“What?”
“Annie is gone. She’s left. She’s skedaddled. Vamoosed.”
“Wait. Sheleft? Because of me?”
“No, because ofme.” I rake my free hand harshly through my hair, leaving it sticking up in all directions. “I fucked this up so bad, Nic. She knew all about the goose. She was helping with it, but I didn’t tell her I was looking into it foryou. So when you came by and she put it all together…she felt like I was hiding something important from her.”
“You…were, though.”
“Iknow!” I whine angrily, then add, “Also, your goose was stolen.”
“What?”
“I mean, back in the sixties. From the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Also more recently, but I’ll tell you about that another time. The good news is that I am no longer being detained by the police and your bird has been returned to its rightful owners.”
“Hold up. You weredetainedby thepolice?”
“It’s fine. And the other good news is that I don’t think they have any interest in questioning you about it or anything.” It had been so long since the goose had gone missing from the museum that no one with either the New Castle, Delaware, county police or U.S. Fish and Wildlife seemed to think it was worth trying to retrace its (metaphorical) steps. Especially when no one currently working at the museum was even aware it was missing.
Nicole lets out a sigh. “I’m sorry it was such a hassle. But thank you, Cal, for handling that. Really.”
“Yeah. You’re welcome.”
“Can I do anything to repay you? Maybe help with the Annie situation?”
“Do you happen to have a time machine and a few extra brain cells I could borrow?” I ask.
She ignores this, instead saying, “You could come over, talk it through some more, if you want. Isaiah’s making ribs tonight, and he only knows how to make enough to feed a whole firehouse. You’re very welcome to join us for dinner.”
Despite how touched I am by the offer, and how much it’s the exact kind of invitation I hoped we might work our way back to with the passage of time, the idea of sitting at a table with my ex-girlfriend and her husband while feeling somehow infinitely worse after losing someone I’ve known for only a couple weeks than I did after losing someone I was with for almost half my life sounds like an actual nightmare. Doubly so, when I imagine doing it covered in barbecue sauce.
“I appreciate it, Nic,” I say. “But I think I need some time to myself. Still trying to wrap my head around all of this.”
“Okay. Well. I know we aren’t together anymore, Cal. But Ido still care about you. We’ve always been friends. And that hasn’t changed, at least not for me.”
“Not for me either,” I say. In fact, I think friends is what we’ve always been best at being. I’m so glad we get to do that again.
“You’ll reach out if you need anything? Or, you know where we live. Just come over if you change your mind, or need company, or—”
“I will. Thanks.”
I hang up the call, not completely sure if I returned Nicole’s goodbye before pressing the button, and stand there for a while, staring at myself in the gilded-framed mirror hanging on the wall. It’s probably just the wavy effect of the aged glass, but a few times I’ve thought I could see a faint outline of Graham’s silhouette standing beside me. It isn’t there now, though. I’m quite alone. Left behind, the way I was always destined to be, unable to keep up with everything moving around me.
Except there’s still one person here, isn’t there? Francis comes to stand behind me. “Did you mean what you told her, Dodger? About needing time to yourself?” he asks quietly.
“No,” I say, already choking on the word as I turn and let him wrap his arms around me as I start to sob.
THIRTY-FIVE
Callahan
I don’t completely fallapart—not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t. Someone needs to keep Virtu running, and with Harold and Inés still overseas and Annie back in Asbury Park, that falls solely on me. And I’m grateful for it. Once again, this store, this gift Graham gave me because of the potential he somehow saw behind my scraggy, thick-accented exterior, is the thing keeping me afloat when I’m otherwise tempted to let myself sink.
I miss Annie so much, but I also miss Graham more sharply than I have since his death. The grief feels fresh, the wound I thought was fully healed torn back open as I mourn the loss of both the past I can never return to and the future I’d begun to believe in. I’m pretty sure I’m hiding it well, though; I’ve only cried once in front of a customer, and they were kind enough to let me play it off as allergies.
Both Francis and Nicole invited me to their Thanksgiving dinners tonight, but I barely feel up to pasting on a polite smileand eating turkey even during the best of times, so I responded to both with my regrets. Neither questioned my choice to instead spend the evening alone in the apartment, picking at a tray of microwaved mac and cheese and staring into the middle distance.
I can’t help but feel like I should bedoingsomething. What, I haven’t yet determined. Something that will prove to Annie that my love is genuine. That my lack of dating experience doesn’t mean I don’t know my own heart well enough to say unequivocally that she is and will forever be my first choice. But I also know she’s not just going to take my word for it, not only because of her own emotional baggage but because I have plenty of my own that I still haven’t quite figured out how to unload. Too bad Marvin’s Moving doesn’t offer a service for that.
