Missing

by Adiva Geffen

  “The guy downstairs,” she began and got closer to me.

  “What about him?”

  “He seemed so nice. He looks like a person who knows how to love. Why did you talk to him like that? Maybe he’s the man who can bring you your salvation. Perhaps he’s the one who can bring you closer to yourself.”

  “All right, Daria.” I stopped her. “That’s enough. I’m not looking for salvation, redemption, or world peace, and I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “He was only trying to find a way to reach you. You’re not in touch with your inner self. A person who has found his inner self will no longer feel lost in the outer w—”

  “I said, enough!”

  “Don’t run away, Dikla. Share. Learn to give of yourself. Being alone can become an unbearable burden.” She stretched out a slender hand and without a word pressed it against my chest. She frightened me. She soothed me. I wanted her to never stop. I desperately wanted her to stop. I walked away from her angrily.

  “Enough,” I shouted.

  I went into the kitchen and tried to organize my thoughts. Cooper. Daria. It was all a bit too much.

  In the cupboard under the sink I found my emergency whiskey bottle. It was empty. Maybe I could just run to the supermarket to get a fresh one? But I recalled Sammy’s instructions. Perhaps I could take Daria with me.

  “Daria, would you like to take a little walk with me?” I shouted toward the sofa.

  “I’m not allowed to.”

  I heard her moving around in the living room. “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “There was this man there,” Daria mumbled and came into the kitchen. One look at her face made it clear her mood had changed again. Aggressive spiritualism had given way to melancholy musings.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Jonah. His name is Jonah. He’s the one I liked best at the nursing home.” A wistful smile crossed her face.

  “Once you settle things back home, you’ll be able to visit him.”

  “I don’t think so. You don’t understand. They won’t let just me go about by myself. Jonah is a very special person, but lonely. No one comes to visit him, and he told me I was like a daughter to him. I called him my soul keeper. He knows everything, but doesn’t understand.”

  I leaned against the kitchen counter and looked at her closely. “Doesn’t understand what? He’s the one who helped you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Who was it then?”

  She shook her head more vigorously.

  “I’m on your side, sweetie,” I coaxed. “You can count on me. I won’t tell anyone. It’ll be our little secret.”

  She stared at me and didn’t say a word. Her mind seemed to roam somewhere distant, to places I won’t ever be able to reach.

  “I’d like to take a shower,” she said suddenly with a faint smile.

  ◊◊◊

  We watched the news together. A French politician explained how the Jews’ perception of the Holocaust is exaggerated. “Fucking anti-Semite,” I snarled.

  “They are infected,” said Daria peacefully. “We need to exterminate them, to cleanse ourselves of evil.”

  “Exterminate them?”

  “Yes. If we cleanse ourselves of negative people, we would be rid of anger, self-criticism, shame, the guilt that we feel toward life, toward ourselves and our dear ones. Until we cleanse that consciousness from every cell in our bodies, there will always be wars — both in the inner and outer worlds.”

  “What are they infected with exactly?”

  She shrugged and stared out the window.

  “Go on, explain it to me,” I insisted. “Am I infected too? How about your mom? How about you?”

  “You are at a difficult stage in your life. That’s how you feel, right? You’re broken, and everything trickles through the cracks and into your soul without any filters,” she said.

  “I think maybe you should go to sleep now, Daria.”

  “In order to free your inner essence, you need to connect with your authentic self. You’re still a long way from achieving that.”

  “Tell me, that’s how your Aunt Deborah speaks, isn’t it? Now I understand everything. I’d run away from that hogwash salad too.”

  She ignored my words. “I sense that you’ve failed, that you need to find resources, and you don’t know they’re already there, inside you.”

  “I sense that you’ve lost your marbles,” I responded and changed the channel to my favorite treasure, The Wire, whose third season I’d been watching for the sixth time, but Daria wasn’t very interested in the adventures of drug dealers in Baltimore.

  In the middle of the episode, the doorbell rang.

  I peeked through the peephole and saw a messenger, a guy who looked like a Robocop wannabe, wearing a helmet and a biker outfit and armed with a walkie-talkie. The green box he was holding had The Green Pizza printed on it.

  “Pizza delivery,” he said when he noticed someone was looking at him.

  “You’ve got the wrong apartment.”

  “This is for Dikla Shoshkowitz. Are you Dikla Shoshkowitz?”

  I opened the door. “Did Sammy send you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know any Sammy. This order was placed by someone named Magidal.”

  Eve must be sending reconciliation gifts to her daughter, but why pizza? What’s wrong with champagne, a juicy steak, and some dessert?

  He came in and put the pizza box on the kitchen table, quickly examining the room, his eyes lingering on Chechnya, who bristled before him. “Why keep a cat in such a small apartment? Cats are not good animals, they belong to the darkness,” he said, still standing in the middle of my apartment. I realized he wasn’t going anywhere until I tipped him. I dug around in my bag for some coins.

  “Girls,” he announced dramatically, “they say we’re going to have a solar eclipse tomorrow!”

  “I don’t give a shit,” I growled at him.

