The Missing Person

by Alix Ohlin

  When Francie came back from the restroom, pink lipstick and blue eye shadow brilliantly reapplied, she asked what was new with Wylie these days.

  My mother shook her head. “I’ve deferred to Lynnie,” she said. “She’s the only one who can talk to him.”

  Francie gave me a generous and approving smile. “It’s so good you’re back!”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “It’s been like that ever since they were children,” my mother went on. “Wylie would keep secrets that only Lynn could hear about. He’d creep into her bedroom at night and whisper them to her. Nobody else could know.”

  I looked at her. I remembered Wylie chattering, and me telling him to shut up and go to sleep, but whether there was any exchange of secrets I couldn’t say. Luis smiled at me, sipping his iced tea.

  “She even got Wylie to come back for dinner,” my mother said. “I’m hoping by the end of the summer, he might even spend the night. It’s like domesticating a wild animal. You have to take it a little bit at a time.”

  Francie and Luis laughed. The tone of my mother’s voice was confident and humorous and, it seemed to me, utterly false. Not to mention the improbability of Wylie coming home any time soon. She was either offering the most favorable interpretation of events or else hoping that by presenting an optimistic scenario she could somehow make it real.

  The idyll of the good daughter lasted less than a week. What broke the peace was this: I drank at least a bottle of wine over dinner with my mother and David, preceded by a gin and tonic and followed by a healthy dose of Kahlua she’d produced from some hidden cupboard, after which I fell into a deep yet troubled sleep rife with pornographic dreams. Then I woke up at five in the morning, thirsty, restless, and wracked by the kind of loneliness that can’t be cured by having a nice chat with your mother. I had to see Angus again.

  It was so quiet in the condo that I could almost hear my mother and David breathing behind their closed door. Outside, the sky was packed with stars, but already lightening to purple in the east. There was a burnt tinge to the air, the distant smell of wilderness fires. I got into the Caprice and drove to Wylie’s apartment, feeling alert and alone. There was no answer when I knocked, but when I tried the door it wasn’t locked.

  The place was empty and dark, and I stood in the middle of the room waiting for my eyes to adjust. Then something damp and rough brushed against my leg: the dog, licking me.

  “Are you all alone here, Sledge?” I said. “For a bunch of animal lovers, these guys don’t pay you much attention.”

  In answer, he worked his tongue down my calf.

  “That’s enough,” I said.

  There was a rustling sound, and a shadow appeared out of the back. Even in the dark I could tell the figure wasn’t tall enough to be Angus. After more rustling and some muttering, a flashlight clicked on and I could see Irina, in a blue night-dress, standing there blinking, looking sleepy and confused.

  “Irina, it’s me,” I said.

  “Oh, my goodness. Is everything all right? Are they in prison?”

  “Are who in prison?” I said.

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said again. “Never mind, then.” She set the flashlight down on the kitchen counter, so that its pallid ray stretched across the room. Sledge whined once, as if for show, then lay down at my feet.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said. Even in the dark, I saw her face was creased with sleep and concern.

  Suddenly the flashlight rolled off the counter and crashed onto the floor. Sledge jumped, and from the bedroom came the anguished sounds of Psyche waking up. I picked up the flashlight as Irina went back to get her, and played the light, in turn, on the dog, the bare floor, and the bedroom, where Irina stepped out cradling the baby in her arms, rocking back and forth and cooing soothingly.

  I went to the window and pulled the sheet loose from the duct tape, letting the vague light of early morning into the room.

  “Are you all right?” Irina said. I looked down at myself, at shorts and an old T-shirt I didn’t remember putting on, feeling as if I’d only just then woken up. “Where is everybody?” I said.

  “They’re off working.”

  “Wylie too?”

  “Sometimes he helps on Angus,” she said.

  “Out,” I said. “He helps out.”

  “That’s what I said,” she said, smiling. “Would you enjoy some breakfast?”

