The waitress came and slid a basket of bread between them. Jim waited for her to walk away, then he took a piece and tore off a chunk. “Go on,” he said.
Trix hesitated, looked at the door, and then squeezed her eyes shut again. “All right. Short version. I’m sorry, it’s just so… Jenny’s the only person I’ve ever told this story, and now when it matters, it’s hard to figure out how to explain.”
Jim said nothing, just listening. From a speaker set into the ceiling above them, Sinatra sang about coffee. He chewed the bread and found it too dry to swallow, so he chased it down with a sip of water, then more whiskey.
Opening her eyes, Trix seemed to have come to a decision. “I’ll tell you what my grandmother told me. She said Boston had an Oracle, like in ancient Greece. This woman knew everything about the city.” Trix shook her head. “No, it was more than that. It was like… I don’t remember the words my grandmother used, but it’s like she shares a soul with the city. She knows every brick, right? Every corner. Something happens in Boston, she knows, whether it’s a secret or not. You know that saying about when a tree falls in a forest when there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a noise? The Oracle would hear. So people go to her. If your kid runs away and is still in the city, the Oracle can find him. If someone stole your car and dumped it, she can tell you where they left it. She knows where all the bodies are buried, literally.”
Jim pushed back into the red vinyl seat. “So how are there still unsolved murders?”
“You think the cops are going to ask ‘the Oracle of Boston’? Seriously?” Trix said. “It’d be like calling a psychic hot line. They wouldn’t risk their careers.”
Jim narrowed his eyes, staring at her. “Jesus. And you really believe in this?”
Trix sipped her beer, glaring at him. “I have to. It’s our only hope. And it worked once before.”
“It did?”
“Just listen. My grandmother took me to that spot, and we asked for help finding my grandfather. Then she brought me here. Her friend Celia had told her this was the place-that you asked for help and then you waited at De Pasquale Brothers, which was the name of this place back then. I cried a lot that afternoon, waiting here. Not my grandmother. Her eyes were red but she didn’t cry. The woman looked like her face had turned to stone.” Trix shook her head, gazing at the wall as though she could see through it, back across the years.
“And?” Jim said. “Did she come? The Oracle?”
Trix reached up and pushed a matted lock of pink hair from her eyes. “Do you think we’d be sitting here if she didn’t?”
The waitress arrived and slid the metal pizza tray onto the table. Jim and Trix stared at each other, both drinking, as the woman served them each a slice and then asked if there was anything else she could get them. They both muttered noncommittally, and the waitress hurried off to her next customer.
“You found your grandfather?”
Trix took a swig that drained the remains of her Heineken. “He’d been a tailor in Chinatown in his thirties and forties. He was walking up and down Harrison Avenue trying to figure out why the business wasn’t there anymore. He thought he was late for work and had gotten turned around.”
“And that was where this Oracle woman had told you he would be?”
Trix glanced at the door. That was answer enough for Jim.
“This is nuts,” he said.
She bit into her pizza, chewed, and swallowed that first bite. “If you have a better idea… if you have the first clue what the fuck we should do about this…” She laughed a little crazily and touched her hair. “Please share. Because I don’t think calling Missing Persons is going to bring Jenny and Holly back.”
As Trix ate, Jim stared at the pizza cooling on his plate. Perhaps two full minutes passed before he picked it up and started to eat, feeling with every bite like he was somehow betraying his wife and daughter by feeding himself. He should have been out on the street, visiting every place they had ever been, or back at home waiting for them to return. But inside, he knew that was foolish.
Trix caught him staring at her. “What?” she demanded.
“Just trying to adjust to your new look.”
Trix shook her hair back. “Me, too. You know, I’m not the only one who looks different.”
“What, me?”
She tapped her eyebrow. “Your scar, from the night you and Jenny went to the U2 concert? It’s gone.”
Jim reached up and ran his finger across the place where the scar ought to be, but he couldn’t muster shock or even surprise. He’d earned the scar in a quick exchange of fists with an asshole who’d groped Jenny’s ass at the concert. There had been blood in his eyes-the guy wore a ring with a Celtic design-and by the time he’d wiped it away they were all being thrown out. But that had never happened, so there was no scar.
“You’re in better shape, too,” Trix told him. “Leaner, maybe a little better built. In the car, when you hugged me, I could tell.”
Now that she mentioned it, he did feel different. For several seconds he studied her again, then he flagged the waitress as she went by. “Another whiskey, please.”
“Do you want another Heineken, honey?” the waitress asked Trix.
Trix laughed uneasily. “Damn right.”
And so they ate and drank and waited, talking very little. There was nothing they could have said that would not have seemed either redundant or ridiculously trivial.
But when the glasses were empty and they’d eaten their fill-and even after they had ordered coffee and the dregs were cooling-no one had come over to talk to them, and no one Trix recognized had come through the front door. The restaurant had a bar that ran its length, right across from the booth where they sat, and from what Jim could tell there weren’t even any single women there.
The waitress had brought the check, but they weren’t in a hurry to pay, though they could feel her silently willing them to give up the table. He had to fight the urge to be up and out of there, to be doing something-anything-to find out what had happened to Jenny and Holly. What would he do, Google “vanishing people”? He would get crazy Bermuda Triangle stories and Amelia Earhart.
Are you sure? he wondered, and realized he wasn’t.
Another twenty minutes went by, and the waitress had obviously become uncomfortable. If he and Trix had been talking, they wouldn’t have drawn any real attention, but even the bartender kept glancing at them uneasily because they just sat there, waiting.
“Are you two sure I can’t get you another cup of coffee or another drink?” the waitress asked.
Jim looked at Trix, who shook her head. “We’re good, thanks,” he told the waitress.
But this time the woman didn’t go away. She hesitated before speaking.
“Are you waiting for someone? It’s just, you keep looking at the door.”
Jim stared at Trix a minute, running his forefinger over the rim of his coffee cup. Then he started to stand. “We’re going,” he said. “I’m sorry we took up the table so long.”
“No, no,” the waitress said. “No one’s waiting. I just wondered if you needed anything.”
“Jim,” Trix said, staring at him. “Let’s… please let’s just get another cup of coffee. A little while longer, okay?”
He glanced at her and then the waitress. “All right,” he said, sitting down. “Decaf.”
Trix asked for a cappuccino, and when the waitress left them alone, she slid back her chair. “I’ve got to use the bathroom,” she said.
“Hey,” he said as she started to walk away. “One more cup and then we go.”
Trix froze, looking back at him. “And then what?”
Jim stared at his empty cup. “Maybe we wake up in the morning and it’s all back to normal.”
“Like Scrooge?” Trix said, and it was obvious she did not believe it for a second. “Yeah. Maybe.”
She headed off toward the back of the restaurant, where a sign painted on the wall pointed the way to the restrooms. Jim fiddled with his cup until the waitress came and refilled it with decaf. As she walked away he poured a little cream and took a sip, flinching at the burn of the hot liquid.