  “Don’t you get it? A solar eclipse. The apocalypse is coming!”

  I would have kicked him, but I was distracted by Daria, who for some reason had started to cry.

  “A solar eclipse, you moron, is when the moon gets between the Earth and the sun,” I quoted my elementary school teacher. “The moon hides the sun and then—”

  “It indicates that the sons and daughters of darkness are about to win. That the believers in the light—”

  “It indicates that you can forget about your tip. Since the apocalypse is coming, you won’t need it anyway.” I pushed him toward the door.

  He looked at Daria, who had buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders were trembling. “That’s what they said — a solar eclipse. It’s all because of the sinners.” The guy had gone off the rails and was about to take Daria with him.

  “Here, take a twenty and spare us your doomsday prophecies.” I shoved a crumpled bill into his hand.

  He jammed it in his pocket and smirked. “We need to escape from darkness. Free the light. We’re not too late.” He chuckled like a B-movie character and flew down the stairs two at a time.

  When I got back to the living room with the barely-there tofu pizza, I found Daria wallowing in sobs, as ghostly as if she’d just met the Chinese dragon that swallowed the sun and devoured all the light.

  “Did you hear what he said?” she wailed. “Did you hear?”

  “He was a perfect idiot. Here, take this. Your mom sent us a surprise, a nice warm pizza. Dear God, tofu pizza! Is that what they used to feed you back home? Another reason to pull a Houdini on them.”

  “It’s them. They sent him.”

  “Obviously. Someone had to find the sucker who’d climb seventy-one steps for a twenty-shekel tip. Did he scare you?”

  “It was a warning.”

  “Daria, he was a psycho
. I’m complaining about him first thing tomorrow morning.”

  She wasn’t impressed by my attempts to soothe her. That delivery guy, whoever had sent him, had scared her half to death.

  “We must protect the sun, the source of light. We must stop the darkness. God, what have I done? What have I done?” She banged her head against the table.

  “Daria, don’t go off the deep end on me.” I hugged her. “He was just throwing words around. He doesn’t know anything. He was joking!”

  Her body turned limp. “No. He knew… It’s all going to happen because of me.”

  “Cut it out. Nothing’s gonna happen. Come, let’s eat some health food pizza.”

  She smiled at me with quiet desperation. “I’m not hungry,” she said.

  “Come on, sweetheart. Eat something and tell me a little more about old man Jonah. Are you going to visit him in the next few days?”

  “Me?” She shook her head. “I’m not. But you, Dikla, you go see him, please — this is important to me.”

  “No problem, but I think he’d rather see you.”

  “Promise me.”

  “All right, all right, whatever you say.” I’d promise her anything at that point, as long as she settled down.

  I chewed my pizza silently. It tasted like cardboard.

  I gave up trying to understand the tired, bewildered girl sitting on my sofa. Tomorrow morning, I told myself, I’d simply hand her over and be done with it. I tried to get back to The Wire. In the middle of the second episode, while the frustrated, sexy Baltimore cops were trying to take down the city’s drug lords, I suddenly felt strangely enervated, as though every drop of energy had been squeezed out of my body. My eyelids weighed a ton, my mouth drooped down. When I tried to stand up, the room spun around me, and the light moved in waves and stung my eyes. That’s what fatigue and too much whiskey can do to you.

  “I’m bushed,” I told Daria. “Time to hit the sack. You should go to bed too. Here, I’ll make up the sofa for you.”

  “Tell me,” Daria said out of the blue, “who lives above you?”

  “No one.”

  “Don’t say no one. Say that the skies and stars live there. Let’s go up there, only for a minute, then we’ll go to sleep.”

  “Daria, I’m running on fumes. What exactly are you hoping to find there?”

  “Please, just this last thing — you promised you’d help me.”

  Her request sounded a little odd, but I decided to humor her. Perhaps it was my detective instinct that made me go up there with her, or maybe it was compassion. “If it makes you feel better, then all right.”

  I pulled my set of keys out of the lock, and we climbed up.

  Our roof was just an ordinary Tel Aviv roof, cluttered with all the tenants’ junk. Bits and pieces of ancient furniture, battered, rusted water heaters, loose clotheslines, and a few dried-up planters. Daria took a look around, raised her hands to the sky, then sat with her legs crossed and closed her eyes.

  A northern wind blew in and washed over us. Perhaps it would finally rain.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Listening to the wind. Come, sit beside me.”

  “If you can talk to the wind, maybe you can get us some rain,” I joked with her.

  She continued to mutter with her eyes closed. When I got closer I could make out the words she was whispering: “Forgive me, Great Mother.”

  “For what?” I disturbed the silence. “Forgive you for what? What have you done, Daria?”

  “You heard what he said. A solar eclipse is coming.” She turned to me. Her face was washed with tears.

  “That’s just a load of crap. We had an eclipse when I was a kid. We were all very excited, and my dad gave me a piece of blackened glass so I could look at it.”

  “It’s a sign.”

  “A sign the world keeps turning and sometimes spins on its head. Let’s go down. It’s cold up here.” I tugged at her hand. She got up and allowed herself to be pulled after me. I locked the door to the roof, and we headed back down to the apartment. I’m sure I locked it.