  Somehow, in an apartment with no power, she made a delicious meal. First, she put a clean baby blanket down on the floor and laid Psyche on top, the baby watching us drowsily, kicking her fat legs a few times before falling back asleep. Then she pulled a small camp stove from a milk crate and heated water over the propane flame, adding dried fruit and powdered milk and maple syrup to some kind of hot cereal, and finally brewed tea. We lingered over breakfast in the cool, gradually brightening apartment. Through the window early-morning sounds made their way into the apartment: trucks barreling distantly past on the highway, the twitter of birds. Psyche smacked her lips in her sleep, but her moon face was otherwise still. We were sitting on the floor, with steaming, maple-scented bowls between us.

  “Why did you ask about prison?” I said.

  “Oh, no reason.”

  “Most people don’t bring up prison without some reason,” I said. Irina shrugged, and the baby lifted her head and said, “Guala guala,” still asleep. Irina smiled. “She is practically obsessing with gorillas.”

  “You were telling me about prison.”

  “Nobody’s in prison,” she said firmly, and hoisted Psyche onto her chest. She was sitting cross-legged, and for the first time I noticed that her legs were unshaven, brown with hair down to her ankles, and her toes had thick, curved nails. She reminded me of some fairy-tale creature, part human, part animal, who lives in the woods.

  Then Psyche woke up and moved a tiny curled fist to her mother’s breast. Irina unbuttoned her pajama top and looked up at me. “Does this bother you?”

  I shook my head.

  “I am glad of that,” she said, starting to nurse the baby. “Some people we know, they do not like to see the baby.”

  “They don’t like babies?” I said. “What’s their problem?”

  “It’s because of VE. I’m not adhering.”

  “What’s VE?”

  “Voluntary extinction,” she said. “No breeding. That’s what they call me. The breeder. Not Wylie or Angus, but some of the others.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” I said slowly. “That’s crazy.”

  Irina shrugged and cupped the back of Psyche’s head in her hand. The baby was sucking dreamily, one hand resting gently against the exposed breast, her eyes closed. “It’s actually the opposite of crazy,” Irina said. “It is totally logical. The logical consequence of thoughtful people observing our world. If you think that humans are destroying the planet, Lynn, and the population is growing too fast, then it only makes sense not to procreate. Trying to slow things down is everyone’s responsibility. VE begins at home.”

  In a way, I thought, this made sense. If you believed that overpopulation was an ecological crisis, why would you bring a child into the world? And if you believed that most people’s lives were ruined by unnecessary materialism, then it made sense to share an empty apartment with a handful of like-minded people. And yet, I thought, looking at the baby cradled in Irina’s arms, they were crazy, too. “Jesus H. Christ,” I said.

  “You keep saying that,” Irina said sadly, “but I don’t know why.”

  I smiled at her then. She seemed like the most innocent person I’d ever met. “Who’s Psyche’s father?” I asked again.

  She smiled at me shyly, then blushed deep crimson. “It’s no one you know.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You are afraid it’s Angus,” she said suddenly. “It is not. And it is not Wylie, either, in case you are wondering that.”

  Now it was my turn to blush. “Okay,” I said.

  Psyche had stopped nurs
ing and was fast asleep.

  “Do you know,” I said, trying to sound casual, “when Angus is getting back?”

  “Oh.” Irina looked surprised. “I thought you had arranged the plan to meet him here. He’s coming back today.”

  I felt strangely contented, hanging out in the bare apartment with Irina and her child. We could hear the building rise slowly into life, the banging of doors and the starting of cars, an early-morning argument downstairs.

  Irina told me about meeting Wylie, and this version of her life story was less mythological than the one about being transported by a nature special. She had arrived in Albuquerque, a little over a year earlier, but she was homeless. Her dreams about a new life had slipped so far from her grasp that she couldn’t remember how she’d come to hold them in the first place.

