Tracking Time

Forty

Grace Rodriguez came into the office at eight on the button. She was wearing a black suit and was ready for war. She walked into the office that she still shared after all these years with a young associate-this latest one a fat boyish twenty-nine-year-old who was constantly eating on the sly throughout the day whenever he thought she wasn't looking, though how he thought she'd fail to notice when she was only a few feet away in a very small room she couldn't begin to imagine.

This morning Craig Hewlett's space was utterly crumbless, so it was clear he hadn't arrived yet. Grace's heart pounded as she put her purse in the top drawer of her desk and purposefully started the long trek around the building to her boss's office. Even though it was the worst day of Jerry Atkins's life, she was going to have it out with him anyway.

The prosperous accounting firm of Haight-Atkins was contained on one whole floor of a large Third Avenue office building. The walls were a mind-numbing pewter throughout. The floors were covered with industrial-quality ashen carpeting that was shampooed only once a year in the spring. Grace's own space had no amenities, not even a chair for visitors. Jerry's office, where the clients went for their meetings, had to be luxurious, however. His furniture was cherry wood, the chairs and sofas were cushy, the colors turquoise and rose like those used in resorts in the Caribbean. This disparity in their stations, however, did not always rankle Grace.

Usually her self-awareness didn't extend to hurt and bitter, and when she was troubled, she would hide behind cheerful, reassuring smiles like malignant cells sometimes hid in otherwise benign tumors. Her life was carefully structured to shield her from hurt; she thought she was above it, able to roll with whatever punches came her way. But today her daughter was missing.

Historically, Grace was alone with Dylan on Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights. And for many years they had been joyful evenings. In recent years, however, her times with Dylan had become ever more painful and difficult. Dylan was twenty years old and still living at home, doing her own thing, coming and going just as she pleased. But she'd become rude and disrespectful, uncommunicative. Grace went over the list of her grievances. In addition, she looked as if she didn't eat anything. She'd promise to come home for dinner, and then didn't come home. When she did come home, she played with her food but didn't swallow very much. Since the summer her bad behaviors had escalated, and last night Dylan hadn't come home at all.

To get to Jerry's office on the outermost tier of the building, Grace had to come out from an inside bank of offices where she worked in a cubicle, then travel all the way around the building on the hallway where privileged partners had offices with big windows and views of the East River and Queens, or the great Manhattan skyline north and south, or Third Avenue looking west. When Grace reached the place where she could see actual natural light shining in from the windows of offices whose doors were open, she felt like a rat coming out of a maze.

She could hardly breathe, her heart pounded with such anger at the mess she and her daughter had become. In the last few months during spring and summer Dylan started acting really weird. Grace had done some soul-searching as she wrestled with herself over what to do about it.

All she'd wanted was a child, a baby girl to love as her mother hadn't loved her. On her walk around the building, she went over her story in her mind. She'd had her baby, and for a long time she'd thought Dylan was enough. When Dylan was a little girl, Grace had enjoyed every minute they were alone. They'd made cookies and played house, done puzzles, learned the ABC's, then math, then social studies, then whatever. She'd thought it was pure joy to have a child. When she was very little, Dylan had spent her days with a nice grandmotherly type who lived in the building. When she was two, Grace took her to all-day school programs. She went to a nearby public school. By middle school Dylan was independent, was coming home on her own, did her homework, and waited patiently for her mom to come home. A good girl.

Grace had always known that Dylan would be her responsibility alone. That had been the deal, and she'd always been perfectly content with it. Their nights together they'd had the independence she thought she valued so highly. She was a mother, protected but free. True, she was not a partner in the firm and had no real job security. Haight had no women partners in the firm. Another excuse of Jerry's for not making her a partner despite her many years of service was the fact that she did not have her MBA, and he refused to give her the time off or the money to get one. Still, she liked her job well enough, and had never thought about moving to another. Jerry gave her a few hundred extra in cash every week. He helped her buy a lovely condo, and she had the little girl she'd always wanted.

That had been the story she told herself. But now too many things had changed. The little girl was now a big girl, a big problem Grace could no longer ignore, and one she couldn't manage by herself. Grace turned the corner and entered Jerome Atkins's office without knocking. It was early for him to be there, but he hated his wife so much that in a crisis she knew he'd be sitting at his desk staring out the big windows of his corner office, which was high enough to offer a southwest span of magnificent open city views. Pointing in his direction on his desk was the same photo that had been there since the day she met him when she was interviewing for her first full-time job at twenty-two. The photo was of his wife, his son, Maslow, and his daughter, Chloe, who was alive then, but had been dead now for more than twenty years.

"Oh, it's you," he said, shaking his head when he saw her. "Terrible thing about Maslow. I'm sick to death about it."

At the time of Jerome's sixtieth birthday party two years ago, Grace hadn't been invited to the celebration party so the magnitude of the milestone had been lost on her. Now with his eyes sunk deep in purple hollows and his face drained of color, she was shocked to realize that her Jerry, the man she'd loved and trusted for twenty-three years, was an old man.

"Sweetheart, I'm so worried. How are you doing-?" His look stopped her. "I guess that's a stupid question," she finished lamely.

"Don't call me sweetheart here," he said automatically.

"Evelyn isn't in yet," Grace murmured, crumbling like a cookie as always. Evelyn didn't suspect anything. No one did. He had her tucked away in Long Island City, where no one they knew ever went. He liked her beauty, liked playing house.

