“So I was thinking,” I told Amy.
I lay on my side on the living room carpet, my body curved protectively around Charlotte, who was conducting a taste test of various toys.
“Maybe we should start looking for a new place,” I said.
She tamped down the lid on her travel mug. “What makes you say that?”
“It just occurred to me, it might be time.”
She peered over her shoulder at me. To avoid her gaze, I twisted to retrieve a ball that had rolled out of Charlotte’s reach.
“Now that she’s crawling, it’s starting to feel kinda crowded,” I said. “You know?”
Amy continued to study me. “Is that what you want?”
“I’m asking if it’s what you want, too.”
“I mean,” she said. “Eventually, yes.”
“Great. I’ll check the listings and see what’s out there.”
“I get notifications a couple of times a week.” She took her lunch from the fridge. “I don’t think there’s much inventory right now.”
“Stuff comes on all the time.”
“We’re supposed to be saving up.”
“Sure. At some point we have to bite the bullet, though.”
“You know as well as I do that we don’t have enough to swing it without asking for help from my parents. We agreed we don’t want to do that.”
“Right. I’m saying, maybe we should be flexible. It’s not like they don’t help us a ton already in other ways. They seem fine with it.”
“That’s different. You’re talking about asking for a handout.”
“I meant a loan.”
“You said you didn’t want that, either.”
“I know I did. I just don’t want to let pride get in the way of our daughter’s needs.”
“Her needs? She can’t walk, yet.”
“It’s a question of economics,” I said. “Prices don’t go down here, they go up. It’s a treadmill. We can wait and wait and it’s never going to happen. Every month that goes by, we’re making it harder for ourselves and missing out on value.”
“I’m confused. Is the purpose of this to buy, or to get more space?”
“Either. Both. The best-case scenario would be to find a decent-sized rental that allows us to keep putting money aside.”
“The best-case scenario is the deal we have now.”
“I’m saying if. Let’s not rule it out in advance.”
“In this neighborhood?”
“It doesn’t have to be here.”
“I like it here,” she said.
“I do, too. But we should be open to expanding the search radius.”
“Unless we’re expanding it to Arizona,” she said, “I don’t know what you expect to find.”
She canted back at the waist, as if to evaluate me at a critical remove. “What’s going on here?”
Clay Edison, Master of Deception.
“I’m just thinking out loud,” I said.
“What made you think of it now, specifically?”
“Honey. Come on. It popped into my head. That’s it. Please let’s not overthink it.”
“You’re the one who brought it up.”
“And now I’m saying let’s not worry about it.”
“Worry about what?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Did you hear from the detective? Is that what this is?”
“He’s investigating,” I said.
“And?”
“He’s got nothing concrete.”
“Is there something not concrete?”
“I told you I’d let you know if there was something worth knowing.”
“Yeah. So? Is there?”
“We can’t live in fear,” I said. “We also agreed on that.”
“It’s wrong to be controlled by an unwarranted feeling. It’s stupid not to take reasonable precautions.”
“We have taken them.”
“You’re telling me we’re safe,” she said.
“I think so.”
She made a frustrated sound. “Why can’t you just say it? ‘We’re safe.’ Say that.”
“Amy—”
“You can’t say it.”
“There’s no such thing as a hundred percent safe. I could knit sweaters for a living, and I still couldn’t make you that promise. We could move to a cave in the middle of the forest and next thing we’re wiped out by a meteor.”
She said, “You don’t knit sweaters.”
Her face was wet with tears.
“Honey,” I said.
“I worry about you, every day.” She plucked tissues from her bag and blotted her cheeks. “Every day you leave and I think, ‘He’s not coming back.’ Uch. Hang on.”
She went into the bathroom to fix her makeup. When she reemerged, she said, “I’m sorry.”
“You’ve never talked about feeling that way.”
“It comes and goes. It’s not a big deal.”
“Big enough for you to say something.”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“I’m glad you did. I am. You look nice, by the way.”
“Thanks.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m as safe as any person in my line of work is. Much safer than if I were on the streets. But some degree of risk is inherent in my job. It’s either that or I find something else to do.” I paused. “Is that what you want?”
“I would never ask you to do that.”
“Fine, but I’m asking you to speak your mind. If you could press a button and make me not a cop, would you?”
“I want you to be happy.”
“Amy. Please.”
She said, “You’re so smart. You could do so many other things, and sometimes it’s hard to accept that you’ve chosen this.”
