Snapper Read Free Page A

and I thought I could unlatch it with my pocketknife. I was right. To my surprise I found Gerald over my shoulder.
    “You’re breaking and entering,” he said.
    “She does it to me all the time,” I said. She had done it once. In those days a cell phone was a shoe-box-size thing you plugged into your car battery, and if you owned one youprobably had a speedboat or a pilot’s license or a wine cellar too. I didn’t think twice about letting myself into Lola’s, mud and all, during an emergency.
    “I’ll let you in the front door,” I said.
    All the dishes were clean in the kitchen. I peered in the bedroom on the way to the front door, and the bed was made. I let Gerald in. On the living room sofa lay an open book, but there was always an open book on her sofa. It was never one I’d given her.
    An empty house, however familiar, is always unsettling, as though it resents you. And Lola’s house in particular was not so much clean as beaten into spotless submission—something I always found at odds with her character—and to see it without her was somehow to witness its pain.
    “I guess she wasn’t home for the storm,” I said pointlessly. Gerald nodded. He looked a little uncomfortable, but I didn’t realize that he didn’t suspect the nature of my relationship with her until I said I was going to change clothes. I was pretty sure I had some old jeans and a T-shirt beneath her bed. His face turned as red as his beard.
    “I’m sure she’s safe,” I called to the living room. Gerald made no reply. I went to the adjoining bathroom to wash my face and hands. When I returned to the living room I found Gerald on his knees with a wet paper towel, trying unsuccessfully to remove some mud that had come from my boots. He looked more at home than I felt.
    “She’s an Indiana girl,” I said. “I suppose she knows what to do.”
    “The storm isn’t the problem,” he said. “I told you she’s been missing for two days. Virgil doesn’t have any food. Or water.” Both bowls on the kitchen floor were empty.
    “Have you seen him?”
    “No.”
    “I’ll clean that mud up. The cat food is under the sink.”
    “I think that if she had planned to be away for any length of time she would have asked me to feed the cat,” he said. He meant because he lived next door, but he sounded possessive about it, as if letting him feed Virgil would have been a special personal favor she granted.
    “Has she ever asked you to feed the cat before?” I said.
    “Not yet,” he said.
    Not
yet
? So much turns on a single syllable. Was Gerald waiting, heart in hand, for Lola to ask him any favor at all?
    “But you thought she’d get around to it,” I said.
    “If she were planning to go away for any length,” he said defensively. “Someone should water her plants.”
    “Would you like that honor, Gerald? Maybe you could check her mailbox while you’re at it.”
    “That’s illegal,” he said. “So I’ll leave it to you.”
    I was beginning to frame an idea. That is, my storm-induced anxieties gave way to wisdom borne of experience. A few months previously Lola had been involved with a comparative literature professor. She got bored with him eventually, but perhaps she had changed her mind. Though probably not. “He said my
interpretations
were too
facile
,” she had explained, “and we were talking about
breakfast
.”
    I didn’t think I should share this information with Gerald.
    Virgil materialized at the sound of food rattling into his bowl. I don’t know where he had been, but he paid no attention to us.
    “Where does she work?” Gerald said, much more to the point. I’d bet whole oil wells on Gerald finding the female of any other species. But she didn’t exactly work. She’d received several grants and fellowships throughout her academiccareer—she was an exceptional student. She also collected small fees for nude modeling sessions at the local Arts Center, and managed to live on them in summer. I