Loving Time

sixty-seven

Gunn kept trying the phone in the basement apartment all Tuesday. It rang and rang and nobody answered. Where was Bobbie? She knew he hadn’t shown up at work because she called and asked for him. The person who answered the phone in the maintenance office said he didn’t know where Bobbie was.

Gunn was worried. When Bobbie got upset, he went out drinking. When he drank, he got in fights. She was glad she’d told the Chinese cop she had no picture of him, and there hadn’t been one out on display to prove her a liar. She was glad he’d never put a card with his name on the intercom board. Bobbie didn’t want to be found. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to find him. She felt so guilty for what she’d done.

As the evening hours crawled by, Gunn became more and more concerned. She’d never liked the game of hide-and-seek when she was a kid. Concealment scared her. It always upset her to be in a game where she couldn’t see what was going on. Days had gone by, over a week had passed since Dr. Dickey drank from his scotch bottle and died. And every second she was more afraid. Last time Bobbie got in trouble, she was right there in the middle of it all, knew every detail of the incident, but was never in any danger herself. Now she was the one in trouble and didn’t know which way to turn. She had nobody but Bobbie, and he was out there somewhere, wasn’t coming home to her now that she’d been to the police station, had her fingerprints taken and talked to the cops. Bobbie would forgive her for everything else, but he wouldn’t forgive her for talking about him.

The Chinese detective had given Gunn her business card last Friday, just in case she thought of something else. Gunn had put the card in her purse to be polite. This morning she took it out. She still felt guilty about letting the detective into her apartment and then not telling her the truth about what she’d done. Maybe Bobbie had seen the cop come in last night and was too unnerved by it to come home. Gunn was pretty sure Bobbie hadn’t slept in the building. Maybe the cop had gone to find Bobbie at work this morning and that was the reason he hadn’t shown up. Gunn hadn’t shown up at work, either. She hadn’t slept and was terrified because she was out of her depth and didn’t know what to do. She wished Bobbie would come back so she could explain everything to him.

From time to time she played with the Chinese cop’s business card. It wasn’t a real business card. It was a police department card that said on it 20 Detective Squad and below that Det. ——— . April Woo had written her name in the blank by hand. The blank below that was for a case number, but no number was written there. Maybe Bobbie’s case didn’t have a number yet. Gunn thought about calling the cop and asking what was going on about Case number-nothing-yet. She thought about calling all day, about giving herself up. Then it got too late.

At eight o’clock she went downstairs and peeked out the glass front door to see if someone was watching the building. She didn’t think Bobbie would come home if there were cops around. She prowled around the back windows of her bedroom, but it was dark out there in the garden and she couldn’t see anything but the shapes of old heaps of garbage. She went down the stairs a second time at nine, then a third time at ten-thirty. There was no light under Bobbie’s door. Each time she returned to her own apartment she had a few drinks. At eleven, she went down the stairs one last time. This time something didn’t feel right. The last of the three dim light-bulbs in the hall ceiling fixture had gone out. It was dark in the hall, and dark under Bobbie’s door. It didn’t feel right. Gunn leaned close to the door. She heard the toilet flush.

“Bobbie?” Gunn whispered. “Bobbie? Are you there?”

Nobody answered.