Silent Echo Read Free

blinks, and realizes for the first time that when you talk to me, you also talk to Numi. Eddie looks back at me, and seems to size me up again. I can’t imagine what he’s thinking, but it can’t be good.
    “Maybe this is a bad idea,” he says.
    “The man is on borrowed time,” says Numi, leaning forward. “Maybe we can waste a little more of it?”
    Eddie is a smart guy and gets Numi’s drift: Get to the point or get the hell out of here.
    “Right, sorry. Shit. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t need your help, Jimmy. Wait, that didn’t come out right. I mean, I should have been here anyway. I’m a shitty friend.”
    He is a shitty friend, but I don’t kick a man when he’s down. I look over at Numi, a very un-shitty friend. Numi is sitting back again, eyes half-closed, looking somewhere beyond the table and into eternity, for all I know.
    “It’s okay,” I say.
    My friend is acting strange. My friend is generally the picture of cool. Or, at least, that’s what he always projected in the past. Now, not so much. His eyes seem unhinged, moving around in his skull like a compass goingapeshit. He’s having trouble focusing on any one thing. He runs his fingers through his greasy hair. I’ve never known Eddie to have greasy hair. The Eddie I remember cared a lot about his looks. Too much, perhaps. His knee is bouncing, too. I figure Eddie is either on something or something’s really wrong.
    He finally nods to himself, looks down. Then he closes his eyes, which is probably a good idea since he can’t seem to focus on anything longer than a nanosecond. He takes in some air, holds it, and then says, “Olivia’s missing.”
    I sit forward. Or try to. My sitting forward consists of a minor tremor that runs through my body, followed by virtually no movement at all. Sitting forward, or other such wasted movements, is a luxury for the healthy.
    Even though I have not seen Olivia since my disease reared its ugly head, she had kept in touch with me via text or e-mail or even Facebook. Whether or not Eddie knew we kept in touch, I didn’t know or care. The e-mail exchanges were light and frivolous, rarely touching on anything heavy, other than she missed seeing me and was sorry I was going through what I was going through. Her concern seemed genuine, and I always appreciated hearing from her. I knew she cared about me and she knew I cared about her. That she never stopped by to see me was, I figured, more Eddie’s doing than hers.
    “What do you mean by
missing
?” I finally ask.
    Eddie looks from me to Numi and says, “It means I haven’t seen or heard from her in almost forty-eight hours.”

CHAPTER THREE
     
    “What happened between you two in the forty-eight hours just before Olivia disappeared?” I ask. This information is important to any missing person investigation. I squelch down my sense of panic that Olivia is missing and turn on my private-eye persona. I give him my most serious no-bullshit glare.
    He looks away. “Remember my friend Jewel?”
    I do. I also remember that Eddie had cheated on Olivia with Jewel… on more than one occasion. How and why Olivia stays with him, I still don’t entirely know. But she has.
    “I remember Jewel,” I say evenly.
    My skin is burning now, actually reddening. Still, I don’t move my arm. The burning makes me feel alive, and, for all I know, this might be my last sunburn.
    Numi stares impassively forward, but his attention is still on me, even if he isn’t looking directly at me. He is like a dog who keeps its ears directed towards its owner, ever alert for walks or treats or both. If I should make any movement, Numi’s eyes will snap around to me. So I make no movement. No indication that the sun is burning me. Numi would adjust the umbrella, or insist we sit inside. I enjoy the burning. I enjoy it more than I should.
    A small wind blows over us, although I am perhaps the only one who feels it. I close my eyes for a few seconds and feel the sun and I