by Tyler King
Except Ethan’s desk is empty.
He’s not here by the time I send Cyle an email with the first batch of my completed assignments from last night. He’s not in when I take my first coffee break at nine, and then a foraging trip back to the snack room at ten when I hear someone mention bagels. It’s almost noon when Ed walks by, glances in my direction, then doubles back to my cubicle.
“I told you to take the day off,” he says, holding a clear plastic cup of some bog-green smoothie.
“I took care of it. I’m good to go.”
He considers me with skeptical eyes, searching for a crack in my armor. “Have you heard from Ethan?”
As a reflex, my attention darts to my phone on the desk. “Not today. I rode with him to the prison yesterday…”
Ed doesn’t need to know the rest.
“He said he was going to get you a draft of the article last night,” I say, hoping Ed might give me a hint. He only produces a noncommittal nod and walks off.
Now I’m a little worried. If Ed hasn’t heard from Ethan, that’s got to mean something, right? I last ten minutes combing through IAQ emails before I can’t stand the uncertainty any longer.
Avery Avalon
12:05 PM
Ed’s asking about you.
Coming in today?
Rather than wait for an answer, I go find Addison for lunch. It’s Thai Thursday, after all. I was promised spring rolls. And if anyone’s got the skinny on Ethan’s disappearance, it’s my all-knowing Sherpa.
* * *
“It’s like explaining thermodynamics to a caveman before the discovery of fire,” Navid says, flicking his hand through the air with a hunk of green bell pepper between his chopsticks. “They think they’re after some criminal mastermind, but I’m trying to explain that any ten-year-old with a computer and a rudimentary grasp of phishing tactics can hack an email account.”
“Please let me quote you on that,” C.J. says, grinning.
We’re gathered around a table at the Thai place down the street, everything gilded gold and tangy melodies of soft plucked string music playing through the room. Navid tells us about his deposition for the Justice Department this week. Or at least the parts he’s allowed to talk about. I glance down at my phone in my lap. Still nothing.
“You’re trying to get me sent to Gitmo, aren’t you?” He shoves the pepper in his mouth and talks around it. “You know what they do to ‘uncooperative’ brown people from desert climates.”
“Well,” C.J. says, “the ones without a wealthy monarchy and a rich tourism economy, at least.”
I’m thankful that they seem to have come to a silent agreement not to ask about my father. The last thing I want is to spend the day telling everyone how fine I am.
“All right.” Addison puts down his chopsticks and cocks his head to the side with an impatient scowl. “What is going on down there?”
“What?” I say, startled. “Me?”
“You keep looking down at your phone every five seconds. Tell me you’re not reading those articles.”
“No.”
I was going to ask anyway, I just wanted to do it less…awkwardly.
“Ed asked me if I’d heard from Ethan today,” I say. “Is it normal for him not to show up without telling anybody?”
Addison doesn’t react at first, then shrugs. But it’s the way C.J. and Navid become fascinated by their meals that sends up warning flags.
“What? What am I missing?”
Taking pity on me, Addison sighs and pushes his plate aside. “He sometimes has a habit of…wandering off. It’s not unheard of that he goes off the reservation for a day or two—”
“A week or two,” Navid interjects.
“—without checking in first.”
“Has he said—I mean, is there something going on with him?”
Taking off from work without letting his boss know isn’t a normal thing to do. Yeah, a journalist isn’t chained to their desk, and someone of Ethan’s status has more leeway than most, but it’s still a job. He’s still accountable.
“We don’t worry anymore,” C.J. says. “The first time, Ed was sending out the search party. After Vee—” She coughs, choking on the name as she seems to remember I’m not of the pre-Vee era. “Yeah, we don’t worry anymore. Eventually he’ll call Ed and tell him he’s taking a few vacation days. I wouldn’t stress about it.”
