by Cecilia Tan
Wren nodded and sipped at the seltzer, the bubbles tickling her nose.
“I did manage to figure out where she’d moved after the address you gave me. I figured I’d go by there, just to see. It was a small apartment building a couple of blocks from the park, toward the river. Not a bad neighborhood. I drove by late last night, but when I got there, I found the front door boarded shut. From the looks of the brick, there had been a fire, and the building was condemned.”
“Oh no,” Wren found herself saying, gripping the glass tight.
“I had to wait until first thing this morning to get to the police reports about the fire. It doesn’t look like your sister was there at the time. The only fatality reported was the landlord. Four people were treated for smoke inhalation in the hospital and released: none of them were your sister. The fire is flagged as a possible arson, but if the landlord was responsible, well, he paid the price. The police wanted to interview all the residents about it, but it doesn’t appear they ever talked to your sister. She might have moved in with a friend or something after that and they don’t have any record of it. Is there lettuce? Or do you just prefer the non-greens?”
His question seemed to bring her back to the kitchen from the world of her imagination, trying to picture Abby fleeing from a burning building and never looking back. “Oh, there’s pre-washed spinach in the crisper. And dressing in the door.”
He nodded, putting a handful of leaves on each of their plates, topping them with the chopped vegetables, and then drizzling them with bottled dressing. He put the dressing away and returned with the chicken, still in its tray. Steam rose as he lifted the cover off. “Anything else you would like?” he asked, "or are you eating low carb?”
Wren couldn’t help but smile. “No, I’m just too lazy and hungry to make any. I'll eat a carby breakfast to make up for it.” She used her knife and fork to take one of the legs of the chicken. “So, is that it? The trail's gone cold?”
He took a bite of salad on his fork and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “There are some other avenues to try. I won’t give up just yet if you don’t want me to.”
The chicken was warm and salty. Wren resisted the urge to pick up the drumstick in her fingers in front of a houseguest and instead tore pieces off the thigh with her fork. The meat was so soft she didn’t even need the knife. “If you could keep looking a bit more,” she said quietly, "that would be great. I mean... if her place burned, I could see her just... starting over and never looking back. Maybe even a new phone, new everything? And just letting the old bills pile up... That’s the sort of thing she’d do. Like the fire would automatically get her off scot free of any responsibility.”
They ate in silence for a bit, and then Derek asked, quiet and serious, "And do you feel like she’s your responsibility?”
“Yes!” Wren was surprised at the vehemence of her outburst. “Yes, I do!” She hadn’t really thought of it that way, not in so many words, but there it was. “Especially since she doesn’t take responsibility for herself!”
She expected Derek to argue, to point out that her sister was a grown woman, or something. But he just looked at her, then back at his plate as he tried to spear a cherry tomato on his fork. “I'll keep looking,” he said, when he had caught it. “I’m working on another missing person right now, too, but that doesn’t keep me very busy.”
Wren found herself very curious about how a private investigator made a living, since he couldn’t possibly be living off what she and one other person were paying him, could he? But she wasn’t the prying type. In the end she finished her meal in silence, and then looked on in shock as Derek put the leftover chicken away, took the dishes to the sink, rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher, then brought a damp sponge back to the table to wipe up the grease spot left by the chicken container.
“What?” he asked when he realized she was staring at him as if he’d grown two heads.
“You must be some kind of neat freak,” she said, holding back a laugh. “I’ve never seen a guy wipe up. One or two who thought they were God's gift for loading the dishwasher, but never one who used a sponge.”
He chuckled, then went to put the sponge back in the sink, while Wren got up to see if there was ice cream in the freezer. “My mother taught me how to cook and how to clean up. She was very particular about a lot of things, and she couldn’t do them herself because she was disabled. After my dad died, it was just the two of us in the house all my teen years. She died just after I got to college.”
“Oh.” Wren wondered if that was how she sounded, talking about her own family tragedy. As if she’d practiced it, said it so many times, so that it would come out sounding nonchalant, as if she were talking about the weather. It was just a fact. But for Wren, telling people anything was a big deal.
She put her hand over his. “Thank you for telling me.”
“You’re welcome.” His eyes met hers. “Any reason you have the freezer open?”
She shut it with another "oh,” thinking she had said that a lot tonight. “Just hoping for some ice cream. There isn’t any, though. I should have picked some up.”
He glanced at his watch. “We could walk over to the place on Main. It’s only five or six blocks and it’s not that chilly out.”
Wren regarded him. “Yeah, we could.” Why not? She didn’t have anything better to do, and he was nice. “It’s not against some kind of client appropriateness rules or something?”
“Getting ice cream?” He laughed. “No. That’s not mentioned in the Private Dick Handbook. If you’re really concerned... we can go dutch.”
She laughed. “Okay.” She grabbed her purse, threw on a jacket, and then held the door open for him.
They met Lawrence coming in the front door. Wren looked back and forth between the two of them for a moment, trying not to show any embarrassment on her face, then said, "Lawrence, meet my friend Derek. Derek, my downstairs neighbor, Lawrence.”
