Dead Time Read online

  “Thank you,” I said. “Lauren is a terrific mom.”

  She lifted her wrist and glanced at her watch. The timepiece was on her left wrist, a reality that allowed her to display her engagement ring every time she felt the impulse to check the time. It felt unkind that I doubted that the watch placement was a coincidence.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I have to get back to DIA. Security these days, you know? Stay in touch, okay?” She looked at me with a sincere face that I’d once fallen for every time. “You will?”

  I wouldn’t. Stay in touch. Neither would she. We’d been divorced a long time. We hadn’t stayed in touch.

  “Sure,” I said. “Take care of that baby. Thanks for coming today. It would mean a lot to Adrienne.”

  I watched her rush down the lane. Pregnant and on three-inch heels, her balance never wavered.

  In six or seven months, Lauren and I would get a birth announcement.

  We would send something nice. Merideth would consider the gift quaint. The circle would close around Boulder again, at least for a while. My ex-wife would be outside the perimeter.

  SEVEN

  The Canyon

  Jack noticed the mini-drama between Jules and her boyfriend, Eric, and Jules’s glance at Kanyn. He wasn’t sure what was going on.

  “She have a last name? Your friend, Jaana?” Jack asked. Jack had finished helping Carmel and had lifted his heavy pack onto his shoulders, but he hadn’t tightened the straps. He lowered the weight to the ground. He wasn’t quite ready to abandon his agenda with the shirtless man.

  Everyone paused a few beats to give the shirtless man a chance to assign Jaana a last name.

  “Like I said, we’re just friends,” he said after a pregnant pause. “Got together a couple times. This is just a…”

  “Lark,” Jules said, glancing toward Lisa. She still hadn’t retied the scarf around her neck. Nor had she slipped either of her arms through the shoulder straps of her Kelty.

  “Yeah, I guess,” the man said cautiously. It was as though his hungover brain couldn’t find whatever neurochemical fuel it needed to permit it to remember exactly what “lark” meant.

  Jack said, “If we see her, or if we see anything that might be, you know, important, on the way out, we’ll give word to someone coming down when we pass on the trail. All right? That way you’ll know if we see anything.”

  “Okay.” The shirtless man was developing an affinity for the conversational rhythm. His eyes were locked on Jack’s.

  Jack said, “Want to know what I think?”

  The man nodded.

  “She probably got tired of sleeping on the sand and she grabbed an empty bunk in one of the cabins when she got up to pee. She’s probably asleep right over there. Right now, as we speak. Recovering from your party last night.” He pointed toward the nearby cluster of cabins. “I bet that’s where she is.”

  “Maybe,” the shirtless man said.

  Jack waited until the shirtless man looked him in the eyes before he asked one last question. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Nick,” he said.

  “I’m Jack. You got a phone number? I’ll let you know…if we learn anything. You know, on our way up. Wait! That gives me an idea.”

  Jack pulled out his digital camera again. The group let out a collective groan. Jack had been pointing the camera at someone during their entire holiday. “I’ll take a quick pic of you. If we see her, I’ll show it to her, tell her you’re looking for her.”

  He snapped a photo of the shirtless man from the waist up.

  Jack checked the screen. From the waist to the neck Nick looked like he was posing for a swimsuit ad. From the neck up, he looked like he’d been caught in some state trooper’s dash cam at three o’clock in the morning.

  Jack was flirting. The women all recognized it. Eric missed it. He was guilty of assuming that the fact that Nick had somehow talked an attractive woman into a one-night assignation in the canyon meant that he was a dedicated heterosexual.

  Jack wasn’t assuming anything of the kind.

  The women had been part of a late discussion a couple of nights before, liberally lubricated by tequila shots, when Jack revealed that he considered himself a gifted gay seer—he possessed a unique version of X-ray vision that gave him the special ability to see through closed closet doors. “Not gaydar,” he’d told the girls. “I’m no better at that than anyone else.” He adopted his best Sixth Sense whisper. “But I can see people hiding in closets.”