But I was there. They didn’t see the way his demeanor turned on a dime when he got that phone call. How he rushed out of my apartment, barely saying goodbye. More than that, it’s the fact that he hasn’t returned my texts that’s got me on edge. This is a guy who went through the trouble of tracking down my address just to convince me to face my father’s death. The guy who drove halfway, maybe all the way home, just to turn around and knock on my door because he had to tell me in person that he was sorry he’d lied to me. This man, whose life for the last two years has been engrossed in my family, and who protected me from my father’s prying curiosity rather than disrupt the smallest shred of normalcy I’d managed to attain.
No, I don’t buy it. Something’s wrong.
* * *
Back at my desk after lunch, I dig into the magazine’s website for answers. I find only one Vee in the online archive: Vivian Mott. Most of her dozen or so articles dated during an eight-month period cover environmental issues, climate change, and related policy matters. There’s a particular series, however, that catches my eye. For five weeks she reported on an armed standoff at a visitors’ center on the national bison range in Montana. In the sixth week, she traveled to Moiese as the situation intensified and a resolution appeared imminent. What’s interesting is in that week her updates included credit to Ethan for additional reporting. Then in the next print issue of the magazine following the end of the standoff, Ethan penned a full rundown of the ordeal. Vivian’s name was left off the article. She has nothing published for Riot Street after the Moiese series. That was ten months ago.
A Google search turns up nothing dated after Montana. No staff positions since leaving the magazine. Either she’s dropped out of the news business, or she’s working under a new pen name. I find five Vivian Motts spread out across various social media profiles, but all are either the wrong age or show no matching work history and interests. Wherever she is, Vivian went to some trouble to scrub herself from the internet.
Still, none of this gives me any insight into why Ethan’s dropped off the grid. All I have are coincidences, vague conjecture, and a building sense of dread. That feeling is multiplied when I notice Ed’s written up a brief, bare-bones summary on my father’s death and pushed it to the front page of the website. There’s no way Ethan would give up the final word on Patrick Turner Murphy without a fight—unless he didn’t have a choice.
* * *
Storm clouds roll in around seven that evening. The office has thinned out a bit, people taking their work home with them to avoid getting stuck in the rain. I’ve been sifting through IAQ emails for the better part of the day, but as I peek up from my cubicle and see another full elevator headed downstairs, I figure I’d better take their lead before I’m stuck walking to the subway in a full-on downpour.
Turns out, I make that decision too late. Just as I’m closing applications on my laptop, Cyle comes cruising down the aisle straight toward me.
Deep breath.
“Hey, Cyle,” I say, like we aren’t sworn office enemies. “Did you get the assignments I sent back?”
“Uh-huh.” He stands behind my chair to hover over me, staring at my screen. “You started on the IAQ questions?”
I want to tell him that’s a redundant phrase. The Q stands for Questions, and thus he’s asking if I’ve started on the Question questions. But it’s not polite to one-up your boss and shine a glaring spotlight on his shortcomings, so I smile and nod.
“Yep. Figured I’d start by clearing out the backlog of repeat questions that have already been answered, getting rid of random nutters, before
I narrow down which questions to answer.”
“Uh-huh.”
I don’t get what’s so interesting on my screen that he’s transfixed, but I feel his hand brace against the back of my chair, his fingers brushing my shoulder. It sends a shudder of revulsion down my spine.
“One other thing,” he says. “Jeremy’s out sick. You’ve done TV reviews before, right?”
Really? “Uh, yeah, on my blog. I did a little entertainment reporting at—”
“Yeah, great.” He doesn’t look at me. “We’ve got a show premiere I need a write-up on. I’ll send you the link for the screener. If you could bang that out tonight, that’d be great.”
“Sure,” I say, taken aback. Getting to write anything I can put my real name on that isn’t about Echo or my father is a step in the right direction. “Thank you.”
“And I’m going to need you to cover the assignment desk tonight. Melissa will be in at midnight to relieve you.”
