The Word Exchange (8 page)

There was another, more salient reason I hadn’t been in touch with my mom: she’d never much liked Max. (“It’s not that I don’t like him,” she’d say, unconvincingly. “I just worry that he doesn’t really make you
happy.”) I hadn’t told her yet that he’d moved out—I wasn’t quite ready for her commentary—and the thought of keeping up a front seemed very tough.

But maybe even more than that, I also didn’t much like the man she’d been seeing, Laird Sharpe. Before he’d shacked up with Vera, Laird had long been one of Doug’s best friends. They’d been freshman roommates: Hollis Hall, Harvard class of ’72. They’d formed a trio with a man named Fergus Hedstrom, who was soon to resurface in all our lives. (I’d never met Ferg; he didn’t spend much time in New York. But all through my girlhood I’d heard filigreed stories of adventures he and Doug had taken—and occasionally still took—in places as far-flung as Norse Lake, Ontario; Barra de Navidad, Jalisco; and Angkor Wat: catching walleye, surfing, visiting shrines, drinking insalubrious amounts. For whatever reason, Laird never went along.)

I was confounded by Laird and Doug’s ongoing friendship. And I likewise didn’t get why Laird was beloved by the audiences of PI News, the station he anchored. Before he’d found his calling, reporting small and large tragedies to the public, he’d done a stint for several years as an investment banker; he still often covered financial stories. And watching him, I always felt like he was still selling something (beyond what was required). I didn’t really enjoy the thought of him and Vera on their jaunt overseas, pitying my fate in some Beijing teahouse or Jaipur gem boutique.

On the morning after Doug went missing, though, it wasn’t so much my pride that kept me from calling my mom; a slightly battered ego seemed like a fair trade for her advice. What welled up instead, swallowing everything—rationality, a desire for comfort, consideration of Vera’s feelings—was a powerful wave of protectiveness. I didn’t want Laird to have the satisfaction of knowing that Doug was gone, or wondering if it had anything to do with him and my mom.

And to be candid, strung out as I felt from sleeplessness and worry—even before I talked to Dr. Thwaite—the person whose voice I wanted to hear most that morning was Max’s, despite everything. Despite a month of embarrassed crying in the stairwell when attacks of sadness would hit on my breathless ascent, picturing the poor neighbors rolling their eyes as they lifted pasta lids, wiped kids’ noses, turned up the volume on things. A month of rashly commanding my Meme to erase his number and most of his photos, texts, beams, only to bitterly regret it later
and try to get them back—an operation the Meme claimed was “not actionable.” A month of inane incantations—“I can’t believe this is happening,” “I don’t understand”—to each of my (also progressively less understanding) friends.

Despite everything, and of course knowing better, I still wanted to feel Max’s massive arms around me. His pointy chin jutting into my head. “Such a cute, cute nutjob,” I could almost hear him say. “I’ll bring you lots of nice chocolates at Bellevue.” Right away I reprimanded myself; even in my fantasies Max was an ass.

Doug, the teasing king, had always disapproved of Max’s brand of it. When I pointed out that I teased Max, too, and noted Doug’s own affinities, Doug would shake his shaggy head, face drooping in sad folds, and say, quietly emphatic, “It’s not the same, Nins. His isn’t generous. He tries to discredit you.” I usually thought that Doug was missing the point, or that I’d misrepresented things. I tried to explain that the difference between my own blithe imitations of Max’s lumbering, athletic stride, the halting way he often talked, and his relentless befriendment of nearly everyone we met (bartenders, dry cleaners, lots of girls on the street) was a difference only in method from the way Max teased me. But Doug didn’t miss many points. And I’d been revisiting this theory.

In recent evidence to the contrary, for instance: after Max was done breaking up with me, he tried to shake my hand, as if we were business associates. That had upset me (obviously). In part because I blamed his work for our estrangement. And there was no denying that things got worse after Hermes was sold in July. He’d had a lot more nights out and coming home trashed, or not at all. He started traveling all the time—Shanghai, Rio, L.A.—and spending money like he’d won a game show. He could waste $16K on dinner, including guests he’d just met. Soon he had a motorcycle and a car. He bought himself one of John Lennon’s guitars, a fur coat, a
gold-plated toilet
. (That was a joke, allegedly.)