  Jack tucked away his camera and in seconds had a pencil and notepad ready for Nick’s phone info.

  Eric was tired of waiting for Nick to move on. He had wanted to begin the hike out by three in the morning to avoid the scorching heat near the rim after the sun was high in the sky, but Jules and Carmel were adamant about not hiking in the dark. He stepped forward and lifted Jules’s pack, holding it up to her so that she could slip it on. His gesture was made more out of exasperation than kindness. She hesitated before she extended her left arm and lowered her shoulder.

  “You didn’t see her? Jaana?” Jules whispered to her boyfriend. “I couldn’t hear what you said before.”

  “No,” he said. “Let’s go. We should be halfway up by now.”

  “Sure?”

  “I said I didn’t.”

  She cinched the backpack straps tight and buckled the belt while the other hikers began to march past Nick in single file on the way to the trailhead.

  Jack repeated his assurance that she was probably asleep in another cabin. That Nick should go check.

  Once the entire file had passed, the shirtless man stuck his hands into the pockets of his shabby jeans and shuffled off toward another cabin that was just beginning to show signs of morning life.

  His plan was to ask those people if any of them had seen Jaana.

  EIGHT

  Her Ex

  I didn’t know what Jonas’s uncle Marty was planning. But he had some leverage. Before her death, Adrienne had stacked the deck in his favor.

  Although Adrienne had named Lauren and me as permanent custodians for her son, she had thrown a joker into our winning parental hand: She had sequestered most of the half of her substantial estate she hadn’t bequeathed to charity into a trust for Jonas’s welfare. According to the terms of the trust documents, Martin and I were the cotrustees of Jonas’s funds. Adrienne had stipulated a few guidelines for us to follow, but by and large, Marty and I would have to agree on how to invest, and how to distribute, the assets of the trust until Jonas was twenty-seven years old.

  Why twenty-seven? If I ever made it to heaven, I would ask Adrienne why twenty-seven, and to please tell me the story about Hand-Job Judy.

  Having known her well, I allowed for the possibility that Adrienne’s testamentary machinations weren’t unwitting, but rather that she had named her nebbishy brother and her stubborn neighbor as cotrustees so that she would have some earthly entertainment in case heaven’s diversions weren’t captivating her on any given day.

  Adrienne would have predicted that her brother and I wouldn’t agree on how to manage Jonas’s affairs. Hell, she would have known damn well that Marty and I wouldn’t agree on what day of the week it was, let alone in what bank to put Jonas’s trust checking account.

  I could hear her laughing all the way from heaven.

  Marty and his bravissimo but kind wife, Kim, stayed until the bitter end of the reception. My wife, Lauren, was fried from being on her feet for so long. It wasn’t a surprise; history had taught us that her version of MS and long stretches of vertical activity weren’t compatible partners. I told her I would finish cleaning up the house. She said good-bye to Marty and Kim, promised to keep an ear tuned for the kids, who were downstairs decompressing from the emotional day, and she retreated toward the bedroom to get horizontal.

  She touched me on the neck, just below my ear. Her last whispered words to me: “Don’t give an inch.”

  Marty found me moments after the last of
the other guests had departed. He rubbed his hands together and said, “Ready? Let’s talk business.”

  The man was a caricature. I was still trying to decide of what. I squelched a sigh and allowed myself to feel some hope that at least Marty no longer seemed interested in gossiping about his sister’s sexual orientation.

  The optimist in me considered that progress.

  Marty gestured outside and told me not to worry, that Kim would “finish straightening up the kitchen.” He herded me back out toward the deck that faced the Continental Divide—apparently that was our spot for man-to-man chats. Over my shoulder I said, “No need to bother, Kim. I’ll take care of it later. I mean it, don’t.”

  Marty said, “She doesn’t mind.”

  Kim sighed. The volume of her sighing was as exaggerated as the volume of her speaking voice. Something told me that it was an adaptation to a marriage where her partner had trouble hearing anything at all.