That vindictive little prick. Now I get it. Give her the carrot then smack her with a stick. There’s no use telling him I’ve already put in eleven hours, I barely got an hour of sleep last night, and that if Manhattan does burn down or Word War III breaks out on my watch, I’m liable to snooze through the whole thing. None of it matters. My guess: Cyle wants to make my experience working here so unpleasant I’ll quit. Well, he’ll have to try a lot harder than that.
“Sure thing,” I say. “I’m happy to help.”
“Good.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. Like we’re pals now. Golfing buddies or some shit. It takes all my restraint not to spin around and punch him in the scrotum. This is what happens when Ethan isn’t here to fire warning shots.
“I’ll send you an email with the link for the show screener and instructions for the assignment desk. See you tomorrow.”
Fuck Cyle. To hell with him and whatever unholy union from which he spawned.
* * *
At nine I go rummaging in the snack room for whatever’s been left behind. I have to settle for a soda and a bag of dehydrated vegetable chips discarded by the food writers from a sample shipment. As I’m walking out, Addison comes in with his coffee cup.
“Hey,” I say. “Thought you’d left already.”
He opens one of the overhead cabinets and pulls down a canister of coffee grounds to make a fresh pot. “Nah, I’ve got to do a Skype interview at ten. Internet’s been dodgy at my place for a couple of days, so I’m sticking around.” He scoops a few spoonfuls into the paper filter then fills the pot with water from the sink. “Still clawing your way through the IAQ?”
“Yeah.” I lean against the counter to milk Addison for all the distraction he can provide. This place will get real boring once the last of the staff goes home for the night. “And Cyle’s got me pulling assignment desk duty until midnight, so that’s fun.”
“In that case…” Addison tosses in three more scoops of grounds into the filter. “You’ll need extra-strength.”
He loads the basin then pushes the button to start the hissing, gurgling percolation. There’s a brief silence between Addison and me. Both watching each other for an indication to segue from polite chatter to real talk. He knows what I’m going to ask, he’s just waiting for the words.
“Vivian,” I say. “She never came back from Montana.”
A dramatic sigh covers his walk to the round table in the center of the room, where Addison sits and pushes out a chair for me with his foot.
“Officially,” he says, as I join him at the table, “no one knows what happened. Ed, maybe. But only Ethan and Vee know what really went down out there.”
“And unofficially?”
“Before Montana, they were thick as mud.”
There’s a dose of Carolina twang in Addison’s voice tonight. A product of exhaustion, I suspect. Like his tongue’s too tired to fake it. I knew a Brazilian girl in college; after too many drinks she only spoke Portuguese.
“Ethan was all about her from day one. I don’t know if they were sleeping together—they’d say it wasn’t like that—but that was the vibe they gave off. Then the Montana story, and Vee convinced Ed to let her go out there. Whether Ethan volunteered or Ed didn’t want the rookie out there alone—that’s a matter of speculation. All I know is, he got on the plane home and she didn’t. Ethan didn’t talk to anyone for days. He turned in his copy on deadline, left one night, and disappeared for two weeks. I broke into his loft just to make sure he hadn’t hung himself in there or something.”
There’s more sympathy than fascination in Addison’s voice. While he’s maybe a little jaded about Ethan’s penchant for vanishing into thin air, there is a level of concern that whatever the motivating factor, Ethan’s antics are more a symptom of distress than willful negligence. Ethan isn’t doing it because he’s an unreliable dick who just jets off to Tahiti on a whim—he’s hiding.
“And?” I ask.
“Well, not dead, obviously. He wasn’t there. Looked like he hadn’t been there in days. Then one morning he shows up like nothing happened. All better, back to work.”
“Did anyone ask why?”
“Sure, but he just brushed it off. Said he was exhausted and needed some time off. He put out two books in two years, plus press and publicity tours while still working full-time. Hadn’t taken a day off in months. Everybody burns out at some point, and this was it all catching up to him. So, yeah, we bought it. The first time. Then we stopped asking.”
