The ARNOW bell went unanswered, and I didn’t let myself in. I could have, and wouldn’t have needed my tools, as Carolyn and I have keys to each other’s stores and apartments. But I figured it would be quicker to go looking for her, and I found her in the second place I tried, a bar called Henrietta Hudson’s. When I went in I got a whole batch of looks ranging from wary to hostile, and then Carolyn spotted me and called me by name and the other women relaxed, knowing it was safe to ignore me.
Carolyn was at the bar drinking Scotch and listening to a willowy woman with improbable red hair. Her name was Tracey and I’d met her before, along with her lover, Djinn, who could have posed as her twin except that her equally unconvincing hair color was ash blond. You rarely saw one without the other, but they had evidently had a falling-out, which was why Tracey was knocking back shots of Jaegermeister and telling Carolyn her troubles, which seemed to be legion.
Carolyn introduced me, and Tracey was polite enough, but when it was clear that I wasn’t just passing through she turned gracefully away from Carolyn and joined a conversation on her other side. “Move down a little ways, Bern,” Carolyn suggested. “That’ll give us more room.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Am I interrupting something?”
“You are,” she said, “which means I owe you a big one. It’s all over between her and Djinn, and she’s about one drink away from inviting me to go home with her, and I’m about two drinks away from agreeing. Where are you going?”
“Home,” I said, “so you can have a chance to get on with your life.”
“Get back on your stool, Bern. The last thing I want is to go home with her.”
“Why? I think she’s gorgeous.”
“No argument there, Bern. She’s a beauty. So’s Djinn, and when they broke up forever a year ago last November it was Djinn who told me her troubles and went home with me, and within a week the two of them were back together again and it was months before Tracey would speak to me. They break up three times a year and they always get back together again. Who needs it? That’s not what I’m looking for these days, a quick little tumble in the feathers. I want something meaningful, something that might lead somewhere. Like you and Ilona might have, from the way you were talking this morning.” My face must have shown something, because hers darkened. “Uh-oh,” she said. “I stepped in it, didn’t I? If I stopped to think, I would have wondered what you were doing in a dyke bar at one in the morning. What happened to the course of true love? It’s not running smooth?”
“It’s not running,” I said. “Can we go somewhere and have a drink?”
“We’re in a bar, Bern. We can have a drink right here.”
“Someplace a little quieter.”
“The tables are quieter. You want to take a table?”
“Someplace really quiet,” I said, “and where I won’t be the only person in the room with a Y chromosome.”
“Let’s see. There’s Omphalos on Christopher Street. Everyone there’s got a Y chromosome.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Not Slumgullion’s, that’s all college kids and noise. Oh, I know. There’s that place around the corner on Leroy Street. They don’t get a gay crowd or a straight crowd. Nobody goes there. It’s always dead.”
“It sounds perfect,” I said. “I hope we can get in.”
It was just us and the bartender. He gave us our drinks and left us alone, and I brought Carolyn up to date.
“That’s just so strange about Ilona,” she said. “The last you saw of her…”
“She was sleeping like a lamb.”
“And you never spoke to her afterward? No, you called and there was nobody home. And then you went there, and there was really nobody home. It’s hard to believe she moved out, Bern. Are you sure she wasn’t downstairs doing her laundry?”
“She took everything, Carolyn.”
“Well, maybe everything was dirty. You know how a person’ll put off doing the laundry, and the first thing you know there’s nothing to wear, so you do it all at once.”
“And she took the dry cleaning the same day,” I said. “And all her shoes to the shoemaker.”
“I guess it’s pretty farfetched, huh?”
“And her books to be rebound, and her pictures to be framed, and-”
“I get the point, Bern. It was a dumb idea.”
“All she left,” I said, “is a little Scotch tape residue on the wall, where the map was hanging. And her fingerprints, maybe, but for all I know she wiped the place down before she took off.”
“Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask you one. Why would she disappear like that?”
“I don’t know, Bern. Was it something you said?”
“Very funny.”
“You know what I mean. What was she like afterward?”
“Sad. But she said lovemaking always makes her sad.”
“Right away? I don’t get sad until the next morning, when I wake up and find out who I went home with.” She shuddered at a memory and chased it with a sip of Scotch. “If it always makes her sad,” she said, “maybe that explains why it took her two weeks to get around to it. But I still don’t get the disappearing act.”
“Neither do I.”
“Do you think she could have been abducted?”
“I thought of that. But if you were going to kidnap her, why pack up all her things?”
“That way she disappears without a trace.”
“What do you mean?”
“When’s the last day of the month, Tuesday? Wednesday whoever took her calls her landlord and tells him he can rent the place, because she’s not coming back. So he looks and everything’s gone but the furniture, and you said you thought that came with the place?”
“It didn’t look like anything she would have picked out for herself.”
“So she’s gone, bag and baggage, and he gets a new tenant in there and that’s it. Gone without a trace.”
“Why not just leave her stuff? Then no one would even know she was missing. I wouldn’t even have a clue she’d moved out if there’d been clothes in the closet and all the other stuff where it had been last night.”
“So that means she must have left voluntarily.”
“I would think so,” I said. “And she packed everything because she wanted to keep it. Maybe she was behind in her rent or skipping out on a lease, maybe that’s why she left so abruptly, but there has to be more to it than that. Why didn’t she call me? Even if she wasn’t going to meet me at the movies, why stand me up? Why not spend a quarter and clue me in?”
“Maybe she didn’t know how to break it to you.”
“Break what to me?”
“If she’d broken it,” she said, “then we’d know. Bern, she must have done her own packing. Anybody else would have packed up the sheets and blankets along with everything else.”
“Whereas she’d leave them behind because she regarded them as contaminated?”
“She would know if they came with the apartment, and sometimes they do in furnished rooms or sublets. What about the kitchen stuff?”
“There was a two-burner hot plate and tabletop refrigerator. I didn’t notice any pots or pans.”
“She probably ate out all the time.”
“As far as I know, all she ever ate was popcorn. And half of an eclair.” I shrugged. “I didn’t check to see if there was anything in the fridge. Maybe I should have. I had a slice of pizza for lunch and popcorn for dinner.”
“That’s terrible, Bern.”
“Well, I had a real breakfast,” I said. “At least I think I did. It’s hard to remember.”
“We should get you something to eat.”
“We should get me something to drink,” I said, and carried our glasses back to the bar.
A little later she said, “Bernie, I keep thinking that I ought to tell you to go easy on the booze. And then another voice tells me to let you drink all you want.”
“That second voice,” I said, “is the voice of truth and reason.”
“I don’t know about that, Bern. You’re putting a lot of alcohol into an empty stomach.”
“That’s a good place for it,” I said. “Anyway, I wouldn’t call it empty.” I patted the organ in question. “Popcorn takes up a lot of space,” I said. “If you want to fill a stomach, you can’t beat popcorn.”