  Emily, our big Bouvier, rushed to get outside before the door closed. She was protective of me; I could tell that she didn’t trust Marty. Emily had good instincts.

  Marty’s agenda items for our latest terrace tête-à-tête were, one, the sale of Adrienne’s house and, two, Jonas’s summer plans.

  Until then, I hadn’t given either topic a moment’s consideration.

  Over the next few weeks—during some tortuous phone calls between Colorado and New York—Marty and I reached an accommodation. He would postpone pressing for the sale of the house for six months if I would permit Jonas to fly east to New York to stay with him and his wife and their kids for three weeks during summer vacation.

  Once Marty reluctantly accepted that our intransigence about the issue of Jonas’s guardianship was not a ploy, he began insisting on a long summer visit. The negotiations started with a demand by Marty for Jonas to spend the entire summer in New York. I’d countered with one week. The three-week interval was our compromise.

  Although three weeks felt like an eternity in Jonas time, I tried to feel good about the middle ground I’d maneuvered.

  I chose a pitching change during the sixth inning of an early season Rockies game at Coors Field to present the three-week option to Jonas for his consideration. The Rocks were already five games back in the NL West. A righty and a lefty were warming up in the bullpen. After Jonas yelled his advice to the manager—Jonas wanted the southpaw in the game—my stepson had some advice for me, too.

  Jonas had a primitive understanding of the position he was in—he was a chess enthusiast, knew the consequences of being down a piece, and knew well the role of pawns—but he wasn’t eager to leave the anchor of his Spanish Hills homes, old and new, to spend an extended summer holiday with relatives who were almost total strangers to him. He suggested a modification to the plan—he asked me if I would go east along with him so that I could stay close by during his summer trip.

  I thought it was an adaptive solution. I ran it by Lauren. She, too, was impressed with Jonas’s idea. I had already decided that I would be taking at least a month’s summer break from my practice. I needed some time away. I would use some of it to go east with Jonas. I would literally be close by if he needed me—and he and I would be able to spend a day together exploring New York City during each of the three weeks he was with his aunt and uncle’s family in White Plains.

  Lauren saw the new summer schedule as an opportunity too. She had just been informed that the local U.S. Attorney had decided not to prosecute her for a prescription drug importation fiasco she’d gotten messed up in earlier in the year. The day after I told her I was considering going to New York with Jonas, she began planning a long-postponed trip to the Netherlands to track down a daughter she’d given up for adoption as an infant many years before we met.

  She considered the timing auspicious medically, as well.

  Her neurologist had recently recommended a change in her MS medications. For many years she had been taking IM interferon injections to control the onset of new multiple sclerosis symptoms. Given her recent instability, her doctor wanted to switch her to Tysabri, the first of the monoclonal antibodies available for MS prophylaxis. As part of the transition protocol she would need to go off interferon prior to her first dose of Tysabri.

  She would make the trip to Holland during the hi-atus between the two medicines. A “double holiday,” she called it.

  Grace was torn about the change in plans. She’d been excited about spending the summer in Boulder with her new brother, but she was also thrilled that she was going to get the chance to go to Europe for a girls’ adventure with her mother.

  What neither Lauren nor I said to each other, however, was that we were both content to use the break from each other to continue to heal. It had been a difficult year for each of us personally. It had been a troublesome year for us as a couple.

  Jonas’s needs provided a perfect platform.

  Mona, Jonas’s nanny, eagerly volunteered to house-sit, keep an eye on Adrienne’s vacant home, and watch our three dogs.

  Our summer cards, it seemed, had been dealt.

  NINE

  The Canyon

  In the predawn, the vertical rock wall seemed to reach from the center of the earth all the way to the dark sky. The group climbing out grew quieter as the incline grew steeper. They all knew that the day promised—cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die kind of promised—to grow hotter as the pitch of the trail grew more acute and as the sun climbed higher.

  After the first section of the North Kaibab Trail the group developed a determined rhythm. Jules’s boyfriend, Eric, set an early pace that she thought was too aggressive. Lisa kept up with him. Jules, Jack, Kanyn, and Carmel fell back about fifty yards. The interval between the groups soon stretched to seventy-five.