“I made that choice long before we were together.”
“I know.” She zipped her bag. “Things change.”
Charlotte rocked onto her hands and knees and began crawling for the front door.
I crawled after her, offering encouragement. “Someone wants to go to work with Mommy.”
Amy knelt beside us. She put a hand on my shoulder, curled a finger under Charlotte’s chin. “Someday.”
—
AFTER THE MORNING nap, I drove to Berkeley Bowl. A sense of violation clung to me, humid, leaden; I couldn’t shed it; couldn’t scrape away the virulence of white letters seared on hollow black.
My name. Amy’s name. Our address.
Thank God Charlotte was too young for social media.
I buckled her in the cart and stalked the aisles, vigilant, detached, irate, grabbing food off the shelves and staring down my fellow shoppers and wondering which of them was Shitlord5546.
Middle-aged Asian woman toting an eight-pack of tangerine La Croix.
Hipster couple bickering over fair-trade rice.
Stock clerk tagging canned olives: That you, Anonymous?
The elderly black woman buying swordfish.
The aproned Hispanic man cutting it for her.
Who owned a jar of red nail polish?
“That is extremely unsafe.”
The woman addressing me was white, in her forties, with a chenille skirt, a sage-green fleece vest, Birkenstocks, and slumping socks.
“Pardon?” I said.
She pointed to Charlotte in the shopping cart. “Those things are death traps. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Her own cart contained nothing but dried bananas, fifteen bulk bags’ worth, filled to the neck and twist-tied.
I said, “Go fuck yourself, ma’am,” and wheeled away, abandoning the groceries by the registers. I was so hacked off that I got Charlotte’s leg caught when I lifted her out of the cart. She let out a bleat of pain and began to cry.
The parking lot was the usual honking catastrophe. My pulse was up, my fingertips tingling. While I struggled to buckle in a raging, stiff-limbed Charlotte, a Volvo pulled up to claim my space.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I tugged it out.
Sibley.
The driver of the Volvo leaned out. “Excuse me. Are you leaving?”
“In a second.” I picked up the call. “What’s up.”
The driver mouthed asshole and glided off.
“I got a text,” Sibley said. “Someone moved the bear.”
—
THE TRACKER HAD pinged at a location on Oxford Street, three-quarters of a mile from People’s Park. I found Sibley standing beneath a stop sign to which someone had added a sticker.
I had Charlotte in the baby carrier, facing out, her feet kicking excitedly at the air.
“Hello you,” Sibley said. To me: “Really?”
“What do you want me to do? Day off.” I glanced around. “Where’s our bear?”
“Here, as of thirty minutes ago.”
She showed me the tracking app: a map, marked with a blinking pin. I tapped the pin. A dialogue box popped up with the coordinates and a timestamp.
“Where’s it now?” I said.
She shook her head. “We’ll find out at noon tomorrow.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Hey. Excuse me for taking into account battery life.”
“You do realize,” I said, “this could have nothing to do with the baby. Someone took the bear cause it’s free.”
“That’s always been true. What’s wrong with you? You look ready to blow a fuse.”
I sighed. “It’s been a week.”
“Yeah, well, chin up, buttercup. This is a positive development. It’s a zoo over there. Ever since they announced they’re going to excavate, folks are grabbing things and hauling them off. Half the stuff that was there is gone. My hope is the mother caught wind of it, had second thoughts, ran back to get it. You have a better idea, speak up.”
I shook my head.
“Fine, then. I’ll text you tomorrow.”
“It’s just, like, the slowest chase in human history,” I said.
Sibley leaned toward Charlotte. “You can come, too. You don’t even have to bring him.”
—
THE FOLLOWING DAY I headed over to my in-laws’ to wait for Sibley’s call. Theresa served me homemade biscotti, and we admired the baby as she motored around the kitchen.
“I can’t believe how fast she is,” Theresa said.
“Future point guard.”
She smiled. My mother-in-law is a thoughtful, understated woman, the foil to her gregarious husband. Paul once summed it up this way: I say ninety percent of the words. She says ninety percent of the words worth listening to.
“Amy tells me you’re thinking about looking for a new place to live.”
“In a general sense.”
“She said you’ve been under a lot of pressure.”
I shrugged.
“I know you take good care of them,” she said.
“I try.”
“Paul and I want you to know that we’re here to help with whatever you need.”
“We do. Thank you.”
She nodded again and left it at that.
