He starts to open his mouth as if to say more, but then he spots a guy with thick horn-rimmed glasses and the most elaborate pompadour I’ve ever seen. He’s standing with a girl with short bangs and bright red lipstick. “That’s Hidecki,” Ben says. “He knew Meg pretty well.”
Ben introduces us and we talk for a bit, but neither Hidecki nor the girl he’s with know anything about Meg or the health center. After a while, I run out of questions, and Hidecki asks about the cats.
“You know about the cats?”
The girl he’s with tells me that Hidecki donated a hundred dollars to their rehabilitation fund. “So he feels invested,” she says.
“A hundred dollars,” I say. “You must like cats.”
“I liked Meg,” he corrects. “She also saved me at least that much money when she fixed my amplifier.”
“She fixed your amp?”
He nods. “Swapped the volume pot and showed me how to do it. I was skeptical, but she knew how to handle a soldering gun.”
“Yeah. She did,” I say. “And the cats are fine. Ben adopted them, actually.”
“Ben?” He gives Ben a look I wouldn’t exactly describe as friendly.
“Yeah. Even has pictures on his phone. Ben, show him your pictures.”
“Another time,” Ben says tersely. “We should hit some more clubs.”
We go to three more places. I meet all these people who knew Meg. Who miss Meg. But no one knows about the health center. I get some names and email addresses of other people she was friendly with. By four in the morning, we have no direct leads but a bunch of contacts to follow up on. I’m so tired, my legs feel like they might collapse from under me, and the whites of Ben’s eyes are redder than Stoner Richard’s after a few bowls. I suggest we call it a night.
When we get back to his house, he leads me to his bedroom. I stop in the hallway outside of it, like it’s radioactive in there. He looks at me. “You crash in here. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“That’s okay. I’ll take the couch,” I reply.
“It’s more comfortable here. And quiet.”
I wince. “Sorry, Ben, but there’s, like, a petri dish of half of Seattle’s female population on your sheets.”
“It’s not like that, Cody.”
I scoff. “Really?”
“Clem was a while—oh, forget it. I’ll just change the sheets for you.”
“I’m fine to take the couch.”
“Let me change the damn sheets, Cody.” I can’t blame him for being pissed. It is five in the morning, and he did just come back from an eight-night tour of sleeping on floors and in vans. But even so, he makes the bed, plumping the pillows and pulling down the comforter in one corner so it looks all inviting.
I snuggle into the pillows. The cats scramble to the foot of the bed and tuck in there, their nightly spot, I gather.
I hear Ben brush his teeth, and then I hear the floorboards creaking under his feet. He stops in his doorway, and for a second I’m scared he’s going to come in and for a second I’m scared I might want him to. But he just stands there.
“Good night, Cody.”
“Good night, Ben.”
x x x
I sleep until noon and wake up rested, the achiness I wear like a second skin gone. When I go into the kitchen, Ben’s already up, drinking coffee and talking to his housemates, whom he introduces me to. He’s eating a bowl of granola and offers me some.
“I can get it,” I say. I find a bowl from the drying rack and the granola from the cupboard, and it’s weird how I’m making myself at home here.
Ben grins at me, like he recognizes the novelty of this, too, and then chats with his housemates about the tour. They’re nice, not the rocker types I’d expected but students and people with jobs. One of the guys grew up in a town about twenty miles from where I live, and we lament the state of eastern Washington, stuck in some kind of time warp, and question why, when you cross the Cascades, heading east, do people start talking with southern accents?
The sun is out and Mount Rainier is lording it over the city, and it’s one of those days that make you forget what happens here between October and April. After breakfast Ben and I walk down the steps leading to the yard. Off to one side is a big bunch of lumber, all covered with a tarp.
“What’s that?” I ask Ben.
He shrugs. “Just something I do in my multitude of spare time.”
I pull up the tarp. Under is the beginnings of some shelves, all clean sloping lines like the ones up in the house. “You made these?” I ask.
He shrugs again.
“They’re really good.”
“Don’t sound so shocked.”
“Not shocked. More like mildly surprised.”
We sit down on the wooden steps and watch Pete and Repeat chase leaves and tackle each other.
“They do know how to enjoy themselves,” he says.
“What? Wrestling?”
“Just being.”
“Maybe I should come back as a cat.”
He gives me a sidelong glance.
“Or a goldfish. Some dumb animal.”
“Hey,” he says, mock offended on Pete’s and Repeat’s behalf.
“Look how easy it is for them. What good is all of our intelligence if it makes us crazy? I mean, other animals don’t kill themselves.”
He watches the cats, who have turned their attention to yanking on a fallen twig. “We don’t know that for sure. Animals might not swallow poison, but maybe they stop eating or separate from the herd, knowing it means they’ll be someone’s dinner that way.”
“Maybe.” I point at the cats. “Still, I’d like to be carefree like that again. I’m starting to doubt I ever was. Were you?”
Ben nods. “When I was little. After my dad left, before my mom hooked up and got pregnant with my little sister. Me and my brothers used to go exploring. We’d go swim in the river or build forts in the forest behind where we lived. It was like being Tom Sawyer.”
I look at Ben, trying to imagine him young and unburdened.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks. “You don’t think I’ve read Tom Sawyer?”
I laugh. It’s a strange sound, that.
“I’ve read Huck Finn, too. I am very intellectual.”
“I don’t know if you’re intellectual, but I know you’re smart. Meg would’ve had no patience for you if you weren’t. No matter how pretty you are.” I feel myself blush a little, and look away.