by Rick R. Reed
He sat heavily when he found an empty bench. He stared out at the pewter-colored water for a long time, letting his mind go blank. Because to think meant imagining things too horrible to contemplate.
When he did permit his mind to function again, a sliver of sun was emerging just above the water, and Cole allowed memory to take over. Just something sweet, something he could think about as a diversion—a way to escape the dread and fear that was eating into him.
The first time he saw Rory was at their gym.
They both belonged to the Bally’s in the Century City mall. It was a cruisy gym, and Cole ruefully thought of all the hookups he’d had as a result of being a member, one memorable one in the showers.
But when he’d been sitting on the abs machine that day not so long ago and spied Rory walking by on his way to one of the elliptical machines, very curiously, he didn’t feel lust. Not exactly.
Rory was almost comical. His shoes were all wrong. (Who wore an old pair of Sketchers leather bowling-style shoes to the gym?) He had on a pair of khaki Bermuda shorts and a Star Trek T-shirt. His reddish-brown hair was an unkempt mop, and his glasses screamed geek.
It was because Rory was so precisely the opposite of all the other pumped-up gym bunnies running around in their spandex and clinging nylon that he caught Cole’s eye. Some might say he looked pathetic, and Cole would have been inclined to agree. He’d also agree with those who might claim this doofus had never seen the inside of a gym, not only because of the ridiculously inappropriate attire, but also because of that skinny Ichabod Crane build. Behind the thick lenses of his glasses, Cole thought, was someone who looked completely lost.
But the urge Cole had upon seeing this stranger took him completely by surprise. He didn’t want to suppress a chuckle. He didn’t want to roll his eyes, as he saw a couple of other guys doing in the heavily gay club. He didn’t even want to maybe clue the guy in on a good pair of cross-trainers, Nike, maybe. Reebok?
No. He wanted to kiss him. Passionately. There was something so vulnerable and sweet about Rory that Cole simply wanted to press his lips against Rory’s slightly puffy ones. He could imagine nothing more satisfying—not even sex.
He just wanted to kiss him. A kiss is never just a kiss.
Cole got up and followed him over to the elliptical, where he watched as Rory awkwardly mounted the machine and pondered its screen as though the words on it were written in code.
“Just press any one of the buttons to get the thing started.” Cole walked up beside Rory, heart hammering away, feeling a little flushed. He never felt this way when cruising other guys, not even when they were naked in the shower. He was always confident.
Maybe it was because he wanted to meet—no, kiss—this new guy so much that he was all flummoxed. Bamboozled. Atwitter. Maybe because these first few words were so important, determining, as they might, their whole future.
Rory regarded him, and Cole got his first look at that impish smile.
And he was in love. Right then. Right there.
“What would I do without you?” Rory asked.
They ran into each other just outside the gym in Century City’s multileveled mall space, and since it was almost lunchtime, Cole invited him to ruin the effort of burning all those calories with a slice or two of pizza.
And Rory had said yes. He said yes after lunch when Cole asked him on a proper first date. He said yes when Cole asked if he could kiss him, right there on busy Clark Street. And he also eventually said yes to spending the night… again and again and again… until they put an end to the ruse of maintaining separate apartments and moved in together.
Now Cole stared out at the water, a horrible thought springing to mind. Are you in that water, Rory? Are its currents tossing you to and fro? Is your hair floating in its blue-green cold?
Cole shivered and stood up, banishing the thought from his mind. It was too horrible to contemplate.
The sun was full up above the lake now. It was time to go home and make some calls.
Chapter 4
DORA REYNOLDS was too tired to do anything other than sprawl on the couch in front of the TV, a bowl of Lay’s sour cream and onion potato chips at her side and a glass of Diet Coke on the coffee table before her. Yesterday she’d worked a double shift at Moody’s Pub, where she’d been a server for the last four years, because that imbecile cokehead Travis had called in sick yet again and she had to cover for him yet again.
