“Did they steal something? I’ve warned you about letting these girls you barely know into your place, Jimmy. They see something shiny, and that’s-”
“Damn it, will you listen?” he shouted at her.
Carole scowled, stepping back from the door, about to close it. “Why don’t you come back when you figure out what the hell your problem is?”
Jim slammed a palm against the door, preventing her from closing it. Alarm flared in her eyes, and he could see her trying to decide if he was secretly a psychopath or a rapist or both.
“Please, just…,” he started, forcing himself to calm down, to take even breaths. “You really don’t know who I’m talking about? When I say ‘Jenny and Holly,’ you don’t know who I mean?”
Carole seemed to sense his genuine distress at last and take pity on him. “Look, Jimmy, I liked that one girl last year, the one who works in the mayor’s office? But it’s not like I invite all your flings in for tea. If you want me to try to remember these girls, you could at least describe them. But short answer is no, I haven’t seen or heard anyone on the stairs today except for you and Oliver.”
A dreadful chill had begun to settle into his bones, and he felt weariness and surrender waiting for him at the edges of his consciousness like thieves lurking in shadows. “Thank you,” he said. “Thanks. I’m sorry I…”
But he didn’t finish. Instead he backed through the door, turned, and ran down the stairs toward their shared exit out onto the street. What could he possibly have said?
Tallulah’s thrummed with clinking plates and glasses and the buzz of conversation. The aroma of coffee hung like a thick, warm cloud inside the restaurant; Jenny had always claimed to get a caffeine high just from walking into the place.
Jim walked like a man spoiling for a fight, but he couldn’t help it. His hands were curled into fists, and he clenched his jaw, the muscles in his neck and shoulders drawn tight. The hostess, Miranda, had bottle-red hair and a top cut so low her breasts seemed about to pop out and say hello. She smiled as he approached. “Wow, Jim, you look so serious,” she said, her voice almost teasing. “Someone key your car or something?”
He almost couldn’t get the question out, that cold dread filling him with a terrible certainty. “Has Jenny been in today?”
Miranda frowned. “Jenny?”
“Yes, Jenny!” he said, slamming both hands down on the hostess’s podium. “My wife, goddamn it! Have you seen…” He faltered, emotion welling up in him, feeling utterly lost. “Oh, Christ, Miranda. Please tell me you’ve seen my wife.”
But Miranda’s eyes had narrowed to cold slits. The dozen or so people waiting to be seated had moved to a safe distance, eyeing him warily, but Miranda only stared contempt in his direction. “You never told me you had a wife, Jim,” she said, biting off each word. “Don’t you think you should’ve told me?”
He shook his head. “This isn’t real. This isn’t my life.”
Miranda shouted something at him as he staggered out the door, but he didn’t hear. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy, unfamiliar key ring, only vaguely noticing that it was different before he bent over a metal trash can and vomited. Blinking, trying to catch his breath, he stared down into the can, grateful that he couldn’t tell what it was he’d just thrown up… because he knew it wasn’t blueberry pancakes.
Spitting on the sidewalk, he turned the corner and hurried around to the back of the building, where the reserved parking spaces that came with the apartment were located. It must have been nearly six o’clock by now. The shadows had grown long and the sky had the strange, ethereal quality of autumn evenings, almost like a dream.
Jim wished he could believe this was all a dream, but he knew he was awake.
Awake, yeah. But sane? He didn’t know the answer to that.
He stopped short, staring at the silver Mercedes parked in his spot. Jim drove a six-year-old blue Audi. His hand closed around his car keys, and the unfamiliarity of their shape and heft struck him again. He opened his hand and looked down at the logo on the key ring. Mercedes.
Jim made up his mind then. He gritted his teeth as he clicked the button to unlock the car. The Mercedes chirped.
“Fine,” he said as he slid into the driver’s seat and plunged the key into the ignition. “I don’t care.”
And he didn’t. The details didn’t matter. Only Jenny and Holly mattered. It was almost as if they had been erased from the world, but Jim knew-as sure as he knew that the road beneath his tires was solid and that the Earth revolved around the sun-that people couldn’t be deleted from existence. Either he was crazy, or something impossible had happened.
It was time to find out which.
The knot in Jim’s gut twisted tighter as he drove over to Jonathan’s apartment in the Back Bay. With one hand on the wheel and only occasional glances at the road, he scanned the contacts list on his cell phone, thinking he would call friends, try to find someone who would end the nightmare, tell him it was all a joke. Somehow, he had to fight the growing certainty that it was neither a joke nor a dream, that either reality or his own sanity had been abruptly and brutally altered. Now that he was away from the apartment, he could pretend it was possible that he had been drugged, that someone had come in and erased all traces of her from his life. And though that idea horrified him, it was somehow preferable to the alternatives.
But now he saw that something had happened to his cell phone contacts list. Names were missing-Jenny’s best friend, Trixie Newcomb, who had become Jim’s friend as well. Matt and Gretchen Kelleher, whom Jenny had met at the gym and who had become their go-to dinner companions-the one couple they really seemed to get along with. The office number for the Atherton School, where Jenny taught.
In place of those listings there were new contacts, names that were unfamiliar to him, and it chilled Jim to wonder who they were and how their information had gotten into his cell phone. If he phoned them and introduced himself, what would they say to him? How well would they know him, these people whose names he did not know?
But not all of his familiar contacts were gone-only the ones he had known through, or because of, Jenny.
A car braked too fast in front of him, and he stopped fast enough for the tires to skid, cutting the wheel and slewing to the right. Another night he would have shot the guy the finger or at least muttered some curse under his breath, but his focus was on the phone instead of the road. The car drove on and Jim accelerated. He had driven this route to Jonathan’s apartment hundreds of times. One hand on the wheel, he navigated on autopilot, scanning the list, finding Steve Menken, and hitting CALL.
Menken answered on the third ring. “Jimbo! To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I need to ask you a question,” Jim said.
“Oooh. Sounds ominous.”
“It is.”
A hesitation on the line. Jim could practically see the smile fading from Menken’s face. They had known each other for more than a decade, running in the same circles in Boston’s artistic community. Menken worked at Hiram Davis Press in Cambridge, editing nonfiction from biographies to art books. He and Jim had become friends without ever managing to work on a project together-Hiram Davis couldn’t afford Jim Banks. They had bonded over a mutual love of beer, old science-fiction movies, and Boston sports teams-common enough interests for men in the city, but not in their line of work.
“You can ask me anything, Jim,” Menken said. “What’s going on? You sound awful.”
“This is… this may sound weird. Do you remember Jenny and Holly?”
Menken paused in thought before replying. “I don’t think I know anyone named Holly. Are you talking about Jenny Garza?”
Jim went numb. “No. Not Jenny Garza.”
“You’re gonna have to give me something more to go on,” Menken said.