Lawrence’s eyebrows were still perched high up his forehead as he shook Derek’s hand, clearly surprised or maybe even skeptical. “Nice to meet you.” He looked back at Wren, curiosity burning in his eyes. “Catching a movie?”
Wren resisted the urge to shrug or to grab Derek’s hand and pull him down the front steps. “No, going to get some ice cream. See you later!” She went down the steps herself instead, hoping that was enough of a hint for Lawrence not to invite himself along.
She waited until they were a block away to say, "Sorry about that. I didn’t tell him I was hiring someone to look for Abby, and if you’d said something about it, it would have looked like I had been hiding it from him.”
Derek’s eyebrow tilted. “Aren’t you?”
She huffed. “Well, I didn’t mean to be. But I haven’t told him yet, anyway, and now I’m going to have to, or he’s going to be all over whether we are dating or something. He’s my best friend, but that doesn’t mean I always want his opinion on everything.” Well, except she usually did, especially when dates went wrong. But, she reminded herself, this wasn’t a date, and nothing had gone wrong.
Derek chuckled. “You’re not comfortable keeping secrets.”
“Not really, no. I’m not good at keeping track of who got told what. I just don’t like hurting people’s feelings.”
“And you think he’d be hurt that you didn’t tell him about me?”
“Maybe.” She stuck her hands in her jacket pockets, leaves swirling around her ankles as they walked. “He’s a good friend,” she said then, and left it at that.
They were nearly there when Derek asked, "Do you have a photograph of your sister I could borrow? Or that you could email to me?”
“Sure. Aunt Brenda emailed a picture of the two of us together last Christmas, actually. I’m sure it’s in my computer somewhere.” She had meant to get it printed out and framed to put on her desk, but hadn’t gotten around to it. She found herself praying that it wasn’t too late, then she put aside the worry. “Now, chocolate, strawberry,
pistachio...?”
“Let’s see what they have,” he said, holding the door open for her.
THE NEXT DAY WHEN SHE got to her workstation in the back of the library, she found a single white flower in a vase sitting there. No card, no note. Later, when she quizzed the student working the front desk, all she could say was that some guy had dropped it off. It was a calla lily, just one long graceful throat, in a tall vase of heavy glass, somewhat phallic in shape, now that she looked at it.
Oh, God. She felt a flush as she thought about Derek. It had to be from him, right? It was elegant and yet sexy at the same time.
She shook herself while her equipment booted up. But Derek had been every inch the gentleman, maintaining, she thought, a professional distance. Right? Just because he seemed so sympathetic, so caring, and just because she was hard up and apparently horny, her brain had turned him into her new fantasy lust object.
She looked again for a card, but didn’t find one. So if it was from him, she didn’t know why he would have sent it, and if it wasn’t from him, then who did?
She put it out of her mind until lunch when she walked out to the dining hall to get some soup and a salad. She had just set her tray down at a table when her phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket immediately, thinking that Derek might call.
“Hi, Wren?”
Was that him? She pressed one hand over her ear. “Hello?”
“Wren, it’s Steve.”
“Who?”
“Er, sorry, look, please don’t hang up.” He sounded pathetic, like a lost puppy. “I work on the campus, too. I’m just really shy. I... I know some of your co-workers, but I hate blind dates and I bet you do, too.”
She sat down. “Wait a second, are you saying we've got mutual friends who wanted to fix us up, but you wouldn’t let them, so instead your calling me yourself?”
“Well... yeah.” Wren wasn’t sure but she thought maybe she heard him swallow. Then he went on quickly. “But really! We did meet once at a department thing, well, maybe meet is too strong a word since I was afraid to talk to you.”
“But you’re not afraid now?” This guy didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but at the same time, neither did much about sex or love or dating to Wren, so maybe he was just as confused as she was.
“Well, the phone is a little easier. But I’d really like to just have coffee or something? Or tea? At the Student Union's even fine with me, though there are some nicer places, like maybe the Starbucks across from the science center? Like, after work?”
She knew the place he meant. “Wait, you mean today?”
He made a pained sound; she could imagine him cringing even though she didn’t know what he looked like. “Well... yes?”
“I’ve got plans today,” she said, which felt like the truth to her, even though as she thought about it she realized she didn’t.
“You do?” His voice went high with surprise, then low again, forlorn. “Oh. Oh, well, is there a day that’s better for you?”
“Stan, this is all kind of weird, you know,” she finally said.
“Steve,” he corrected. “And, I know. I’m sorry. I fail at this sort of thing. Look, just, don’t say no now. Think it over and I'll call you again in a couple of days, okay? I’m sorry. I know I just made a terrible first impression, but... I’m sorry.”
And he hung up. Wren sat there staring at his number, wondering who had put weird pills in the campus water supply. It wasn’t until she got back to her desk later that she realized she should have asked if he’d sent the flower.