  “I was also,” she said, “having a little problem with the drugs.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “Many kinds. The social worker said I had a diversified appetite.”

  I looked at the baby, who had rosy, healthy skin and an appetite confined, from what I’d seen, to Irina’s milk.

  “So. I was living out of the dumpsters. And I met these people, these boys, who were also living out of the dumpsters. We were always meeting at these same dumpsters. The ones behind the pizza restaurant by the school are good, and also behind the grocery store. But these young men are doing this by their choice. It was like a whole new idea to me, do you see? A whole new meaning of life. I thought, maybe I am not just a drug-addicted person. Maybe I can believe in something also.”

  There was a pause.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You are thinking, Jesus H. Christ. But this is what happened. And then Wylie, he helped me go away from the drugs, and he let me stay here whenever I wanted to, and the rest was easy. I have learned so much since I have met these people.”

  “Okay,” I said. I stood up to stretch, and I was in the middle of a big one—arms above my head, stomach exposed— when Angus opened the door and saw me.

  “Hello, stranger,” he said, and his voice warmed me like the sun.

  Then my brother, Stan, and Berto came through the door behind him, their skin and clothes smeared with dirt and sweat. Sledge went into a welcoming frenzy, leaping up on each of them and licking their faces and stinking bodies. I felt the same way the dog did. I was being released from my calm existence in my mother’s condo, from the days of boredom and good behavior. I caught Wylie’s eye and said hello as Angus and the others carried backpacks and milk crates into the apartment and dropped them on the floor.

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “Looking for you,” I said, “like always.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said, glancing at Angus.

  I blushed for the second time that morning, strongly and with conviction. I’d really taken to shame, it seemed. Then I looked over at Irina; she smiled as if she understood, and I felt better. “Where have you guys been, anyway?”

  “Bisbee,” Wylie said.

  “What the hell’s in Bisbee? And please don’t say ‘Bisbee.’”

  “It’s just a place we like to go,” Wylie said, and rested his skinny hand, for the briefest moment, on my shoulder.

  The group convened, cross-legged, on the floor. It was daylight now, and through the open windows I could smell freshly laid asphalt from some distant driveway.

  Angus clapped his hands.

  “The time has come,” he said, “for the next plan.”

  I was more curious than I would have expected to hear what new instance of extreme behavior they’d invented this time.

  “No way, man,” Berto said, to my surprise, his gray, hang-dog face even more ashen than usual. “The time has come for breakfast, man, if you know what I’m saying.”

  Angus put his hands on his hips. His clothing was in tatters: his jeans had holes, his white T-shirt had holes, even his socks had holes. Through the tears in the fabric his pale skin glowed. I wanted to go over and touch it.

  “Is this how everybody feels?” he said.

  Everybody nodded.

  “I can cook breakfast if you bring me some supplies,” Irina said from the counter, where she was perched with the baby in the sling.

  “All right, then,” Angus said. “The time has come for breakfast.”

  So the morning began all over again. Angus left and returned with a backpack crammed full of fruit and eggs and bread and sausages, which Irina cooked over the propane stove. People showered, more quickly than I’d thought possible, and some even rummaged around by their sleeping bags for clean clothes.

  After eating, Stan and Berto fell asleep on the floor, their heads on their still-rolled sleeping bags, Sledge snoring along with them. My brother was standing in the bedroom doorway watching Irina and the baby, who were also sleeping. He’d grown a beard since I’d seen him and looked fatherly and devoted, and in the back of my throat I felt the sudden, harsh salt of tears.

  Angus came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. “There’s a roof,” he whispered.

  We climbed up a fire escape and found ourselves looking out over the drab rooftops of the student ghetto. It was still early in the morning, and the sun was gentle. Angus lit a joint, then handed it to me.

  “Did you get this in Bisbee?” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That’s where Wylie said you went.”

  “Well, Bisbee’s less an actual destination than a state of mind.”