  “You were crying up there,” I said.

  “I asked for forgiveness. Maybe they’ll forgive me. Maybe we can defeat the solar eclipse yet.”

  “Now that you’ve spoken with the stars and the wind, do you feel a little better?”

  She lowered her eyes and crushed the hem of her shirt between her fingers, “I’m… I’m a failure. I was afraid. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t believe strongly enough. That’s what you’re missing — you’re like me, a leaf tossed on the wind. You need something to hang on to.”

  “Cut it out, Daria, I’m not in the mood.”

  “Please, call him,” she said before I could escape to my bedroom.

  “Call who?”

  “The guy who waited for you downstairs. He has a pure heart. He came here to apologize for something he had innocently done. He is pure. You need to forgive. You must forgive! Forgiveness is a gift the skies award the chosen ones.”

  “Enough, Daria. I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions, all right?”

  She closed her eyes, and I felt her sending me heat waves.

  “I’m trying to extend a helping hand,” she whispered.

  “Thank you, but try to help yourself first.” Is that what I told her? Maybe not. I was dazed and exhausted.

  At 11:20, nearly dead on my feet, I brought Daria a sheet and a blanket, apologized for the itty-bitty sofa, took my cell phone, and hobbled toward my bedroom. For a moment, I thought about turning around to hug her, offer her protection from whatever frightened her. Then I thought to myself, she’s only a client, tomorrow she’ll leave, and her family will take care of her. End of story.

  As I went into my room, I decided it would be smart to lock the front door. You need to keep the fledgling in the nest, I remember thinking. Who knows what she might do? Let her run away from her mother, not from me.

  I went back out and locked the front door. Daria was on the sofa drawing on a piece of yellowish paper.

  I keep trying to picture it: Did I lock it? Yes. Absolutely. For sure. But what if I didn’t? And the keys? Where did I put the keys after I locked the apartment?

  A noise roused me some time later. A rattling sound. I sat up at once. Daria was standing next to my bed, holding my cell phone. “I’d like to… Can I?”

  I looked at the clock; it was 2:30 am. “Dear God, Daria. Who are you calling in the middle of the night?”

  “Please,” she begged.

  “Just let me sleep. God, you scared me.” I sank back under the covers.

  That was the last time I saw her. Then came the dreams: I was rolling down a long, narrow tunnel until I reached a greenish room with a giant pizza in the middle. The pizza had a note on it saying Bite me.

  ◊◊◊

  Now, after everything has been shaken upside down and smashed into a million pieces, after Daria was swallowed into a blinking, wailing ambulance, I tried to relive those moments when the angels of sleep led me to their kingdom: My head was spinning. My feet barely managed to carry me to my bedroom. The keys were in my hands. I dropped them on the night table, near the lamp, right next to my cell phone. Then I felt her standing by my bed. Daria. What did she take?

  Hold on! My cell phone! That had been nagging at me from the moment I heard the sirens. My cell phone. Where was it?

  I turned my bag inside out, pouring its contents onto the bed. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t on the nightstand when I woke up. I was sure of that. I always go to sleep with my cell phone right next to me, on the nightstand. Where was it? When had I seen it last? I tried to recreate what had happened. There was this loud noise. I woke up. I wanted to see what time it was. I fumbled for it. It wasn’t there. My fingers wandered across the cool glass surface. It wasn’t there.
<
br />   I found my keys on the coffee table in the living room. She had taken them, of course, to open the apartment door. I examined the key ring — all the keys were there.

  All except one. The key to the roof.

  And what did she do with my phone? Who did she call in the middle of the night? Had she asked someone for help? Had she called someone to come and get her? What was it I missed?

  “Broken,” I could hear Daria’s voice. “You’re at a difficult stage. You’re broken, and everything trickles through the cracks and into your soul without any filters.”

  God, how right that lost, miserable child had been.

  17

  “Ms. Shoshkowitz?” an unfamiliar female voice came through the phone.“Yes?”

  “I’m calling from the precinct. We’re sending a couple of detectives to ask you a few questions about Daria. They should be there any minute.”

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s after eleven,” answered the officer.

  I opened the window, let the sea breeze into the room, and notified Sammy about the upcoming visit. She just loves detective-style meetings and presents herself as my lawyer if (okay, when) things get out of hand.

  “Sorry,” she surprised me, “you’ll have to manage on your own this time. I’m at the forensic medicine institute to see the coroner, waiting for Shosh and Barak.”

  “Eve and Barak.”

  “Whatever. I still need to sit and wait while this knee drives me crazy. My life is in the dumps, Shoshkowitz.”

  “Doesn’t Eve want to talk to me? After all, I was the last one who—”

  “I’m trying to keep you two as far away from each other as possible,” she explained. “You don’t want to know half the things she’s already said about us.”

  “Try me. Maybe then she’ll get to hear what I have to say about her.”

  “Let’s drop this, all right? We’re all a little stressed today. I’ve never lost a client before.”

  “You’re actually worried about not getting your money?”