Chapter 13

Darvin and I both hoped that we'd find Al soon. But it didn't happen that way. Days went by, then weeks, then months. And there was no sign of her. Darvin's mood became subject to foulness. I saw him on one occasion, when I was in his office hearing another negative report, hurl his trash can at the wall and say half of a foul word before he chopped himself off. He grew morose at times.

It could have been worse, I think. Al had disappeared in June. That fall Darvin's mood began to improve, and he seemed to have something on his mind sometimes when I'd talk to him. I didn't see him much – he preferred the early service while I liked the second – but he didn't seem to be as foul-tempered, as fall passed into winter, as he had earlier in the year.

But whatever his mood, progress didn't exist. Al had dropped off the face of the earth. And our apartment was dreadfully empty.

I'd filed a missing persons report after the 24 hour period was up, and the police had said they'd do what they could, but Darvin told me that though they had more manpower, they probably couldn't do much more than he could. There just aren't enough hours in the day to give every case the time it deserves, and budgetary considerations require that old cases receive less attention. The sad and terrifying fact is that when someone disappears, you either find that person alive and well very soon, or you never find that person alive and well. There aren't many exceptions. It's not that the ones you don't find are dead, Darvin told me, though that happens, but that some people just drop out of sight so completely that you can't find them again.

He had to tell me things like that several times, for I seemed to be living in cotton. Nothing penetrated. The only sensation I felt keenly was loss. I'd wake up in the night and reach for Al, and find only the empty bed, and I'd cry out in despair. I'd look up from a book and see that she wasn't there, and I'd spot the page with sudden tears. I really believe it would have been easier if I'd known she was dead. At least then I would have been able eventually to accept that she wasn't coming back. But I didn't know whether she was dead or alive, whether she was in Albuquerque or somewhere else, whether I'd ever see her again. I couldn't go on with life because I didn't know what life held.

It turned out that Darvin's distraction was a woman. He'd fallen in love with a client, and Tyrone married them in the April following Al's disappearance. It had been almost a year since I'd seen her last. There'd been no word, no sign, no hint of where she'd gone. I cried at Darvin's wedding. I was happy for him, but I remembered what I'd had, and didn't have any longer, and it tore my heart out.

One year passed, and I was functioning better. It wasn't that I missed Al less, but that you can't live at the same acute level of pain forever. Eventually the emotions become numb, and then you even begin to smile again. I loved Al more than ever, and I missed her with an excruciating pain whenever I woke in the night. But my days began to be almost normal.

There was a portrait of the two of us that I kept on top of the television. She'd taken us to a professional photographer just after we'd returned from our Oklahoma vacation, and this was her favorite shot. I was in my pinstriped suit, and she was wearing the white dress she'd worn to church in Marlow. I'd sometimes pick the photo up and sit on the sofa gazing at it. I'd known Al for several years when we were growing up, and I'd been married to her for nearly a year at the time she ran, but it wasn't until she was gone that I really looked at her face.

I'd known that face most of my life. But I'd never examined it in detail. I knew the overbite, of course. In the photo she was smiling broadly, and her upper teeth showed clearly. Probably some men would have thought her ugly on that account, but I found it incredibly alluring. Her hair was dark – nearly black, but actually brown, and that day she'd gently waved it so that it fell over he shoulders like fog coming over the Sandia Mountains. She was thin, and it really showed in her face, which was narrow with high cheekbones and a triangular chin. That too, I supposed, wasn't going to attract many men. But something in that face did, in fact, attract men. Of course there are men who'll take the first prostitute they see and not care about looks, but she'd never lacked for customers. She'd seemed to attract them without trying. I remembered that of the three times I'd found her on Central, on one of those occasions she'd been just leaving a customer and on the other she'd just began negotiations with one.

I would hold that picture, and look at that face which was so dear to me, and many times I'd have to wipe my tears off the glass. "I will never forget you," I'd whisper to the woman who was there only in the photograph. And what frightened me was the possibility that if I didn't have the photo, I might eventually begin to forget her face.

It was early August, three years after Al had vanished, and I was eating lunch, sitting on a stack of cement blocks, when my cell phone rang. I looked at it, and saw it was Darvin's office number.

"Hello?" I said.

"Alan, pack a bag and meet me at the airport. I've found Al."

I don't believe I fainted, for I never fell. But for a few seconds I certainly wasn't aware of anything around me. When I again realized where I was, Darvin's voice was in my ear.

"Alan? Alan, are you there?"