Sole Survivor

and obsessive preoccupation with family albums and loose snapshots, Joe had packed all the photos in a large cardboard box, reasoning that rubbing a wound retarded healing. He had taped the box shut and put it at the back of his only closet.
        Now, in the course of his scanning, when their faces appeared on the screen, he was unable to breathe, though he had thought he would be prepared. Michelle's publicity shot, taken by one of the Post 's staff photographers, captured her beauty but not her tenderness, not her intelligence, not her charm, not her laughter. A mere picture was so inadequate, but still it was Michelle. Still. Chrissie's photo had been snapped at a Post Christmas party for children of the paper's employees. She was caught in a grin, eyes shining. How they shone. And little Nina, who sometimes wanted it pronounced neen-ah and other times nine-ah , was smiling that slightly lopsided smile that seemed to say she knew magical secrets.
        Her smile reminded Joe of a silly song he sometimes sang to her when he put her to bed. Before he realized what he was doing, he found his breath again and heard himself whispering the words: “ Nine-ah, Neen-ah-have you seen her? Neen-ah, nine-ah, no one finah. ”
        A breaking inside him threatened his self-control.
        He clicked the mouse to get their images off the screen. But that didn't take their faces out of his mind, clearer than he had seen them since packing their photos away.
        Bending forward in the chair, covering his face, shuddering, he muffled his voice in his cold hands. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit.”
        Surf breaking on a beach, now as before, tomorrow as today. Clocks and looms. Sunrises, sunsets, phases of the moon. Machines clicking, ticking. Eternal rhythms, meaningless motions.
         The only sane response is indifference .
        He lowered his hands from his face. Sat up straight again. Tried to focus on the computer screen.
        He was concerned that he would draw attention to himself. If an old acquaintance looked in this three-walled cubicle to see what was wrong, Joe might have to explain what he was doing here, might even have to summon the strength to be sociable.
        He found the passenger manifest for which he had been searching. The Post had saved him time and effort by listing separately those among the dead who had lived in Southern California. He printed out all their names, each of which was followed by the name of the town in which the deceased resided.
         I'm not ready to talk to you yet , the photographer of graves had said to him, from which he had inferred that she would have things to tell him later.
         Don't despair. You'll see, like the others .
        See what? He had no idea.
        What could she possibly tell him that would alleviate his despair? Nothing. Nothing.
        … like the others. You'll see, like the others .
        What others?
        Only one answer satisfied him: other people who had lost loved ones on Flight 353, who had been as desolate as he was, people to whom she had already spoken.
        He wasn't going to wait for her to return to him. With Wallace Blick and associates after her, she might not live long enough to pay him a visit and quench his curiosity.
        When Joe finished sorting and stapling the printouts, he noticed the white envelope that Dewey Beemis had given him at the elevator downstairs. Joe had propped it against a box of Kleenex to the right of the computer and promptly forgotten about it.
        As a crime reporter with a frequently seen byline, he had from time to time received story tips from newspaper readers who, to put it charitably, were not well glued together. They earnestly claimed to be the terrified victims of vicious harassment by a secret cult of Satanists operating in the city's parks department, or to know of sinister tobacco-industry executives who were plotting to lace baby formula with nicotine, or to be living across the street from a nest of spiderlike extraterrestrials trying to pass as a nice family of Korean immigrants.
        Once, when cornered by a pinwheel-eyed man who insisted that the mayor of Los Angeles was not human but a robot controlled by the audio animatronics department at Disneyland, Joe had lowered his voice and said, with nervous sincerity, “Yes, we've known about that for years. But if we print a word of it, the people at Disney will kill us all.” He had spoken