  Jack got the women laughing with a playful description of Shirtless Man’s abs.

  Jules had the long, easy stride of a natural athlete. The exertion of the climb didn’t wind her as it did the others, though the dry air turned her voice husky. She said, “You can have his abs—but those pecs. I mean, come on. I can almost—almost—understand Jaana’s decision to come down here with somebody she just met. Though he did seem one shot short of a cocktail.”

  “Be nice,” Carmel said. “He got a little drunk, so what?”

  Jack agreed. “Who cares, who cares, who…cares? I’m going to give the poor man the benefit of the doubt all day long…and if I get lucky someday, maybe all night long. You should cut him some slack too, ladies. You should! So the guy was a little hungover. Which one of us hasn’t been there, waking up somewhere where nothing quite makes sense? Does it matter? And just forget all your slutty fantasies about him, because I have dibs on those pecs. And that butt. I’m the one who has his photo in my camera and his phone number in my pocket. That should tell you all something about his…true inclinations.”

  “Jack! He’s not gay,” said Jules. “Didn’t you see him staring at Carmel’s boobs?”

  “Light from a dying star,” Jack said dismissively. “Wagers? Anyone? I don’t even care if it does turn out that the boy is from a tribe that hails from the dimmest part of the planet. As God is my witness, Jaana—wherever the hell you are—I understand you, girl. I would have come down here with that man for a night…or two.”

  “Jack!” Carmel scolded him.

  Jack laughed. “I’m sorry, little mama. But I would have. Call me a slut—doesn’t matter. That”—he sighed dramatically—“package doesn’t come along every day. And sometimes on Christmas morning you care more about opening the package than you do about what you find inside. Am I right? Am I?”

  “Amen,” Jules said. “But once the holidays are over…”

  “I know, I know. I’m not saying the boy has relationship legs. But I am saying he has a chest and an ass that you only see on statues. What does it matter to me? I’m planning my Christmas morning, not my Valentine’s Day.”

  Jules asked, “Did you give him your number, Jack?”

  “You kidding? He won�
��t call me—he’s not that far along in his personal awareness. But he’ll remember me when I call him. That’s how it works.” Jack grinned.

  The women laughed. They laughed more when it became clear that although any of them could’ve drawn a topo map of Shirtless Man’s pecs, none of them could remember the color of Shirtless Man’s eyes.

  Jack knew. He pursed his lips together and raised his hand like the teacher’s pet until the girls were looking at him. “Dark mostly, gray I think. But there’s some teal on the edges,” he said. “And some little periwinkle flares near his pupils.”

  Jules laughed so hard at Jack’s description of the color of Shirtless Man’s eyes that she shot some of the Gatorade she was drinking right out through her nose.

  Kanyn had moved ahead. She was halfway between the two groups.

  Twenty minutes later, as more of the day’s light began to seep into the canyon, Carmel stopped near the end of a diagonal section and asked everyone to pause for a moment. They had reached the hairpin of a switchback a few hundred feet above the canyon floor. “Let’s all take one long look for Jaana,” she said. “See if she’s…on a rock, or maybe sleeping. Maybe she went to meditate someplace and she fell asleep. We have a great vantage here.” She raised her voice and called out to the three men marching ahead, “Stop for a second, everybody. Look for Jaana.”

  Eric called down to them from his position above them, past the hairpin. “Why? How the hell does a guy lose his girlfriend in a place like this?”

  “Just stop for a second. Everybody, please,” Carmel said. “What if Jaana’s sick, or she’s hurt? We can see more from up here than they can see down there. Maybe she’s wearing something bright. Now that there is a little bit of light, we’ll be able to see the color. It will stand out.”

  “Be brighter than her boyfriend,” Eric chimed in.

  Lisa laughed. No one else did.

  “Please,” said Carmel.

  Eric ignored her. He didn’t slow his pace up the trail.