‘What I can’t figure out,’ I continued, ‘is what Lilith did for a living. She was an artist. I know that because Zan made reference to her “works in progress” and encouraged her to try to get a particular painting into a photorealist show going up at some gallery in Soho, but I see no evidence that she did anything more than paint for her own amusement.’
‘It costs money to travel around like that. London, Paris, Hong Kong, Rome,’ Connie pointed out.
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘She spent a lot of time in Zurich, too.’ I pawed through the photographs and came up with another picture. ‘I think these people may be her parents. It’s labeled on the back Schloss Kyburg, Zurich, 1966.’
Connie scrutinized the photo of a sophisticated couple standing arm-in-arm in what appeared to be a castle courtyard. ‘I’d agree. There’s a strong resemblance between Lilith and this other woman. They’re both stunningly beautiful.’
‘Another thing I know about Lilith,’ I said, ‘she was a Democrat, because in one of the earlier letters, Zan mentions how elated she must have been at the outcome of the fall elections when Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford.’
Connie, a lifelong Republican, like her late parents, rolled her eyes. Dennis was a staunch Democrat, and there were some years when neither one of them went to the polls, claiming they simply cancelled each other out.
‘By the 1980s, I think Lilith settled down, Connie. Most of the letters from that period were mailed to an apartment at Thirty-nine Fifth Avenue in New York City. The address sounded very posh, so I looked it up on Google Maps. It’s medium posh, as it turns out, just north of Washington Square Park, adjacent to New York University. But the letter that I sent to her there boomeranged back “Addressee Unknown. Return to Sender.”’
‘You actually wrote to her?’
I shrugged. ‘Why not?’
Connie had picked up my notebook and was studying the handwritten spreadsheet I had made showing where Lilith and Zan had been living at the time each of his letters was mailed. Chicago to Brooklyn. Omaha to Zurich. Mexico City to Rome. The jet-setting pair seemed to have been hopscotching all over the planet.
‘Was Zan wealthy, too?’
‘Possibly. I’m trying to find a pattern, but so far it eludes me. I wish to hell he’d written more about what was going on in his life, rather than sending her sappy poetry.’ I found the envelope I was looking for, opened it and extracted a letter. ‘Listen to this!:
“Your skin is so soft
Your face is so fair
I want to touch
Your raven hair.
I will come
To see you soon
And then I’ll be
Over the moon.”’
Connie groaned. ‘He would have been better off to stick with Elizabeth Barrett-Browning.’
‘You’ll get no argument from me. When did they repeal the law that said that all poetry had to rhyme, anyway?’
‘I don’t know, but clearly Zan didn’t get the memo. It’s that slavish use of rhyming couplets that always slays me.’ She looked up from the spreadsheet. ‘Did you see Miss Saigon?’
‘The musical where a helicopter lands on the stage?’
Connie nodded. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the helicopter is the highlight of the show. How many hours can you take of doggerel like: “No one can stop what I must do; I swear I’d give my life for you.”’
‘Thank you!’ I made a cutting motion across my throat.
‘I really like this picture of Zan, though,’ Connie said, handing the short stack back to me. The color Polaroid on top featured Zan – long-haired, bearded, wearing wire-framed glasses – perched on a log and surrounded by dozens of dark-haired, brown-skinned children.
And then Connie said something that had not occurred to me before. ‘Say, Hannah. Do you suppose Zan was in the Peace Corps?’
NINE
The Peace Corps has a headquarters building on 20th Street between L and M, a comprehensive library, a website, a blog and a fan page on Facebook. They even Tweet. When you show up with no more than a person’s nickname, however, it’s one great big Dead End.
Reluctantly, I put Zan on the back-burner.
Besides, I was distracted. My cast – colorful as it was, and decorated with drawings by my talented grandchildren – hearts and flowers, and airplanes shooting down other airplanes with ack-ack fire – was driving me crazy.
‘It itches,’ I complained to my husband a little over three weeks after the accident as I scrabbled in the utility drawer looking for a chopstick. I was seconds from inserting the chopstick between the cast and my skin so I could indulge myself with a good scratch, when Paul snatched the chopstick out of my hand.
‘No, you don’t! Technical foul! If you open up the skin under there, you’ll be in big trouble, missy.’
The cast cramped my style in the bath, too. No more long, hot, semi-submerged soaks. My cast was supposed to be semi-waterproof, but that didn’t mean that I could go deep-sea diving in it.
In desperation, I sweet-talked a receptionist into moving up the appointment I had made with an orthopedic specialist at the sports medicine center favored by a number of Naval Academy athletes. If they could put an injured quarterback back in action in time for the Army-Navy game, couldn’t they work miracles for me, too?
After taking some X-rays and clucking inscrutably over the results, the doctor made my day by powering up a cast removal saw and releasing me from bondage. Scratching furiously (but oh so gently!) at the skin which had been covered by the cast for so long, I felt like Scarlett O’Hara being released from her stays. The doctor replaced my cast with a brace similar to those used to treat severe cases of carpal tunnel syndrome. Had I died and gone to heaven? Oh yes, indeed, I had.
‘Don’t twist your arm,’ the doctor warned, ‘No screwing, or you’ll be back in my office in no time.’
I nearly fell off the examination table. ‘What?’
‘No screwing.’ He demonstrated, extending his hand and twisting it as if working a screwdriver.
I felt my face redden. ‘Thanks,’ I chuckled. ‘I won’t.’
Having tabled Zan, I decided to run down every lead I had on Lilith before allowing myself to give up on her, too. She’d stayed in a dozen hotels, at least, and I Googled every one. For those hotels still in business, I jotted down their phone numbers and gave them a calclass="underline"
Mlle Lilith Chaloux, s’il vous plaît,
Por favor, Señorita Lilith Chaloux,
Fräulein Lilith Chaloux, bitte.
I spent a good five minutes practicing my French on the woman who answered the phone at L’Hotel de la Belle Aurore in Ste Maxime – une coude maison rêve sur son rocher au bord du golfe de Saint-Tropez. Ooh la la! I thought I’d hit the jackpot at the posh seaside resort, until the switchboard put me through to a Mlle Lili Charlotte who mistook me for some lackey setting up her photo shoot for a spread in Paris Match. ‘Mille pardons,’ I groveled, and hung up.
I tried snail-mailing the hotels, too. I included a photo of Lilith and a personal note, asking her to get in touch with me so that I could reunite her with her letters and photographs.
It was early days yet, but no dice.
Still no word from Skip, either.
Reluctantly, I packed everything away neatly in the box it had come in and tucked the Garfinkel’s bag away in the closet where I kept my knitting. Winter was coming. If I hurried, the sweater I was working on might be done in time for Christmas.