When she left work later, she found herself torn between dreading Steve calling again and hoping that Derek would, even though he wouldn’t be calling for the reason she hoped. It wasn’t until after she’d eaten some frozen pizza and was on the treadmill zoning out, not watching the channel the TV was turned to that it occurred to her that after Abby was found, Derek wouldn’t be in her employ anymore, and then there wouldn’t be a conflict. Her heart skipped a beat literally—the monitor on the treadmill beeped—as she thought about it. But would he be as kind and caring and interested in her if she were just a face on the street? She had the feeling he really liked her, though...
And Wren trusted her feelings. Usually.
That night she had another erotic dream. It started out about Derek, big surprise, casting him in one of her typical dreams. Kissing, heat rising, hurrying from where they are, trying to find someplace private... She’d had this same dream about almost every guy she’d been at all attracted to since she was fourteen. Of course, it being a dream, the more and more and more they looked for a private place to have sex, the more outlandish the reasons such a place was unavailable grew. They were behind a movie theater, but there were people dancing in the parking lot, so they couldn’t do it in the car. Derek tried to buy tickets to the movie inside, but then his wallet was stuck in his pocket and wouldn’t come out, even with Wren tugging on it, too. She eventually realized it was because his erection was too large, making his pants too tight and making her quake with desire and fear both. She paid with a credit card herself and they went into the theater, but could not go up to the balcony because the stairs were covered with ice, and several attempts to climb them failed. They decided to try the back row of the theater then, but just as they reached the doors, the alien invaders in the film came to life and started eating the patrons.
She woke with her panties damp and her heart pounding, but too sleepy to actually touch herself. She slipped back into sleep.
The next dream found her waking in a pool of white light, lying on her back, surrounded by softness. Something silky caressed her skin and she arched up into the touch, but it was feather-light. She looked down to see the calla lily, held above her by a man's hand that seemed to come out of the white mist and brightness. He stroked her belly with it, as if drawing lines toward the center of her heat, the throbbing place between her legs. Her nipples stood under the caressing touch and she reached up to touch them herself, only to find her wrists bound by satin ribbons. She could move her hands, but only a few inches, and a soothing "shhhhh" came from above her.
The flower made its way lower, until at last it brushed between her thighs, encouraging her to spread her legs wider, wider, trying to get just a bit more stimulation in the right place. Her hips bucked, and then a warm hand came down on her abdomen as if to hold her still.
A voice whispered. “Do you want pleasure?”
“Yes,” Wren answered, also in a whisper. She didn’t know the rules of this place, didn’t know what might offend those who made them.
“You haven’t said yes to pleasure, Wren,” came the answer.
“I haven’t?”
“No...” Another feather-light brush of the flower sent a spark through her but it wasn’t enough, wasn’t nearly enough. “Don’t be afraid...”
“I’m not,” she said, a little louder, but it didn’t sound like the truth.
She woke with a shudder to sunlight in the windows but still another hour to go before her alarm would go off. She didn’t want to wait. She climbed impatiently into the shower, thinking that she must have it really bad if her subconscious was talking to her that directly.
THREE
WREN GOT TO WORK LATE, not for any particular reason really, other than she ended up taking a long time in the shower, didn’t want to hurry through breakfast, stopped to get gas on the way...
Oh, who was she kidding? She didn’t want to run into Steve, if he was hanging around trying to catch her coming in. He sounded nice enough, he really did. But Wren didn’t like pushy, even if it was how much he liked her that had made a painfully shy guy into Mr. Pushy.
It didn’t make sense, she thought, if he was so shy, that now he’d suddenly be reaching out to her. Maybe he had a therapist who encouraged him to do it? She hoped so. She didn’t want to be the one to deal with it.
When she got to her desk there was a new flower there. The same vase, but now it held a waxy red bloom with a single
powdery stalk rising from the center. She blushed looking at it and remembering the vivid dream she’d woken to. No note again, of course.
Instead of getting to right to work upon logging in, she opened a web browser and searched for "red tropical flower" trying to find the name of the thing. It was fire-engine red, sort of heart-shaped... the more she looked at it, the more pornographic it seemed. “Anthurium,” she murmured as she found a picture of it with just a minute or two of searching. Well, they were common enough at florists, but she couldn’t help but think the meaning was blatantly sexual.
Wren moved the vase to the side desk where she wouldn’t see it and tried to concentrate on work, but after an hour she found she was making mistakes due to inattention and she sighed. With a glance around, she opened up the web browser again to check her email. Technically it was not against the rules to check her non-work email, but she always felt funny about doing it. It was lunchtime now, Wren rationalized, so it was okay, right?
She felt a little jolt go through her as she saw there was a message from Derek.
Had an interesting night last night and might be onto
something. Give me a call when you can, or email back?
I’d rather tell you more in person, so let me know when
you’re free. I can drop by or we can meet.
Now she knew she wasn’t going to get anything more done. She nearly fired back an email to say "drop by for dinner and I'll order take-out" when she realized she’d just fidget all afternoon. Instead she sent a quick email from her work account to library administration saying she was taking the rest of the day off, logged out, put her jacket back on, and picked up her purse. She left the flower where it was and walked quickly back to her car.
A tow truck was there, hoisting up a red van. Probably illegally parked. She got in her car but had to wait for the truck to clear. Might as well make a few phone calls.
