Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

for another job and figured I could do that while I waited for Gale to call.
    Tina was asleep in my bed, so I sat on my couch and laid the paper out on the coffee table and looked through the help wanted ads. There wasn’t much to choose from. This wasn’t the time of year to be looking for a job. But there was an ad for a dishwasher at the LeChef, the French restaurant on Job’s Lane. I knew the owner’s wife from the college. I circled the ad and closed the paper and glanced at the cover stories. A Hampton Bays teenager was arrested two nights ago and charged with running heroin from the city to Bridgehampton. An East Hampton businessman whose abandoned Lexus was found a week ago was still missing. As I skimmed the articles, I wondered if some night soon the mother of the teenager would come looking for me telling me that she had heard of me, asking for my help. Or would it be the wife of the well-respected businessman asking me to find him and bring him home safe since it was now painfully clear to her that no one else could, or would? I told myself that all that had nothing to do with me. I chanted it like a mantra. This wasn’t me. This wasn’t me. This wasn’t me.
    As I thought this I continued looking through the paper. It was always better to see it coming, even if, it turns out, it wasn’t really coming at all, even if all it turned out to be was a close call. I liked the feeling of being prepared, even if that feeling was little more than an illusion. Sometimes all it took to get through to morning was an illusion. So I read on. But I could spot nothing, so I closed the paper and folded it and thought about the fact that I had rent to pay. Then I got tired, so I put the paper down and lay back on the couch with my arms folded across my chest like a corpse and sensed the still apartment around me. I fell asleep easily and dreamed of my father, of him waving me to follow him into some unfamiliar woods. I did not follow him, just stood there and watched him go and felt the pain of his departure. Before anything more could happen I awoke to the sound my phone ringing. I scrambled to grab it quick, thinking of Tina asleep in the other room.
    I caught the phone on the second ring. “Hello.”
    “Mac.” It was Gale.
    “What’d you find?”
    “Nothing. No one came in last night or this morning with any kind of knee injury.”
    “Shit.”
    “Any news from Augie yet?”
    “No.”
    “You boys play too rough.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “Keep me posted, Mac.”
    “I will.”
    I hung up and looked toward the bedroom. Tina was standing in the doorway. She was wearing one of my tee shirts, her long bare legs running like the two steep sides of a narrow triangle to the floor.
    “Who was that?”
    “Gale.”
    “From the hospital?”
    “Yeah.”
    “What did she want?”
    “She wanted to know if I’d heard from your father yet.”
    “Have you?”
    I shook my head.
    “What time is it?”
    I didn’t know. Tina turned and looked into the bedroom, at the secondhand windup clock by my bed.
    “It’s almost noon,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
    “You should put some clothes on, Tina.”
    “I went out and bought some food. You had nothing. You know, you need to keep up your strength, especially after last night.”
    Tina didn’t move from the bedroom doorway. “You’re home now. Do you want me to leave? Do you want me to go back to Lizzie’s?”
    “I’m going back out,” I said. “I need you to wait for Augie’s call.”
    She nodded. “Okay. Did you find whomever it was you were looking for?”
    “Not yet.”
    “You look tired.”
    “Tina, put something on, please.”
    She waited a moment before turning impatiently and going into the bedroom. A minute later she came out with jeans on and the tee shirt tucked in. Her limbs were lanky, her torso narrow, like a girl’s, but in places she was a woman, the worst place being her mind. I ignored her obvious bralessness. My mind had wandered back to my dream and for now I was stuck there.
    She looked at me for a moment, studying my face closely.
    “You were thinking about your father, weren’t you? I can tell by that look on your face.”
    We had gotten to know each other too well during our three months crowded together under the same roof. I had taken lately to acting a little cold toward her, to keep at a distance. It seemed the more my guard was up, the more she needed to try to bypass it.
    “I was just remembering a dream I