The Leftovers

whatever was going to happen next.
    *   *   *
    NOTHING HAPPENED.
    As the weeks limped by, the sense of immediate crisis began to dissipate. People got restless hiding out in their houses, marinating in ominous speculation. Tom started heading out after dinner, joining a bunch of his high school friends at the Canteen, a dive bar in Stonewood Heights that wasn’t particularly diligent about ferreting out fake IDs. Every night was like a combination Homecoming Weekend and Irish wake, all sorts of unlikely people milling around, buying rounds and trading stories about absent friends and acquaintances. Three members of their graduating class were among the missing, not to mention Mr. Ed Hackney, their universally despised vice principal, and a janitor everybody called Marbles.
    Nearly every time Tom set foot in the Canteen, a new piece got added to the mosaic of loss, usually in the form of some obscure person he hadn’t thought about for years: Dave Keegan’s Jamaican housekeeper, Yvonne; Mr. Boundy, a junior high substitute teacher whose bad breath was the stuff of legend; Giuseppe, the crazy Italian guy who used to own Mario’s Pizza Plus before the surly Albanian dude took over. One night in early December, Matt Testa sidled up while Tom was playing darts with Paul Erdmann.
    “Hey,” he said, in that grim voice people used when discussing October 14th. “Remember Jon Verbecki?”
    Tom tossed his dart a little harder than he’d meant to. It sailed high and wide, almost missing the board altogether.
    “What about him?”
    Testa shrugged in a way that made his reply unnecessary.
    “Gone.”
    Paul stepped up to the tape mark on the floor. Squinting like a jeweler, he zipped his dart right into the middle of the board, just an inch or so above the bullseye and a little to the left.
    “Who’s gone?”
    “This was before your time,” Testa explained. “Verbecki moved away the summer after sixth grade. To New Hampshire.”
    “I knew him all the way back in preschool,” Tom said. “We used to have playdates. I think we went to Six Flags once. He was a nice kid.”
    Matt nodded respectfully. “His cousin knows my cousin. That’s how I found out.”
    “Where was he?” Tom asked. This was the obligatory question. It seemed important, though it was hard to say why. No matter where the person was when it happened, the location always struck him as eerie and poignant.
    “At the gym. On one of the ellipticals.”
    “Shit.” Tom shook his head, imagining a suddenly empty exercise machine, the handles and pedals still moving as if of their own accord, Verbecki’s final statement. “It’s hard to picture him at the gym.”
    “I know.” Testa frowned, as if something didn’t add up. “He was kind of a pussy, right?”
    “Not really,” Tom said. “I think he was just a little sensitive or something. His mother used to have to cut the labels out of his clothes so they wouldn’t drive him crazy. I remember in preschool he used to take his shirt off all the time because he said it itched him too much. The teachers kept telling him it was inappropriate, but he didn’t care.”
    “That’s right.” Testa grinned. It was all coming back to him. “I slept over his house once. He went to bed with all the lights on, and this one Beatles song playing over and over. ‘Paperback Writer’ or some shit.”
    “‘Julia,’” Tom said. “That was his magic song.”
    “His what?” Paul fired off his last dart. It landed with an emphatic thunk, just below the bullseye.
    “That’s what he called it,” Tom explained. “If ‘Julia’ wasn’t playing, he couldn’t go to sleep.”
    “Whatever.” Testa didn’t appreciate the interruption. “He tried sleeping at my house a bunch of times, but it never worked. He’d roll out his sleeping bag, change into pj’s, brush his teeth, the whole nine yards. But then, just when we were about to go to bed, he’d lose it. His bottom lip would get all quivery and he’d be like, Dude, don’t be mad, but I gotta call my mom. ”
    Paul glanced over his shoulder as he extracted his darts from the board.
    “Why’d they move?”
    “Fuck if I know,” Testa said. “His dad probably got a new job or something. It was a long time ago. You know how it is—you swear you’re gonna keep in touch, and you do for a little while, and then you never see the guy again.” He turned to Tom. “You even remember what he looked like?”
    “Kinda.” Tom closed his eyes,