He naturally began to resent “my” tiny apartment and started looking at listings. “You wouldn’t get it,” he snapped when I asked, bewildered, what was happening. “You’ve
always
had money.” (Which wasn’t totally fair—I remembered lots of successive nights of beans and rice as a child when my parents hadn’t felt like going begging to my grandparents. But the underlying point was sound.) Max bought things for me, too, of course. Perfume. Spiky jewelry. Electronics. I gave most of them
back. Faster than I knew what was happening, he’d turned into a person I didn’t know, or like. Our life became a never-ending fight. But it was because of Hermes’s sale, I told myself. I just had to wait. For how long, I wasn’t sure—he didn’t like to talk about work.

In truth, we’d had only two really good years. But the first had been transcendent. We’d been together barely two weeks when Max asked, over glasses of rum, if I’d ever been to Barbados; he had to go for business, he claimed, and the thought of a beautiful, secluded beach without me was “just too sad.” Flattered and flustered and caught off-guard, I opined in a bad British accent that my favorite former island colony was Dominica. (I’d been exactly once.) It was a stupid quip, and kind of mean. (I’d assumed at first, like nearly everyone Max met, that he came from money; I thought I was calling him out.) But I wasn’t self-conscious; with Max, I felt completely at ease. “Okay,” he said, laughing. “We’ll go there instead.” But when he sent me a hotel reservation later that night, I was shocked. Thrilled and nervous and a little offended. But mostly gripped by a fit of excitement so intense I almost thought I was coming down with something. When I next saw Max, I could tell he felt the same way: his eyes were ragged with agitation and amazement and disbelief. (I didn’t know that his anxiety was at least as much about money: he was broke.)

From then on we couldn’t stand to be apart. We moved in together after just three months. “You need to get a life,” I’d say, laughing as I tried to tear myself from our bed to visit the studio, or have dinner with Coco, or ferry Ramona through her latest crisis. “You
are
my life,” he’d say. And even though I knew it was mostly a joke, it worried me. It didn’t seem smart, letting him give me so much of his time. But I couldn’t help it; it was the happiest I’d ever been.

Ineluctably, though, things began disintegrating. He did start to feel trapped, did often resent me, sometimes for good reason, and there were times I resented him. We’d both done stupid things. Yet despite the many reckless ways we’d alienated and betrayed each other, I still loved him. And none of our previous attempts to break up had stuck. I’d known right away, though, that this one would. But I’d always believed, even to the end, that he loved me, too. I nearly convinced myself that the final split itself had been a gift: his callousness crafted so I could stop loving him. It just didn’t work.

But on the morning after I discovered my father missing, I managed not to call Max, thanks largely to Bart.

It was just after nine a.m., and I hadn’t yet gone to the pay phone to try calling Dr. Thwaite. I was balanced on one leg in the bedroom, frowning at my Meme, wondering how to override its “not actionable” setting, when a groggy voice floated up from the floor in the other room. “Very graceful,” it croaked, startling me so badly I lost my balance and nearly dropped the Meme.

“Sorry,” Bart mumbled, sounding still snared in the nets of sleep. “I wasn’t watching. Just opened my eyes. And there you were.”

The back of my neck petaled with heat. I wasn’t quite sure why. I wasn’t attracted to Bart; he wasn’t my type. (“Bastards?” Audrey would say. Which wasn’t totally inaccurate, unfortunately. Historically I’d fallen for men with a little more … audacity.) I also knew Bart wasn’t interested. Shortly after I met Max, Doug dropped hints about how Bart made the better catch, and I wondered, with the placid detachment of someone newly in love, if Doug had been told (or imagined) that Bart had a crush on me. But then I heard Bart was in love with our colleague Svetlana, and that made more sense. She’s more beautiful than I am, and far smarter. And if there’s one thing that ever made me insecure around kind, funny, slightly odd Bart, it was my intellect. Several Dictionary staffers could read at least three languages; Bart could read eight; Svetlana: five. I struggled to read Spanish even with the Word Exchange. Bart also read lots of philosophy, which he discussed with Svetlana. Next to them I felt like what I was: a genius’s relatively average daughter, hired out of family loyalty.

Speaking of filial ties, part of the reason I was so aware of Bart was because of his friendship with my dad. They ate lunch together most days—at the Fancy, or the weird sandwich place down the block—talking constantly about work. Doug solicited Bart’s opinions on nearly everything. I knew because Doug often cited Bart’s stellar insights. They also occasionally played squash on weekends when Doug’s regular partner couldn’t get away. I think they even went fishing once, upstate.

