It was a simple-looking building: faded slate, glossy with Glassteel; probably the top of some residential building that went up in the 1950s or ’60s. Only three stories rose above the ocean, the first of them slightly higher than usual. It was one of a series of identical homes in the same building, and they all shared a wide, solid bridge, white polished steps descending from their doors to the walkway lined with waist-high lamps in the shape of old lanterns. It was a quiet part of town. A few bridges away were the buildings and boats where what was left of NYU operated, but these bridges felt private, like a gated community. A little ways away, Simone saw a woman pushing a stroller. She felt the gel in her coat warm up in response to an involuntary shiver.
She walked up the steps to the door of the townhouse and rang the bell. No answer. So the servants had cleared out, too—if they had had any. Simone had assumed a woman like Linnea had a score of attendants, but there was no real reason to think that. She rang the bell again, but still no answer, and then tried the door. Locked, which wasn’t surprising. No alarm panel visible, and it looked like a run-of-the-mill electronic lock.
Simone looked around, searching for the usual spots people hid their spare key. There was no doormat. There were small decorative sconces on the wall on either side of the door, sort of scallop-shaped, but no key tucked into either of them. She walked back down the steps to the bridge. She looked at the closest of the lanterns built into the bridge. It was a simple thing, with a metal-cone top and a tube of fogged glass. Simone glanced around to make sure no one was looking, then lifted the top off the lantern. There was no key inside the glass part, but when she looked inside the actual metal top, there was a slim, plastic card, taped so it wouldn’t fall down. Simone smiled. She took the card and replaced the metal top, then hurried back up the steps and slid it into the lock, which opened with a click.
Inside it already had the stillness of a place abandoned. Simone recognized it in the way she could hear the waves outside, or how the air smelled overly cool. She called out “Hello” just in case, but no one responded, so she began her search.
None of the lights was on, and Simone didn’t feel a need to change that. Silvery light came in through silk shades and a skylight on the roof. It was a nice house. It had been completely remodeled recently, by the look of it. There was no stairway to the flooded parts of the building, but a large spiral stairway went up. The color scheme was seashell pink and white, and a large tapestry of some Mediterranean city with a vibrant blue ocean dominated the living room.
Next, she searched the kitchen and then the bedrooms upstairs. Linnea and Henry seemed to have separate bedrooms—his plain with a touchdesk; hers white and pink with oversized sheets and a vanity with a few photos tucked in the sides of the mirror. Some makeup was missing, and her closet was empty. Nothing under the bed, no stray notes or clues. Even the wastebasket was empty. Linnea had definitely taken off. Simone sat down at the vanity and opened the drawers, one by one, rifling through perfume samples and hairbrushes for some real sign of where Linnea could have gone, but there was nothing. She stared at the photos stuck into the vanity mirror. Why hadn’t these been taken? She tugged at one, but it was sealed to the frame. If she pulled any harder, she’d tear it. So Linnea had cleared out, fast enough she couldn’t bring this mirror.
There were three photos. One of Henry and Linnea, but much younger. This one was on the right side of the frame, probably more for show than genuine sentiment. On the left were two older photos: one of a couple and a little girl, about forty years ago, judging by the clothes. Simone bent it slightly to look at the back. “Me, Mom & Dad,” it said in elegant cursive. The other photo was of a young Linnea, holding a small toddler in her lap. Simone furrowed her brow. Linnea had never mentioned a kid, and when Simone had done the usual background check on her and Henry, nothing about kids had come up. She bent this photo forward, too, and looked at the back. “Me & baby M,” it said. Simone shrugged. A niece or nephew, maybe?
She let the photo go, now with a slight crease in it, and sighed. There were no obvious signs of where Linnea had gone. But there was still more to explore. She went back to Henry’s room and rifled through his touchdesk but didn’t find anything useful there. The bathrooms were all squeaky clean, and there were no notes in the pockets of any of Henry’s jackets or pants in the laundry room. There was a study another flight up, but the touchdesk was clean, except for some notes comparing the costs of tickets to the mainland by ferry and a few planes. Passage to the mainland wasn’t too difficult; there was one ferry that came in every morning and left every night. It was a long voyage—just over a day—but the ferry wasn’t cheap and didn’t hold more than a hundred, so it took some planning. It was why the mainland government couldn’t keep a steady grip on the city for more than a day or two. If you wanted to get away on the fly, you needed to hire a small airplane out of the Ohio, a decommissioned aircraft carrier that served as the city’s one airport, or a private boat sturdy enough to make it to the mainland and with radar up-to-date enough not to hit anything getting there. There were huge storms that rolled between the city and the mainland, tearing up any small boats or planes stupid enough to be in their way. And there were other, smaller cities between New York and the mainland, empty of even ghosts, with buildings that rose up to just below the water like hands eager to pull down anything they could grab.
The next flight up was an immaculate guest bedroom and what seemed to be a large storage room. It was the one room in the house where Simone needed to turn on the lights, but it was mostly just shelves lined with plastic boxes labeled “clothes,” “blankets,” and the like. Simone looked at the dust on them to see if any had been gone through recently, but they had all clearly been closed for at least a month or two. Except one. It was a plastic box on the floor, in the far corner of the room. It was empty, but there were handprints in the dust on top. Simone picked it up and turned it around, looking for impressions of what had been inside. There was a peculiar smell, like chlorine and smoke. And in one corner a whitish residue. Foam?
Linnea and Henry hadn’t seemed like drug users at all, much less MouthFoamers. But the box had definitely held Foam. The smell of it was unmistakable and brought back the memory of the one time she’d tried it, after her dad died and she found an old photo of her mom in his stuff. It had made her feel not numb, and not happy, either, but content. Like she’d transcended regular emotions and found some sort of Zen, Nirvana, inner-peace crap, and the ocean was a lake and the city was an opening flower, wilting as it floated. Then, a day later, she’d woken up in her dad’s bed, his old clothes woven around her like a nest, and the weird, sticky drool that the drug got its name from sticking her face to a jacket. And she felt not at all at peace. Not at all enlightened. Like she’d forgotten something important, like she’d forgotten how to be happy, had forgotten if it was even really possible to be happy. She knew then she couldn’t do it again. It was too good, too easy, and she knew she would just slip away like a stone into the water, and she was half terrified and half thrilled at how that idea made her feel. For a year, she’d avoided anywhere they bought and sold the stuff.