Chapter 25
Sitting alone at my kitchen table, I skim bleary-eyed through the last of the articles I printed from a variety of trusted websites.
In conclusion, most sexual health professionals agree that sexual role-playing, when done appropriately, can help happily married couples further deepen their connection, while being a powerful and enjoyable source of empowerment for both partners. The bored accountant can become a merciless despot. The harried stay-at-home mom can envision herself a seductress. The possibilities are endless.
I set the article aside and take a handful of Smartfood from the bowl next to me. Okay, fine, I get it. Dr. Annie Marie Potter was pretending to be a sultry twenty-four-year-old French girl in order to increase her confidence inside and outside the bedroom, while getting to know Sam in a more intimate manner. The accent. Her age. It was all part of it. This is, apparently, a thing, if Dr. Steven Perkins, resident sex expert at AskMen.com, can be trusted. According to his study, nearly 66 percent of all married couples have at some point in their relationship engaged in this type of behavior.
I scrape the last kernels from the bowl and shake my head, convinced I’ll never understand the mating rituals of married couples. How could I? My longest romantic relationship was exactly zero days. （Actually, here’s something I know: the fact that they chose to do this at his place of business, a room I imagine many of his patients consider sacred, is, in my opinion, taking it too far.） I wash the popcorn bowl and begin to water my collection of hanging plants when my alarm dings with a reminder. The news is about to begin.
In the living room, I aim the remote at the television, expecting Eyewitness News to open at 11:00 p.m. as it did at 6:00: with local meteorologist Irv Weinstein, standing outside the station, braving the cold. But it’s not Irv, it’s the blonde with the tight face, wearing a pink polyester dress. The words SEARCH FOR MISSING DOCTOR flash next to her head on the TV screen.
“We begin tonight with an update on Dr. Sam Statler, the local man who was reported missing two days ago. As the police spent the last forty-eight hours trying to piece together what may have happened to the missing psychologist, residents of Chestnut Hill came out in full force to attend a community-wide search this afternoon. For more on this, we’ll go to Alex Mulligan, reporting live.”
A different woman in a blue rain jacket fills the screen. “That’s right, Natalie,” she says. “Nearly one hundred volunteers spent this rainy Friday afternoon combing areas like the woods behind Brookside High School”—she jerks a thumb at the copse of trees in shadow behind her—“where Sam Statler was once a star athlete. Unfortunately, not one clue was uncovered to determine what may have happened to him the night of the storm, after he was reported leaving work around five p.m. As everyone knows, there was a travel advisory in effect, and conditions were considered extremely dangerous. I’m here with the man who spearheaded the search.” The camera pans back, revealing a smiling Crush Andersen, the beefy former linebacker who was glad-handing everyone at the bowling alley today. “Crush, tell us what you were hoping to find in today’s search,” the reporter says, tipping the microphone toward him.
“Anything that might help solve this,” Crush says. “But mostly his car. We had a great crowd come out today, despite the bad weather, and we were able to cover even more ground than we’d hoped to. If Stats had been in an accident on the way home, we would have found his car.”
“Given the lack of clues, what do you think may have happened to your old friend?”
Crush shakes his head, apparently bewildered. “No idea. But we’re going to keep the faith that he’s okay, and this is all going to turn out fine.”
The reporter offers a sympathetic nod before throwing the story back to Natalie at the news desk, who segues into a story about another round of layoffs at a local chicken plant. I click off the television and head upstairs to my room, trusting that Crush is right.
Sam’s okay and this is all going to turn out fine.
Chapter 26
Sam’s eyes flutter open.
The room is dark and he can’t remember the last time he saw light. His body aches and something feels off. It takes him a moment but he gets it, eventually. It’s his legs.
He can’t move them.
He reaches down, and feels the rough surface of plaster against his fingers. His legs are in casts. Both of them. He tries to lift them, but he can’t. Either the casts are too heavy or his legs are too weak. His only option is to go back to sleep and he doesn’t know how much time has passed when he’s jarred awake by the sound of the door opening, the flash of light from the hallway stinging his eyes. A figure appears next to his bed and he waits for a light to turn on but it doesn’t.