‘Skip,’ I said. ‘His name is Skip. His last name could be Chaloux.’
‘We don’t have any Skips on the patient list,’ he explained for the second time. ‘How do you spell Chaloux?’
‘C-H-A-L-O-U-X.’
He tapped a few keys, shook his head. ‘Nope, no Chaloux either.’
‘Look,’ I said, waving my fluorescent cast under his nose as Exhibit A. ‘I was a patient here on Tuesday. I think Skip was a patient, too. We were both involved in the Metro crash,’ I added, hoping to earn a sympathy vote. ‘The hospital, i.e. you, mixed up some of his belongings with mine, and I simply want to return them.’
The volunteer fixed me with a steely glare. ‘Ma’am, I will explain it to you once again. We are required by federal law to protect the privacy of our patients. Unless you are a family member, or a designated person, even if you knew the name of this Skip person, even if you are telling me now that he’s your very best friend in the whole wide world, I couldn’t tell you a single thing about his condition.’
My sister-in-law stood at the counter next to me, wisely staying out of the discussion. I leaned in her direction. ‘I should have lied,’ I whispered. ‘Said I was his aunt or something.’
‘In that case,’ Connie whispered back, ‘you would have known his last name.’
I felt my face flush. ‘Duh.’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ the staffer began again. Maybe he was softening. ‘Why don’t you leave whatever the mixed-up thing is with me, and if this fellow called Skip is in the hospital here, surely he’ll notice that it’s missing and ask about it. Then, we can make sure it gets back to him.’
I tend to get huffy when thwarted, so I fixed the volunteer with a steely gaze of my own. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand that unless you can confirm or deny the presence of a patient nicknamed Skip in this hospital, I can’t return the items now in my possession to you directly, only to Skip himself, or to a designated member of his family.’
The old guy smiled. He actually smiled. ‘OK. Point taken. Why don’t you write Skip a note? If it turns out he is, or was, a patient here, I can see that it gets to him. If, regrettably, he’s passed away, I’m sure his next of kin would want all his effects returned and they’ll get in touch with you. How does that sound?’
I faced Connie. ‘I don’t have anything to write on. Do you?’
Connie pawed through her handbag, then shook her head.
‘There’s a gift shop,’ the staffer pointed out helpfully.
I popped into the gift shop and purchased a greeting card – a cocker spaniel holding daisies in his mouth on the outside, blank on the inside, where I wrote:
‘Skip. I hope this finds you recovering from your injuries. I have your Garfinkel’s bag. If you get this note, please telephone me at…’ I turned to Connie who was inspecting some stuffed bears. ‘Home or cell, do you think?’
‘Both, I imagine.’ So I wrote the numbers down, signed the note ‘Hannah (the woman on the train),’ stuffed the card into its envelope, scribbled on the front and handed it to the staffer behind the desk.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Skip. Parens. Garfinkel bag. Not a lot to go on.’
I shrugged apologetically. ‘It’s all I know.’
‘What now?’ Connie asked as we strolled back to the spot where she’d parked her car.
‘Now?’ I asked.
Connie pressed the keyless remote and the car beeped. ‘Yes, now.’
Using my good arm, I reached for the door. ‘Nothing to do but wait.
Later that afternoon, when Paul came home from class, he found me sitting in the dining room, the contents of the Garfinkel’s bag spread out neatly on the table in front of me, a photograph in my hand.
After Connie dropped me off, I’d untied the letters, carefully preserving the pale green ribbons that had held them together for so long. I’d arranged them in chronological order – 1976 through 1986 – like a game of solitaire.
I held a pencil, freshly sharpened, with an eraser on the end. A spare pencil, equally sharp, was tucked behind my right ear.
I had a notebook in which I had already written ‘#1, Sep 15 1976 New York’ and the address of the apartment in Paris where Lilith had been living at the time.
A cup of tea sat at my right hand, the bottle of pain pills at my left, but, surprisingly, I’d been so engrossed in what I was doing that I’d missed the last dose and hadn’t even noticed.
‘Hannah, what on earth are you doing?’
I looked up at my husband and grinned. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Research.’
‘Well,’ Paul said as he set his briefcase down on one of the dining-room chairs, ‘so much for your protestations about invasion of privacy.’
‘I feel like a voyeur, I admit. But I’ve promised myself that I’ll read only enough to help me find out who these letters belong to.’ I tapped the letter dated 1976. ‘There have to be clues in the letters somewhere.’
Paul dragged a chair over from the wall next to the buffet and sat down at the table across from me. ‘What progress have you made?’
‘Look at this picture,’ I said, sliding it toward him across the polished mahogany.
Paul studied the black and white image carefully. It showed a young man in his twenties with dark fluffy hair, long in back and trimmed to just cover the tips of his ears. Sunglasses dangled by one earpiece from the three-button placket of his Izod polo shirt. He was perched on the lip of an ornate fountain and smiling broadly for the photographer.
‘Who’s this, then?’
‘His name is Zan.’
SEVEN
Sometimes my husband has a one-track mind.
‘What’s for dinner, or dare I ask?’
Abandoning the photograph, he had come around behind me, kissed the back of my neck, then begun to massage my aching shoulders with his thumbs. I rotated my shoulders against his hands. ‘Um, that feels good.’
‘Pizza?’ I asked him after several more minutes of bliss. ‘Chinese carry-out? Or… do you fancy a stroll down to Galway Bay?’
Galway Bay won hands (and pink fluorescent cast) down, so we set out into the deliciously cool evening for the short walk up the street and around the corner to our favorite Annapolis hang-out.
‘What happened to you?’ Fintan wanted to know when we appeared at the door.
‘Metro crash,’ I told the restaurant owner simply.
‘My God,’ he said, fumbling the pile of menus he was carrying. ‘Tonight, drinks are on the house. The usual?’
Fintan seated us in a quiet, two-table alcove near the front of the popular neighborhood restaurant, then, after admiring my eye-catching cast, went off to fetch our drinks – a frozen margarita for Paul and a mojito for me.
Paul spread a napkin in his lap. ‘So, his name is Zan. What’s Zan short for? Alexander?’
‘I don’t know. He just signs the letters Zan.’
‘Zandros,’ Paul mused on. ‘Zander. Maybe even Zane. Last name?’
I shook my head. ‘Never. The man was married, I discovered very early on, and not to Lilith.’
‘Aha! The plot thickens.’
Just then, a waiter appeared with our drinks. After he took our dinner order, Paul tested his frozen margarita, licked salt off his lips and pronounced it good. ‘Without a last name to go on, it’s going to be pretty tough tracking this Zan person down.’
‘I know. We’re back to Mr Skip No Last Name again,’ I complained, taking a sip of what turned out to be a very tasty mojito, heavy on the lime and crushed mint, just the way I like it.
‘Speaking of Skip, how do you think he’s going to feel if he shows up asking for his Garfinkel bag and finds you’ve gone pawing through it?’
‘Well, I hope he’ll understand that the only reason I was pawing through it, to use your term, is so I could find out who to return the bag to. Besides, you encouraged me to do it, if you recall.’ I stared at the decorative window etched with a map of Ireland that separated our table from the hostess station on the other side of the wall. ‘If only Skip had told me his last name, instead of…’ I took another sip of mojito. ‘Well, that’s water under the bridge now. But, oh my God, Paul, he was so horribly injured, I can’t believe he would have survived.’