  “If you say so,” I said. I was trying to identify precisely when I got stoned, a moment that had always eluded me in the past and now seemed, for some reason, within my reach.

  “How’s the research coming along?” Angus said.

  “Not so good,” I said, not even wanting to think about it.

  Angus sat down on the roof, leaning back on his elbows, and grinned at me. His cheeks and the bridge of his nose were pink from the sun. I sat down beside him, wondering where his hat was.

  “You should leave the library and take to the streets,” he said. “Put down your pen and join the cause.”

  “I mostly use a computer,” I told him. “Not a pen.”

  “My point remains the same,” he said, and exhaled smoke.

  “I think you’d like some of the art I work with,” I said. “I study a lot of revolutionary people, guerrillas who were trying to change society. Women putting their bodies on the line.”

  He raised his eyebrows and looked unconvinced, then rolled onto his side and put his hand on my thigh. “Like how?” he said.

  “Picketing museums, doing outrageous performance art in public spaces, that kind of thing. This one woman wrote a poem, rolled the piece of paper up, then scrolled it from within her, you know, body and read it out loud to an audience. And there were these others who dressed up like cheer-leaders and each had a letter on her sweater—a C, a U, an N, a T—and they did cheers to, like, take back the word or whatever. They were very political.”

  Angus was smiling, with his eyes closed. “I like you,” he said, “because your secret rebellious side is so badly concealed. That’s why you hang out with me so much.”

  “I don’t have a secret rebellious side.”

  “In fact it’s not even a secret.”

  “It is too,” I said.

  “So you admit it.”

  “I don’t even know what we’re talking about,” I said.

  Angus laughed, and after a second I did too. I lay down next to him, my face to the sun, and put my hand on his leg. The sweet smell of pot rose and buzzed around my ears. Angus covered my hand with his. Then, long before I was ready to leave, he stood up and pulled me to my feet and said it was time to get going.

  Back in the apartment the troops were rallying, sort of, sleepily and with some complaints. “Does this have to be done today, man?” Berto kept saying. Wylie sat in the corner with Irina, silent and deeply tanned and expressionless, holding the baby. E
ven the dog lay on its side, only one eye open, mustering a minimum of enthusiasm.

  “This one’s ready to go, so why wait?” Angus said. “The hard work’s been done. The rest of the troops have been informed. It’s a cakewalk.”

  “What is a cakewalk?” Irina asked.

  “It’s something easy,” Angus said eventually. “Easy as pie.”

  “You know, I have tried to make pie,” she said, “and it is not very easy.”

  “Irina,” Wylie said. “Never mind.”

  “It is the crust part that can be hard.”

  “What are you guys going to do?” I asked him.

  “It’s the Sandias,” Angus said.

  The plan, he explained, was to remove the crest of the Sandias from the life of the city, to take it away, temporarily, so that people would remember that it was there. Most people forgot to even look at the mountains, as they went about their pitiful day-to-day lives. This was what he called them, “pitiful day-to-day lives,” in a tone I hadn’t heard before: sharp with not just excitement but disdain. I wondered if he thought my mother’s life was pitiful, or mine. In fact, I decided, he probably did, but also thought that I could be saved from it or somehow redeemed.

  “So, we’ll divide,” Angus was saying. “Kickoff time is midnight. Stan and Berto, you two take the roads. Wylie and Irina and I will take the tram.”

  “Who’s going to secure the airspace?” I asked. There was a silence. “Just kidding,” I added, but nobody laughed. “Where do I go?”

  “Home,” Wylie said.

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  We glared at each other, both of us cross-legged on the floor.

  “Children,” Angus said quietly, seeming amused. “Lynn, you’ll come with me. We’ll all meet back here at midnight. Class dismissed.” He clapped his freckled hands, and the dog jumped.

  Angus wanted me to while away the afternoon in a motel, but I had other plans. Cornering Wylie, I told him there was something I wanted him to do with me.