Charlotte started nosing her way through the service porch entrance. I got up and reset her to the middle of the floor, and she turned around and headed for the same spot.
“She’s nothing if not persistent,” I said.
“I wonder where she gets that from,” Theresa said.
At noon on the dot Sibley texted MLK @ Berryman
10 minutes I wrote.
I kissed Charlotte goodbye; kissed Theresa on the cheek and thanked her.
“We’ll be fine,” she said. “You take care of yourself.”
—
THE BUILDING WAS a triplex of no discernible architectural style, ineffectually screened by a row of black poplars. On the app, the pin sat squarely in the middle of the structure.
“Do we know which unit it is?” I asked.
“The GPS is accurate to fifteen feet,” she said.
“So, any of them.”
Two doors under the street-side portico, enameled mailboxes labeled GIORDANO and WILLIS. A Post-it, affixed to the wall with clear packing tape, directed delivery people to the end of the driveway for CHEN APT. #3.
Sibley and I sifted through the contents of the mailboxes. Willis was Matt Willis. There were also items addressed to his roommates, or perhaps old tenants. Juan Miguel Eisenstein and Matthew Boyarin.
“Attention Target shoppers,” Sibley said. “Special on Matts. Two for one.”
Giordano was Anita. She appeared to be the sole occupant of apt. #2. Her catalogs skewed older. More promising.
We headed down the driveway to apt. #3. Kevin Chen. Iris Chen. A tower of Amazon packages. Lululemon. Children’s apparel. Nobody takes your demographic profile more seriously than a direct-mail marketer.
“Well,” I said. “I know who I like.”
We rang the bell for Anita Giordano.
No answer.
Middle of the day. At work.
Sibley pressed the bell for Willis.
This time we heard slow, bare feet on hardwood. The peephole dimmed, then the chain went on and the door opened, releasing from within a gust of dude-stink.
“Help you?”
White, early twenties, ectomorphic, bloodshot; black beard segueing into chest hair.
“Mr. Willis?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’m Deputy Edison of the County Sheriff’s. This is Lieutenant Sibley of UCPD. You mind if we ask you a couple of questions?”
“About what.”
“May we come in?” Sibley asked.
“What questions,” Willis said.
“It’s concerning your neighbor, Ms. Giordano.”
A beat. He undid the chain and led us into the living room.
“Have a seat,” he said.
We couldn’t. Everywhere were pizza boxes, wadded tissues, energy drink cans. A dragon-shaped bong made of green glass leaked tendrils of smoke. Foremost was a massive TV connected to a PlayStation. Half the screen showed a paused video game, the other half a chat module, streaming viewer commentary.
Willis plopped down on the couch and picked up the controller. Donning a large headset with a microphone, he addressed a webcam mounted above the television.
“All right, douchebags, I’m back, and as you can see, I have five-O in the house.”
The chat module went wild.
Tears of laughter emojis, weeping emojis, cop emojis, padlock emojis.
LOL SWATTED
Run b4 they beat u
“Mr. Willis, you mind please shutting that off?” I asked.
“I can do this and talk at the same time,” he said, unpausing the game.
Sibley and I shared a look. I think we’d both been puzzled by his willingness to let us in. Now we understood: He’d co-opted us into his show.
“But I ain’t no snitch,” Willis said, smirking.
Snitches get stiches the chat module read.
“What time does Ms. Giordano usually get home?” I asked.
Willis shrugged. His thumbs worked the controller, producing a shower of severed limbs and pixelated gore.
“Do you know where she works?” Sibley said.
“Nope.”
“Does she live alone?”
Willis blew a raspberry. “I guess.”
“How old would you say Ms. Giordano is?”
“Sixty? Seventy? Older than you guys.”
Sibley rolled her shoulders. Done with this mook.
We turned to leave.
“Hang on, hang on,” Willis said, giggling. “What’s the deal? She killed someone?”
“We’re looking for a bear,” Sibley said.
His eyes unstuck from the screen. “Bear?”
“One’s been spotted around this neighborhood.”
“You might want to clean up,” I said. “They can smell from miles away. Come straight through your window.”
Bear emojis flooded the chat stream.
“Wait, what?” Willis said.
“Have a good day, Mr. Willis,” Sibley said.
He mashed PAUSE and trailed us to the door. “Like, an actual bear?”
We didn’t answer.
Briefly he craned his head out, scanning the street for non-virtual wildlife.