Dora was only twenty-four, but she felt more like fifty-four or even sixty-four today. Her very bones ached. Breathing was a task that very nearly seemed beyond her energy to achieve. Anything she’d do in a normal morning—cleaning out the litter box, emptying the sink of dirty dishes, calling her mom out in Des Plaines, reading a few pages of the book that had been on her nightstand for six months, Neverwhere, taking a walk, for heaven’s sake—she put on hold, laying down these daily tasks as a kind of tribute to the great god Fatigue.
Today she’d be a blob, remote in hand, and passively watch whatever she could find on offer to stare at while she drank soda and ate junk food. She deserved the indulgence and promised herself she wouldn’t feel one whit of guilt about it. Her cat, Paula, a smoky gray domestic shorthair, snuggled against her side, completely in favor of Dora’s agenda, since it aligned so perfectly with her own feline one.
Outside, rain lashed against the windows. Good thing. Dora didn’t have to feel guilty about not going outside and doing something crazy, like a bike ride or a run along the beach, just because the sky was blue and the temperature was in the eighties.
When the local news came on at noon, Dora wasn’t really watching until an image popped up during the drone of new stories that grabbed her attention. She set down her Coke and sat up straighter on the couch.
“That guy looks familiar,” she said softly to the cat.
Indeed, the young man with reddish-brown hair and black horn-rims nudged something in Dora’s memory. She told Paula, “I’ve seen that guy before. But where?” The cat chirped as though telling Dora to shut up and listen to the news story.
A blonde reporter stood outside an older apartment building, informing her audience that Rory Schneidmiller, age twenty-three, of Rogers Park, was missing. He was last seen a little over a week ago on Monday night at his place of employment, an insurance company in the Loop.
“Who is he?” she reiterated to the cat.
And then it came to her. Sure, she’d waited on him at the restaurant last Monday night. He wasn’t “last seen” at work; he was, maybe, “last seen” by her. She tuned in more to the story, learning that the guy disappeared on Monday night, leaving no trace of his whereabouts. A tingle went through Dora at the reporter’s words. He’d seemed like a nice guy, a little lonely, eating by himself and reading a Stephen King book. She’d wanted to ask him how he liked it because she was a fan and hadn’t gotten around to reading it yet, but just ran out of time.
She remembered it all clearly now. How he’d broken a beer bottle on the pavement outside. How he was a little tipsy, not in an obnoxious way, but in a way that had been kind of cute.
Had he met with something bad on his way home from Moody’s? She shook her head, feeling a sudden and powerful welling up of sympathy for a young guy who was, really, little more than a stranger. She could see him now clearly in her mind’s eye, a little unsteady on his feet as he headed out.
Dora, no longer tired, watched as Rory Schneidmiller’s mother appeared on the screen. She had the same reddish-brown hair as her son and similar glasses. The worry on her careworn features was obvious as she implored anyone in the viewing audience to contact the Chicago Police Department if they’d seen Rory or had any news at all of him.
At least she held up better than the next person interviewed, a very handsome young man described as Rory’s “roommate.” Dora raised her eyebrows. She had a lot of friends with “roommates.” The cute guy with the pale eyes, dark hair, and way-past-five-o’clock shadow was barely holding it together
as he spoke. His eyes were filled with tears, and he had to pause a couple of times to prevent breaking down in sobs on camera. He reached out much the same way the mother had—desperate for any information regarding the young man’s mysterious disappearance. The title on the screen said the guy’s name was Cole Weston.
Dora leaned forward to snatch the folded-up section of yesterday’s Tribune she’d left lying on the coffee table. She’d discarded it earlier after failing to complete the crossword puzzle. With the pencil she’d been using for the puzzle, she jotted down the name Cole Weston in the paper’s margin. She added Rory Schneidmiller next to it. She wasn’t quite sure why.
The news faded to a commercial, and Dora picked up the remote to mute the sound. She leaned back on the couch and called out, “Hey, Tommy! You up?”
