had turned her off somehow. He went and flipped through his records, pulling out Songs of Love and Hate, and dropped the needle on its first track.
8
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 9:48 P.M.
Caroline was in her bed, wide awake, emailing back and forth with a stranger. Her orange cat Estrella slept, as was her custom, on the edge of the lower right corner of the mattress, curled into a tight ball. Fable, her other cat, could be anywhere.