"What do you want?" He was wearing a custom suit as black as hers.

"I want to talk to you," she said softly. "About Dylan."

He shook his head. "I've had dozens of calls. News cameras were at my apartment this morning. I had to go out the service entrance. You wouldn't believe what's going on."

"I need to talk to you, Jerry."

"I'm waiting to hear from the police. A ransom call could come in at any time." He spoke as though to a child.

"We have another serious problem, Jerry," she said softly.

"Well, I don't have time to hear your complaints. You can tell me tomorrow. If I can make it. With all this I don't know if I can make it tomorrow." He made a little hand gesture that she was supposed to take as a dismissal. Time for her to trot back into her cage. She was his toy, nothing more.

Instead of leaving, she moved to the door, closed it, returned to a soft turquoise chair, and sat down. "Jerry, your daughter didn't come home last night."

"Dylan? Why not?" He looked surprised.

"My guess is that she's upset about her brother."

"You're not making any sense." His tone was flat. He was walling up.

"I am making perfect sense. Your daughter wanted to know your son; you didn't want her to know him. It weighed on her something terrible. Now he's missing. How can you be absolutely certain the two have nothing to do with each other?"

"I'm sure."

"What if she told him, and he killed himself?" Grace's heart pounded. She didn't like the look on his face-blank, flat, cold. Like the times she'd wanted to be a partner and he'd argued it would look bad, like all the times he'd fought her on raises, like the time Dylan wanted to go to a private university and he'd refused to pay for it. He was out to lunch on this, too.

"She's loyal. She loves me. She wouldn't do that to me," he said.

"Are you implying I'm not loyal?" A tear came to Grace's eye. After everything she'd sacrificed for him?

"You want to expose me, bankrupt me, ruin my life after all I've done for you?" he said, gaining energy with the prospect of such a huge betrayal.

"I get the feeling you don't care about your son." She'd always supported herself. He'd never even supported her. She stared at him, stunned by a new disturbing thought. He didn't care about her, that she'd guessed. But he didn't care about his precious son, his legitimate child, either.

"Maybe he let me down," he said. More tragedy king.

"Your perfect son let you down?" She shook her head, amazed to hear this. Her Jerry was a cold man, an iceberg.

"You're in a strange mood this morning," he remarked. "What's the matter with you?"

"How did Maslow let you down?"

"Look, forget I said that."

"I get the feeling you don't care whether he lives or dies."

"I'm under a lot of stress. I didn't mean it." He pointedly checked his watch, then made the hand motion again to dismiss her. She didn't budge.

"I've accepted your demands for secrecy all these years, Jerry-"

"Well, of course you did. You're the woman I love. You're everything to me."

"That's why you support your wife's credit card bills and go on vacations with her instead of me?"

"But I don't like it. I'd much rather be with you."

"Men don't go on vacations with women they can't bear to be in the same room with."

"You're twisting my words again. Look, it's eight-thirty. I have to-"

"What about the press? What about our baby?"

"Don't threaten me," he said angrily. "I won't take it. Not today."

"I'm trying to get through to you, Jerry. Dylan has been following Maslow."

"How do you know?" He swiveled back and forth in his chair.

"I know. She told me she was going to meet him."

"When?" More swiveling.

"I don't know. Months ago. I didn't think anything about it. She's been upset ever since you wouldn't let her go to Swarthmore."

He made an angry noise. "For Christ's sake, that was three years ago, and City College was good enough for me, wasn't it?"

"Maybe for you, but not for Maslow."

"Maslow was different," he said harshly.

Grace sighed. "That's exactly what Dylan thinks. Your legitimate son is better than she is."

"Go away, Grace, I'm disgusted with you. If you loved me you wouldn't hurt me this way now."

"You hurt your daughter. You hurt me. And now Maslow. You only care about your precious reputation, your precious business. What about the rest of us? I can't let this go on, Jerry. I can't." She shook her head sadly. "I can't. Not now."

"All right, I know. I know. I don't know what comes over me. Of course you're important. You're everything to me. I'll tell." He shook his head with great conviction. "I'm going to do it. You'll see."

"You have to call the police today."

"No! Not today. It would kill my wife."

"You should have thought about that earlier. Now it's too late. You have to help them find Maslow. You have to tell them everything you know about him and about Dylan so that they can find him."

"If you're so certain she knows something, why don't you ask Dylan yourself. No, I'll ask her," he said, resolving the issue to his satisfaction.

"She didn't come home. You're making me repeat myself." Jerry was so rigid, Grace felt she, too, was going crazy. He was like a brick wall that could withstand any pressure. He'd tell lie after lie, would do anything to squirm away. It was as if she were seeing him for the first time. An old selfish man, capable of killing any of them rather than be exposed for the self-serving bastard he was.

He sighed hugely. "I'll take care of it. Trust me."

"I can't trust you," she said softly. "I'll tell the police about Dylan myself."

"You don't mean that, sweetheart. She's your baby. You don't want to hurt her, expose her to all kinds of questions and ridicule, do you? Really?"

"I mean it." Grace's eyes flooded. "The children have to come first this time."

"Okay." His facade cracked, and he caved in the way he had over the raises but not anything else. "Okay, there is somebody I can tell. Not the police. But somebody who can help. Okay? Are you satisfied now?"

"I'll be satisfied when both your children are safe." Grace got up and walked out of the office without another word.

Evelyn was at her desk with that smug smile on her face. "Raise time again, Grace?" she said as Grace passed her on the way out.