Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

were three people eating at the counter, a Hispanic couple, a tall thin black man wearing a UPS jacket, all three decades too old to have gone to high school with Sally Bruce. There were two black girls in a booth near the door. They were probably Madison’s age, drinking colas, poking each other and giggling. There was a young mother and a baby in the booth behind them, the mother looking too young to be a mother, just as Sally had been.
    The man who’d waited on me could have been seventy or older, his skin pleated and sallow, his eyes faded. I’d ordered a ginger ale, not wanting to commit to anything more elaborate, not wanting to stay if Jim didn’t show. It was five to seven and he wasn’t here yet.
    I looked out the window at the street. I was only a few blocks from my aunt Ceil’s house in Sea Gate, but that neighborhood was a world away from this one with its projects, clusters of tall brick buildings that had replaced the two- or four-story tenements that lined the blocks adjacent to the ocean when I was a kid. There were rides on one end of the island, what people thought of when they thought of Coney Island, the Cyclone, Nathan’s hot dogs, places where you could buy a hot knish, other ethnic food now as well, tacos, pizza, Thai or Chinese takeout. Walking here from the subway, I’d smelled the food, but I’d also smelled the ocean, just a block away.
    Seven o’clock. Still no Jim. I took a sip of ginger ale, checked my watch again, and then there he was. We might have been in Grand Central Station, I’d still have known him. It wasn’t the dark hair, curls covering the top of his shirt collar, some falling over his brow when he took off his baseball cap. It wasn’t his height, so tall that his shoulders were rounded, as if he were trying to make himself seem shorter. It wasn’t his complexion either, because even though he’d clearly attempted to clean up, there was so much dirt on his face I couldn’t see if he was fair or dark. It wasn’t even the pain on his face that made me know he had to be the man who’d made the call. It was something else, something that even before he got to the table, changed everything I thought I knew, tilting the world so that for a moment my stomach swirled so badly that I felt prophetic for having ordered that ginger ale.
    As he got closer, knowing me, too, I saw that what covered his face wasn’t dirt. It was grease covering his skin and his hands. He wiped one against his jeans and extended it toward me, grease in the creases on his knuckles, grease under his nails. A mechanic. When he slipped off his jacket, his name was over the pocket of his dark blue shirt, dark blue like the blue of his eyes, confusion in those eyes now, not knowing how to do this. Jim, it said over his pocket, part of the m missing.
    He tossed the jacket onto the bench opposite me and slid into the seat, his hands flat on the table, looking around for Henry, his name over his pocket as well, ordering a Coke, no ice. I noted the wedding band on his left hand, scratched and worn looking. He apparently didn’t take it off when he was working.
    “Do you want anything else?” he asked. “The burgers are pretty good here. The BLT’s not bad.”
    “Sure,” I said. “Whatever you’re having.” Buying time more than feeling hungry.
    He got up, leaned over the counter and spoke to the woman there, a net covering her bright red hair, her pink uniform stretched tight around her ample bosom, the buttons barely able to hold the stiff material closed. Then he was back, bringing the Coke with him, sitting across from me, hands around his glass, eyes down, having trouble getting started.
    “When was the last time you saw her?” I asked.
    “Sally?” As if I might mean someone else. He took one hand off the glass, lifted it, turned it over, then touched his forehead with two fingers. “High school, senior year.”
    “You were good friends?”
    “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” Then, “No, not exactly good friends.” He picked up his glass, moved it off to the side. “I thought we were. Then I thought we weren’t. Now,” lifting his hands, “now I don’t know what to think.” He took the glass again, taking a long drink this time.
    “Because?”
    “She disappeared twice, you know.”
    I nodded. I did. “Five years ago, that would be the second time.”
    This time he nodded. “She took off back in high school, too. Same thing. She just disappeared. I tried like hell