Tracking Time

Twenty-nine

Allegra Caldera was ashamed of herself for not telling the detectives her secret. She should have told them everything she knew the minute they said Maslow was missing. The whole city knew he was missing-everybody except her. This was all her fault. The whole thing. She could not forgive herself for continuing the lie.

After the police locked her out of his office, she walked downtown, back to the building where he lived. There, she wandered back and forth, waiting for him to return. When it started getting dark, she marched back uptown and hung around his office some more. She knew she was the most pathetic creature on earth.

She kept thinking that wherever she looked for him she had a ninety percent chance of missing him. By eight o'clock she was on Eighty-second Street again, standing by the park entrance where she had seen him last. He'd looked very small in his shorts and white T-shirt, really slim, about the same size as her father. Her father had his disappearances, too. She should have gotten used to them, but she never did.

When she was so dizzy with hunger that she could hardly stand up, she went to the coffee bar on Columbus and had a cup of espresso, no sugar. For her it was dinner. Finally at ten o'clock she entered the park once again.

Allegra thought she must have walked miles going nowhere at all before she finally sank down on the bench and let her grief out in great heaving sobs. She couldn't lose the only person in the world she really loved. She couldn't lose him before he knew her.

The Chinese cop had given Allegra her home number. Allegra still had it with her. The call box was right there, right near, where she was sitting. It was painted dark green and had a plaque that read "Gift of Central Park Conservancy" on it. She thought of calling the police on the phone. The detective had seemed very nice, understanding. Allegra wondered if she should call her and explain everything.

But what could she say? If she hadn't spooked Maslow, he wouldn't have had to avoid her. He wouldn't have had to run away. He would just have jogged right back out of the park as he was supposed to. She didn't understand why he hadn't just jogged back. He was angry at her, but he would never run away.

She didn't understand him at all. He was so rigid, just like her father. He hadn't let her explain last night. But the truth was Maslow never let her explain. He just never let her. No matter how hard she tried, he wouldn't let her take her story where it needed to go.

It made her sick to think that he was in the dark about so many things. And now he might never know her. Allegra sat there for a long time struggling with emotions that were too big to hold inside her. She loved her mother, loved her so much right at that moment. She wished she could go home and tell her mother everything. But her mother would be so angry. Her mother believed intelligent people should solve their own problems. Her father felt even stronger about it. He was almost a maniac about it. They both believed that psychiatrists were the very last resort, only for people who were really crazy. Allegra wasn't really crazy. Ordinary people like them could get over anything. Her mother wanted Allegra to just get over it, just get on with her life. She'd be furious, just furious at what

Allegra had done to get relief. So many lies her parents and she had told, and for what, so that she could expose them all in the end? No, she couldn't tell her mother.

There was another reason Allegra could not leave her bench and return home to her real identity. She was afraid to go on the subway. She couldn't go down those stairs and face the train tonight. Now she had even more reason to kill herself.

Allegra was in a state of extreme agitation when she saw the shadows of the two kids slinking into the park. Boy and girl. The boy, very big. The girl, little, like her. She frowned in the dark. She'd seen them last night. They'd come out of the park while she was waiting for Maslow to return. They'd been a mess. She remembered their wet sneakers, squishing as they walked past her. Again, she thought of calling the detective. Maybe they had seen Maslow. But she didn't call the police, and she was too tired to follow their fast pace. She moved to another bench and waited for them to come back.