“Sofia and I got engaged right before I left for my summer assignment at Ramstein. We were still really young, and I was worried about losing her. She was meeting all these cool people at college. Every high school couple I knew had already broken up — or had a shotgun marriage because they were pregnant. Anyway, I bought an engagement ring from a pawnshop of all places.” He narrowed his eyes. “Do you have any trouble with alcohol, Wilde?”
“No.”
“Drugs? Any kind of addiction?”
Wilde shifted in the booth. “No.”
Carter smiled. “I’m glad to hear that. I had a bout with alcohol, though I’m twenty-eight years sober. But I can’t blame that. Not really. The long and short of it? I had a crazy summer in Europe. I figured it was my last chance as a single man, and stupidly I thought I should sow my wild oats or whatever nonsense we men used to justify acting out that way. That summer was the only time I cheated on Sofia, and sometimes, even after all these years, I look over at her sleeping and feel guilty. But I did it. One-night stands, we used to call it. Heck, I think people probably still call them one-night stands, don’t they?”
He looked at Wilde as though he expected him to answer.
“I guess,” Wilde said to keep the conversation going.
“Right. You married, Wilde?”
“No.”
“Not my business, sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Anyway, I slept with eight girls the summer of 1980. Yep, I know the exact number. How pathetic is that? Other than Sofia, they are the only women I’ve had sex with in my entire life. So the obvious conclusion here is that your mother is one of those eight women.”
Conceived during a one-night stand, Wilde thought. Did that matter? Wilde couldn’t see how. Perhaps there was some irony in the fact that Wilde was most comfortable in short-term situations or, more bluntly, one-night stands. He’d had girlfriends, women he tried to connect with, but somehow it never quite worked out.
“Those eight women,” Wilde said.
“What about them?”
“Do you have their names or addresses?”
“No.” Carter rubbed his chin, his eyes turning upward. “I only remember a few first names, sorry.”
“Did any ever reach out to you?”
“You mean after? No. I never heard from any of them again. You have to remember. This was 1980. None of us had mobile phones or emails. I didn’t know their last names, they didn’t know mine. Do you ever listen to Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band?”
“Not really.”
A wistful smile crossed his face. “Oh man, you’re missing out. I bet you’ve heard ‘Night Moves’ or ‘Turn the Page.’ Anyway, in ‘Night Moves,’ Bob sings, ‘I used her, she used me, but neither one cared.’ That’s what it was like for me that summer.”
“So they were all one-night stands?”
“Well, one girl was a weekend fling, I guess. In Barcelona. So that was more like three nights.”
“And they only knew you as Daniel,” Wilde said.
“I go by Danny mostly, but yeah.”
“No last names. No addresses.”
“Right.”
“Did you tell them you were a soldier or where you were stationed?”
He thought about that. “I may have.”
“But even if you did,” Wilde continued, “Ramstein is huge. Over fifty thousand Americans.”
“You’ve been?”
Wilde nodded. He had spent three weeks there training for a secret mission in northern Iraq. “So if a young woman got pregnant and she wanted to find the father and came to the base looking for a Danny or Daniel—”
“Hold up,” Carter interrupted. “Do you think your mother looked for me?”
“I don’t know. It’s 1980. She’s pregnant. Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe she was just one-night-standing too. Maybe she had one-night stands with a bunch of guys and didn’t know or care who the father was. I don’t know.”
“But you’re right,” Carter said, his face seeming to drain of color. “Even if she tried to find me, she would never have been able to locate me at that base. And I was only there for eight weeks. I may have even been back stateside by the time she’d learned that she was pregnant.”
Nancy came back with their sandwiches. She placed one platter in front of Carter, one in front of Wilde. Her eyes danced between the two. Sensing the mood, Nancy hurried away.
“Eight women,” Wilde said. “How many of them were Americans?”
“What difference does that make?” Then: “Oh right, I see. You were left in the woods in New Jersey. It would stand to reason that your mother would be American.”
Wilde waited.
“Only one. I mostly met the girls in Spain. It was like spring break for all kinds of Europeans back then.”
Wilde tried to keep his breathing even. “What do you remember about her?”
Carter picked up a single french fry, held it between his thumb and forefinger. He stared down at it as though it might give him the answer. “I think her name was Susan.”
“Okay,” Wilde said. “Where did you meet Susan?”
“A discotheque in Fuengirola. That’s a town on the Costa del Sol. I remember saying hi to her and being surprised when I heard her accent because there were so few Americans who vacationed down there.”
“So you’re at the disco,” Wilde continued. “Try to think back. Who were you with?”
“Some guys from my regiment, I guess. I don’t remember. Sorry. They may have been there. We’d bounce from disco to disco.”
“Did Susan tell you where she was from?”
Carter shook his head. “In fact, I can’t even say for sure she was American. Like I said, we rarely saw young American girls down there. It wasn’t a spot for them back in 1980. But her accent was clearly American, so I’m guessing she was from here. I also had a lot to drink. I remember dancing with her. That’s what you did. You danced hard and sweaty and then you left.”
“Where did you two go?”
“A couple of us had chipped in for a room at a hotel.”
“Do you remember the name of the hotel?”
“No, but it was right near the nightclub. A high-rise. I remember it was round.”
“Round?”
“Yeah. It was a round high-rise. Distinctive. Our room had a balcony. Don’t ask me how I remember that, but I do. If I looked at pictures of hotels online, I could probably figure it out. If it’s still there.”
Like that would make a difference, Wilde thought. Like he could fly over to Spain and visit some hotel and ask them whether a young American woman named Susan had a one-night stand in their hotel in 1980.
“Do you remember when exactly this happened?”
“You mean like the date?”
“Whatever, yes.”
“I think she was later in my stay? Like the sixth or seventh girl, so probably August. But that’s a guess.”
“Was she staying at this round high-rise too?”
He made a face. “I don’t know. I doubt it.”
“Who was she traveling with?”
“I don’t know.”
“When you started talking to her, was she with anyone?”
He slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry, Wilde. I don’t remember.”
“What did she look like?”
“Brown hair. Pretty. But...” He shrugged and said that he was sorry again.
They talked about other possibilities. An Ingrid from Amsterdam. Rachel or Racquel from Manchester. Anna from Berlin. An hour passed. Then another. They eventually ate the sandwiches and the now-cold french fries. Daniel Carter’s phone buzzed several times. He ignored it. They talked, though Carter did the majority of the speaking. Wilde wasn’t one for opening up.
When the phone buzzed yet again, Daniel Carter signaled Nancy for the bill. Wilde said that he would pay it, but Carter shook him off. “I would say it’s the least I could do, but that would be too insulting.”