Ed has to know. I don’t care how popular Ethan is, there’s no way Ed tolerates a reporter who’s perpetually taking off without explanation. At some point, he has to have sat Ethan down and given him an ultimatum: Give me a good reason or you’re fired. Ed must have been satisfied with the answer.
“What about that intern you mentioned before. Brittany?”
Addison shakes his head. “Nah, that girl just quit. Had a total nervous breakdown in the middle of the office. Cops had to escort her out of the building after she locked herself in the bathroom and refused to leave.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, you’d be surprised how often that kind of thing happens around here. Like, no one ever just quits quietly. They all want to be the guy who pulls the emergency exit lever on the plane, sliding out with two giant middle fingers in the air. But we didn’t want to scare you off your first day.”
Somehow, I’m not surprised.
“Avery, let me be real with you for a minute.” Addison leans toward me across the table. “Ethan is addictive. He’s smart, and charming, and most of the time a lot of fun to be around. But the guy’s always got one foot out the door. We used to be tight. But little by little, he drifts away. I don’t think he means to, it’s who he is. Easily distracted and forever absorbed in his own mind. If he doesn’t have constant stimulation, he gets bored. Once someone’s lost that luster of a shiny new toy, he loses interest.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Addison raises a sarcastic eyebrow. “You seem like a good girl. I get that you and Ethan meet at this weird sort of tragic intersection, but when the novelty of it wears off, I don’t want you to be another cynical victim of his short attention span. One bright new ingénue didn’t come back, and he drove the other one to madness. Just once, I’d like the new girl to make it through her first year unscathed.”
Addison means well, even if his advice is a bit insulting. I have no intention of letting Ethan or anyone else distract me from the reason I took this job. All the same, when I get back to my desk, I can’t escape the notion that the office feels empty without Ethan. His presence has a way of filling the room, even when he isn’t doing anything at all. Ethan doesn’t have to pull focus—it finds him. In his absence, it’s too quiet. Dullness permeates the air. Now he’s run off.
I know this preoccupation isn’t healthy—becoming too entangled in the messy affairs of others is a quick way to drown in their troubles—but I have a bit of a soft spot for people who are in a perpetua
l state of disarray. And I know, if our places were reversed, Ethan would look for me.
* * *
I get out of work at midnight and catch the subway up to the East Village. There were only two addresses online for an Ethan Ash in the five boroughs. The first was an apartment building reserved for senior citizens. The other, it turns out, is a single-story structure that looks like it had a previous life as an auto shop. Three gooseneck lamps hang across the face of the building, illuminating the matte façade of painted white brick with huge, irregular swaths of primary colors, red, yellow, green, and blue, cutting across the entire wall. In the center, a ten-foot anatomical heart carefully rendered to resemble a pencil sketch. Something like a spear pierces through the heart at an angle. For this mural alone the trip was worth it, but I remind myself this isn’t a sightseeing excursion.
On either side of the heart are identical metal doors. I take a guess at the one on the left and knock. After a few seconds, I knock again. Nothing. Doubt seeps in. What if this isn’t Ethan’s place and I’m some crazy woman pounding on a stranger’s door in the middle of the night? Sure, the thought occurred to me before I came out here, but on the way I convinced myself that it had to be his. Addison said he had a loft. I guess this counts, right?
Once more, just to be sure, I knock again. This time, I hear movement on the other side. It takes several seconds before the scraping sound of metal on metal, then the door whips open.
“Avery?”
Ethan stands shirtless in the doorway. I’m met eye-level by the kind of body you see on Olympic swimmers. His hair looks like someone’s been tugging at it. Lines like pillow creases cut across one side of his face. He wears only a loose pair of black pajama bottoms hanging low on his hips. I’ve just made a horrible mistake.
“What are you doing here?”
He pokes his head out the door just a fraction, looking behind me like he expects someone to jump out from the shadows. I wish I had a good answer, but now everything that made perfect sense an hour ago seems completely mental.
