Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [256]
TWO WEEKS AFTER SHE LEFT, I felt at odds with my house. I found my library oppressive. In the kitchen, I took out my dinner, which was a foil packet labeled FRIDAY in my handwriting; it was the last of what I had cooked, frozen, and packed in aliquots many weekends ago. Now I saw this categorizing of my freezer food as a sign of the true chaos inside my head.
Thank God for my good neighbor, Sonny Holmes. He heard me raging, he heard me bang my head against the fridge. Sonny Holmes had an inherent curiosity an honest, all-American nosiness that came with crossing one's seventieth year and that did not try to conceal itself. Hed been aware of the coming of my guest—such a rare event—and he'd heard the headboard music and then the long silence.
“You need to hire a security firm,” he said, coming to a quick diagnosis before I had even finished my story. Sonny believed in the ennea-gram, that Jesuit-invented classification of people into personality types. He was a One, willful and confident and certain. He had me pegged as a Three or a Four, or was it a Two? Whatever it was, it was a number that did not argue with Ones.
“I need a what?” I said.
“A private detective.”
“Sonny, for what? I don't want to see her again.”
“Perhaps so. But you need closure. What if she's in jail or in a hospital? What if she's trying desperately to get back to you, but can't?”
A noble motive, that was all a Two needed to continue an obsession. I latched on to that.
East Coast Investigations of Flushing turned out to be an earnest, blond youth by the name of Appleby, son of Holmes's late sister-in-law. Appleby quickly established that Genet had not returned to her halfway house. She hadn't gone to Nathan's restaurant, where she washed dishes. She had not checked in with her probation officer and she had not called Tsige. He learned these facts in no time. He even knew that Genet had been diagnosed with tuberculosis while in prison. She began medications, but then failed to report for her DOT—Directly Observed Therapy—after she was released. The cough, the fever, in all likelihood were her tuberculosis coming back. The disconcerting news was that if she ever materialized, I'd be third in line after the state health department and her probation officer. She would be headed back to jail. Apple by s source in jail could get his hand on her complete medical records if we wished, and Appleby said he'd taken the liberty of telling the man to proceed. I was concerned about violating her confidentiality. “Knowledge is power in these kinds of situations,” Appleby added, and with that he won me over; any man who would use a quote that Ghosh loved was a man to trust. “You are paying to know,” he added, “and I think we're obliged to know more.”
“So what now?” I asked Appleby. I wasn't asking him about exposure to tuberculosis. I could handle that.
Appleby avoided my eyes. His cheeks and the tip of his nose were covered with twitchy blood vessels, ready to flush at the least provocation. His condition was acne rosacea, not to be confused with the pedestrian acne vulgaris, the bane of many teenagers. Appleby's nose would one day be burgundy and bulbous, the cheeks a meaty red. Already shy, his problems would get worse because strangers would assume incorrectly that his appearance was a result of drink. Here I knew about his future while paying him to tell me mine.
“Well, Dr. Stone,” Appleby said, clearing his throat, his nose starting to redden, a sure indication that I would not like what he had to say, “Respectfully, I would say to check your silverware. Inventory your belongings. Make sure nothing is missing.”
I looked at him for a long while. “But, Mr. Appleby, the only thing that matters to me is precisely the one thing that is missing.”
“Yes, of course,” he said.
The compassion in his voice told me he had known my kind of pain. There are legions of us.
AS FAR AS THE EVENTS of the next few weeks, I recall one night