THE NEXT AFTERNOON, I SET MYSELF UP IN MY CHILDHOOD BEDROOM, which my mom had turned into a showroom for her sneakers, all these IKEA wall shelves, these shoes in neon green and void-of-space black and the kind of white that would instantly smudge if you applied even the slightest pressure from your fingertip. In the closet, I looked at the baseboard, this little opening, and there was one of my folded-up posters stuffed in there, the paper yellowed, and I let it stay there, a magical protection for my mom.
I knew that I could try harder to find Zeke, but I wouldn’t hire someone, couldn’t imagine trying to explain it to a detective who was wondering if I was a stalker ex-girlfriend, wanting to simply tell me that I didn’t need to create some story about outsider art and satanic panic and the spirit of true collaboration. He would just need a cool grand, and then I could go kill this guy or whatever.
And so for five straight hours, I really tried, wrote down every bit of information that the internet would give me, even about people who clearly weren’t Zeke, like someone from Georgia who had died in 1982, just in case it could lead me to him. I bookmarked and saved and copied and pasted, checked the distance from Coalfield to places like Eastland Heights, Georgia, and Bluffton, South Carolina, and Medford, Oregon, praying to find a single image of that goofy boy. I went to the forums devoted to the poster, where I was registered but had never commented, and searched for the name “Zeke,” but nothing came up just like it hadn’t come up the hundred other times I checked. I looked up Memphis and violin and art school and Cydney Hudson, his mother’s maiden name, but there was nothing new, nothing that got me closer to him. I didn’t even have a photo of him from that summer, hadn’t even thought about it, or maybe I had assumed there would be more time, and all I could do now was try to keep the image of him in my mind, to not let time degrade it or change it. I felt like I’d done a fairly good job, could still see him so clearly, but who knows how close it was to the real thing. The entire summer still felt hallucinatory, a fairy tale, and so maybe I’d misremembered every detail about him. I mean, it took me a long time to even figure out his full name. How could I be sure what his teeth looked like? But I did. I knew that I had it right.
When I was done, I had three locations that seemed feasible, all of them ones I’d seen before, and six different phone numbers. Not a single photo. No idea about jobs or schools or if he was married or had kids. This was the edge. I was at the edge, and I had to go beyond it if I wanted him.
After I talked to Junie on the phone for about twenty minutes regarding a rare doll that she found for three hundred dollars on eBay, and after I talked to my husband about making sure that Junie did not guilt him into buying the doll, which had green face paint dripping from her eyes and was outfitted with a Technicolor dream coat, I sat in my old room and squinted until my head hurt. I took several deep breaths until I felt dizzy, and then I called the first number on the list, a Knoxville area code. I almost started crying when it rang, and then I made a little sound like a bark when it rang the second time, and then I don’t remember the third or fourth or fifth ring, but then it was an answering machine recording that said, “This is Lydia, leave a message and maybe I’ll call you back,” and I just sat there, dumbfounded. There was the beep, and I was not breathing, not making a sound. I almost said the line, almost, but then I just hung up. I crossed off the number with a pen. I wanted to strangle Lydia. I was just about to try the next number when my phone rang, and I dropped the phone, then cursed, then picked it up.
“Hello,” I said.
“You just called me,” Lydia said, not a question but a statement of fact. Her voice had none of the sultry playfulness of the answering machine message.
“Did I?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “you did. Or someone at this number did. Caller ID.”
“Oh, yes, I did,” I said. “I realized it was the wrong number when I heard your message.”
“What did you want?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“Why did you call me?” she asked.
“Oh, ha, well, I was trying to call someone else.”
“How did you get the number?” she asked. Damn, Lydia was relentless.
“I didn’t. I mean, I must have misdialed. You know? Like . . . a wrong number.”
“Okay then,” she said, and it sounded like she did not believe me.
“Well . . . ,” I said, because I needed to be sure, just so I never had to call Lydia again.