Her roommate (which was not a euphemism for any other label), Tommy D’Amico, wandered in from the bathroom, clad only in a white towel. With another white towel, he rubbed at his head of bright red hair.
“Hon, I’ve been up since six, studying. This torts course is killing me.” Tommy was in law school at Loyola downtown. “What’s up?”
“I just saw the weirdest thing on TV.” Dora wished she had the power to rewind the TV, as she could do with a videotape.
Tommy plopped down beside her, smelling of sandalwood from his shower gel. Part of her wanted to lean over and nuzzle her nose in his neck so she could get a big whiff, but that would be crossing a boundary line.
“Oh yeah?” he asked, setting aside the towel he’d used to dry his hair. Paula immediately rushed over to it, thinking, obviously, that this new piece of fabric would make a great bed, once she kneaded and rearranged it to her liking.
“Last Monday night, I waited on this guy who came in to eat alone on the patio.”
“Earth-shattering.”
“Would you let me finish?” Dora shook her head. “Anyway, I just saw on the news he went missing last Monday night.” She turned to Tommy and met his green-eyed gaze. “Missing without a trace.” Dora rubbed up and down her arms. “It gives me chills to think I might have been the last person to see him. They said on the news no one had seen him since that day at his job downtown, so chances are I was the last to see him.”
“See him alive,” Tommy mumbled.
She punched his arm. “Don’t say that! He’s missing, not dead.”
“Well, come on, a young guy goes missing without a trace and still hasn’t turned up over a week later? He’s dead.” Tommy crossed his arms across his bare chest.
“You’re heartless.” Dora reached over Tommy to grab the cat off the towel and set her down on her own lap, where she could stroke her. Paula purred. “Do you think I should call the police?”
“Do you know anything about what he had planned after he left Moody’s?”
“No, but, I don’t know, maybe it would help them to have another piece of the puzzle.”
“I don’t see how. Don’t get involved.” Tommy picked up the remote and began scanning through the channels.
“Give me that!” She grabbed the remote out of his hands and returned to the news. Tommy’s words ignited a stubborn—and nurturing—streak within her. She had to help, even if her help was little aid at all.
“Well, I think I should call. Who knows? It might help, even though we don’t know how. I won’t know unless I try.”
Tommy stood. He was a fine-looking man, a perfectly proportioned and muscled body dusted with freckles and light reddish-brown hair.
Too bad he was gay. Or maybe it wasn’t, since they lived under the same roof. And Lord knew he could get on her nerves.
She didn’t feel quite as tired as before as she went looking for the cordless between the couch cushions. At least now she had a plan.
IT WAS evening before Dora found herself back on the couch, Paula keeping watch at her side. The report of the missing young man had unnerved her, and she knew why. When she was eight years old, just a little girl growing up in the small town of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, her father had vanished without a trace. She’d recalled how people wanted to surmise that he’d run away from taking care of a too-large family—Dora had three brothers and four sisters—on his decent but hard-to-stretch steelworker’s pay. The talk around town was that he’d simply taken off to escape the shackles of matrimony and parenthood. But her mother, her siblings, and Dora herself knew that would have never been the case. Not with her dad. He loved his wife and kids with a fierce devotion. No, much like what she’d learned in the intervening hours since she first saw the news story, her father’s disappearance so long ago was very similar to Rory Schneidmiller’s. Both men had simply vanished without a trace one night. They both left—or were taken—without any of their personal belongings and without a word to a single soul of any plan of leaving. There were no signs of foul play, no telltale evidence that would at least provide some clue to the mystery of their disappearances.
Dora shook her head, pointing the remote control at the TV to turn it on. Tonight Mad About You and Frasier were both on, two of her favorites. But it was hard not to be distracted.