There was one thing, though, that had kind of come between Bart and me: I’d gotten the sense he didn’t think so highly of Max. Max respected him and thought they were friends, and Bart was otherwise so nonjudgmental
that it seemed a little unfair. So out of my own sense of loyalty, I’d always felt a small degree of distance from him.

But that was before Max and I broke up. Before Doug started acting so strange—and then vanished. And seeing Bart that first morning, steeped in sleepiness on my hardwood floor, I suddenly felt shy; I couldn’t quite believe I’d asked him to come home with me the night before. And I didn’t want him to hear me beg my Meme to call Max.
You’re better than that
, I told myself. I’d had a shortage of those kinds of thoughts since being dumped, and it gave me a grateful little rush of fortitude.

Instead of calling my mom or Max, I was on the verge of calling the cops. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d say; I was already afraid, though, that they’d be involved eventually. But Bart blearily convinced me that they wouldn’t take us seriously until we waited at least twenty-four hours. Repeated what he’d said the previous night when we hadn’t found Doug home, about him maybe having plans he’d forgotten to mention. (Doug did have a few friends, like Ferg, who sometimes spirited him away.) Or maybe, Bart suggested, something had come up with the launch, and Doug had “gone into one of his tunnels” and hadn’t thought to be in touch. “I bet he’ll call in a few hours,” Bart said with a yawn. Then he rolled over and went back to his dreams.

I’d tried to distract myself for another couple hours—streaming some of the music Bart had pointed out the night before, doing a quick sketch of him asleep on the floor, willing Doug to call—but the thought of waiting, pacing, trying not to panic, was making me feel unwelcome to myself. And that’s why, after running out of other ideas, I’d carefully crept outside to call Dr. Thwaite and found myself, coldly huddled in an old phone booth, agreeing to go to his apartment.

I wrote the directions on my skin. That felt strange. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used my hand for transcription.
²
I examined Doug’s pen, which I’d been surprised to find still in my coat pocket. It was branded with some kind of seal, an open book ringed by crowns. But soon I turned my attention back to writing; the directions turned out
to be very involved: when I got to Dr. Thwaite’s building on Beekman Place, I should see Clive, the doorman, who’d send me right up. But if Clive wasn’t in for some peculiar reason, I should turn around and walk back toward the door, where I’d see a painting of a wintry scene. I should lift it to reveal a panel of buzzers and press Dr. Thwaite’s, gently but firmly. He’d be waiting on the sixth floor, a point he underscored. Then he hung up without saying goodbye.

I hurried back home to collect Bart, but Bart wasn’t collectible: he was gone. In his place I found the faint, ferrety smell of boy. On the floor, a messy nest of blankets. Several poorly washed dishes in the rack. A dusting of coffee grounds on the counter. A bouquet of purple deli roses and a note on a scrap of paper bag. “A—Thank you,” it began in his slanty left-handed script. “I’m sorry the flowers are sort of forlorn. It was the best they had at that place on eighth. Hope you like purple. Hope you find Doug today. Talk soon?—B”

Worried as I was about Doug, I smiled. Its taciturnity—so un-Bart-like—made me wonder if it said more than it said.
³
When I’d seen him curled on the floor that morning, sleeping in all his rumpled clothes, I’d felt a warm, pleasant shock. He was the first person to stay the night since Max had moved out, and the nearby beating of another heart did something to sort of reset mine.

As I’d started to sketch his face, I noticed for the first time that he looked a little like Buster Keaton. He had the same long, almost Gallic nose and small, bow-shaped mouth. Same dark, lightly waved hair gently receding from his forehead. His large, wide-set eyes bulged slightly under the lids, as if that were the price of closely observing things. I was so glad he’d stayed. Glad, too, that the night before, when he’d discovered my Box of Shame—relics of the nerdier person I’d once been—he hadn’t mocked me, had in fact seemed interested. As I’d carefully stepped over his legs and seen his soft pink heels exposed by holes in his dark socks, I’d felt a web of tenderness spring from me to engulf his whole tall, lean frame.

Anyway, I was sad he’d left. And without him, I was also less sure about the trip to Dr. Thwaite’s. But the flowers, still hemmed in plastic, gave me a little boost of strength. I put them in a vase. When a bud fell
off, I tucked it in my pocket. Kicked the gamey blankets beneath the table. Poured myself a black coffee—Bart had finished the soy milk—and made my way east.