Her name was Kiko, and she was the only lover who’d lasted. And yet, even with Kiko, he’d maintained his usual distance. She called him when she had a free afternoon, which happened about once a month. They met at her apartment on the Upper East Side, a place that was always immaculately clean and smelled faintly of lavender. The bedroom was small but beautifully appointed, with Kiko’s own small paintings on the pale blue walls, flower gardens that had a vaguely sensuous feel to them, though in a chilly, refrigerated sort of way. Amid these motionless blooms they “did” each other, as Kiko liked to call it, then went their separate ways.
“My father’s pretty sick,” she said.
Stark had never met Kiko’s father, nor anyone else in her family, nor any of her friends. And so it surprised him when he said, “I hope he’ll be okay,” with an unmistakable sympathy.
“He won’t be,” she said.
“It’s like that?”
“Yes.”
He had no words for her, and so walked over to the bed, leaned forward, and kissed her softly.
She looked at him quizzically. “You’re in a strange mood.”
He stepped away and continued to dress.
She watched him somberly for a moment, then cocked her head to the right, almost playfully. “By the way, there’s something I’ve never asked you. Are Asians better? I hear guys think we are.”
He stood by the window, knotting his tie. Outside, a brief autumn rain had come to an end. “I don’t rank women by ethnic group,” he told her.
She propped herself up in the bed. Her hair lay thick as a blanket over her small and perfect breasts. She had flawless skin and gleaming oval eyes. Everything about her was perfect, particularly her forthright acceptance of herself, the utter lack of self-importance.
“Okay, so how do you rank them, Stark?” she asked.
“By how much I care,” he told her.
“You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
“So where am I on that list?”
“Second from the top.”
Something in her face changed. “We’ve been together for a long time.”
He gave his tie a final pull. “Yes, we have.”
“What’s our secret?”
“That we’re easy, I guess,” Stark answered. “That it’s no big deal.”
She drew her knees up and planted her chin on them. “That is so the wrong answer, Stark.”
He plucked his jacket from the chair across from the bed. “Maybe it’s time for you to move on, Kiko.”
She heard it, and he knew she’d heard it, the air of finality in his voice, its declaration, clear and ominous, that he’d turned a corner in his life, was taking no one with him.
“You’re not coming back, are you?” she asked.
He said nothing but only drew on his jacket and buttoned it.
“Can you at least tell me why?”
He walked to the door, then turned and faced her squarely. “Because you need to find someone else and go over the falls with him.”
“Over the falls.”
“You need to fall in love, Kiko,” Stark said. “Everybody needs to do that . . . just once.”
Her eyes glistened suddenly, and her long black hair trembled. “Good-bye, Stark,” she said.
At the door he wanted to look back but knew he shouldn’t. “Good luck” was all he said.
TONY
The little rooming house was neat but very shabby, with furniture that looked scavenged from the street. Eddie’s room was equally spare. A small refrigerator rattled in one corner. A single-eyed hot plate sat on a tiny wooden table, fit only for heating water or canned food.
“He ain’t suppose to have a hot plate,” the old woman who ran the place said sourly. “Fire code don’t allow it.”
Tony stood at the center of the room, hoping to get some idea of where Eddie had gone. He’d never been in Eddie’s room, he realized, nor anywhere else with him save at the marina or one of the little diners in the nearby village. And yet, during all that time, he’d thought of Eddie as his best friend, the person he’d turned to to help find Sara, and who had now vanished without a word.
“He didn’t come into work this morning,” Tony said. “Didn’t call. So I was wondering, you know, if maybe something happened.”
The old woman plopped down in the room’s single, overstuffed chair. Her hair was white and stringy, her eyes a filmy brown.
“He don’t talk much, Eddie,” she said. “Keeps to himself.”
Tony wondered if this amounted to loneliness, or if Eddie was simply one of those solitary souls who prefers the quiet, the lack of fuss, a life without strings.
“When was the last time you saw him?” he asked.
“Yesterday,” the old woman answered.
“What time?”
“In the morning. About nine, something like that.”
Tony glanced toward the open closet, where a few shirts hung limply from wire hangers, along with a couple of wool jackets and three pairs of flannel trousers. “It’s not like him not to show up for work, not to call in. It’s just not like him.”
“So, where is he, you think?” the old woman asked.
“I don’t know,” Tony answered. He walked to the window and peered out at the street. The neighborhood was like Eddie’s closet, drab and untended, its faded brick buildings lined up like old shoes. “Did you notice him going off with anybody?”