Earlier, she’d called the Chicago Police Department and had been lucky enough to catch the detective who was looking into Rory Schneidmiller’s disappearance in her office and willing to talk to her. The detective’s name was Jordyn Adkins, and she listened as Dora unspooled her story about waiting on Schneidmiller the previous Monday and how, when he left, he’d been a little under the influence. Detective Adkins asked all the right questions—Did he mention any plans for after he left the restaurant? Had she seen him speaking to anyone else? Did he seem troubled? And Dora had tried to paint a picture of a young man who, she thought, simply didn’t want to cook and had gone out for a quick burger and a few beers with the company of the book he was reading, a Stephen King potboiler called Desperation. It had surprised Dora that she’d recalled the actual title of the book because it hadn’t come to her until her phone call to the police.
In the end, though, she knew what she’d provided wasn’t of much use, other than narrowing the timeline for Rory Schneidmiller’s disappearance just a bit. If she had seen him talking to someone or if he had revealed something about his mental state to her or a plan for where he was off to next, then maybe her intervention might have helped. But Dora had been busy, mostly inside the restaurant, waiting on a rowdy bunch of Loyola University frat boys. She’d almost forgotten the young guy sitting outside.
Yet his face continued to haunt her. He’d been cute. Not in a way that was necessarily attractive or sexy or anything like that, but in a way that brought out her nurturing side, even though they were about the same age. His being slightly tipsy she saw not as a sign of trouble, but as someone who obviously didn’t drink much and couldn’t handle his liquor. She did remember he’d only had three beers, not exactly enough for most people to get as smashed as Rory appeared.
Maybe, drunk, he’d wandered down the wrong alley? Maybe a mugging had gotten out of hand? Maybe he’d fallen into the lake, hit his head on a boulder? Drowned? Who knew?
The thing that bugged her, that made her want to help in some way, was that she didn’t want Rory’s mother and roommate to go through the same agony her family did when her father had vanished. All her family thought there was no ache worse than simply not knowing. Death—as horrible as that would have been—would have brought a tiny bit of relief because it would also bring closure. But as long as a loved one was missing, whether it was days, weeks, months, or yes, even years, there was always, somewhere in the back of one’s mind, a tiny flame of hope that refused to be extinguished.
It was impossible to truly move on, whatever that meant.
She picked up the cordless and punched in 411. “Do you have a number for Cole Weston in Chicago?” Dora asked when the operator answered.
And there was only one, on Fargo Avenue. Dora thought that had to be the same guy she’d seen on the news and jotted down the number.
She wasn’t sure yet
what she’d do with it.
Chapter 5
“I’VE DONE everything I can think of.” Cole sat across from his sister, Elaine, at a diner a couple of blocks away from his apartment. The diner was on Sheridan Road; they’d done more watching the traffic go by than talking to each other. That traffic was also fascinating enough to make both of them pretty much ignore the breakfasts laid out in front of them on red Formica. The only thing Cole had partaken of, like his sister, was lots and lots of black coffee. Together, they must have drunk about a pot of the stuff.
Maybe that was why they were out of sorts, jumpy.
Maybe that’s why Elaine snapped, “Everything? Surely there must be something you haven’t thought of.”
It was now over two weeks since Rory had gone missing. In that time, not one clue about his whereabouts had emerged. Cole still woke up some mornings expecting to hear Rory in the shower, humming some bad eighties tune.
Cole put his head in his hands, staring down at the table, breathing hard. He didn’t want to blow up at Elaine, who was only trying to be helpful. She’d stopped by the apartment this September Saturday morning specifically to take her little brother out to breakfast because the whole family was worried about him, worried about the changes they’d seen over such a short period. Because when Rory vanished, so, in a way, had Cole. While Cole was still present physically, almost every other aspect of his personality had gone into hiding the night he came home to an empty apartment. Cole was once quick to laugh, lighthearted, carefree, never worrying about the serious parts of life, like work and education. He lived for pleasure but wasn’t hedonistic—his joy was not satisfied until everyone around him was as happy as he was.
That person had vanished. Since Rory’s disappearance, Cole was often morose, moving slowly and rarely smiling. And no one could blame him for his sense of loss, his sadness, his confusion, his lack of interest in life. He looked like he’d lost at least ten pounds.
