Fresh Kills by Reggie Nadelson

something was different. Couldn’t describe it. A smell. A feeling. I’d been snooping around apartments a long time and it just came to me. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was drunker than I knew. Some of my CDs were on the table and I couldn’t remember if I’d left them there, but so what? So what if Billy got up and played some music? But what if someone else had been here?
    When I checked on Billy he was still asleep in the room where I’d left him – I’d never seen anyone conk out so completely – blanket over his head, feet sticking out at the bottom.
    In my bedroom, the shirt I’d taken off when I changed was on the bed where I left it, but it was folded differently, I thought. Maybe not. My head was fuzzy and I got undressed, then I put my pants back on and went downstairs to look for Jorge, the doorman, who was out front smoking.
    Jorge said that Billy had not come down from the apartment at all. He said he also went up to check on him once. Yeah, Jorge said he had been in the lobby the whole time, except for going to the bathroom once and out on his dinner break for like ten minutes. Just to pick up a breakfast burrito even though it was his dinner because he liked the burritos, homemade, he said, at the corner deli. Good coffee, too. A black and white cookie was what he had for dessert, though some of the time he went for an oatmeal raisin cookie or, if it was hot, maybe a Haagen Dazs chocolate-covered ice cream bar. Like everyone in New York, Jorge’s every meal was a complicated story.
    I didn’t think Jorge was lying about Billy, but his dinner break made me uneasy. I took the elevator back up and the woman in it stared at me because I wasn’t wearing a shirt. I couldn’t tell if she was disgusted or interested. I really was pretty drunk.
    â€œTell Maxine,” Sonny had said.
    I didn’t want to lie to Max. I didn’t want to make a mess of things this time. We were married, I loved her, and we were friends. She wasn’t going to fall apart because I had Billy in the house for a few days. Why would she?
    Maxine was plenty tough. She was a 9/11 widow, and she had worked forensics in the days when they were bringing in pieces of the firemen who died; her husband had been one of them. They never found him, not even a little piece of finger, she always said. Not even a finger.
    I looked at my watch. It was one in the morning. Ten in San Diego. I dialed Maxie’s cell and waited.
    â€œHi,” she said. “Hi!”
    â€œWhere are you? Did I call too late?”
    â€œWe’re on a dinner cruise in the harbor. It is so entirely gorgeous here, honey, I so wish that you were with us, it’s just beautiful. San Diego is so clean! The girls adore it, and they like their cousins, and wait a sec, no, never mind, they’re up on the deck. I think maybe I had a few too many glasses of wine, so if you think I sound silly, blame the vino. Also, I can’t believe this, but we met a retired guy who lives around here, he was sitting near us on the boat for a while, he says he actually designed the first space buggy, the thing they rode around in on the moon, this real American inventor type of guy. Back when. Said in those days he slept on a waterbed. He was reminiscing, don’t think they were connected. It’s so cool how people out here just talk to you. What’s up?”
    Max was exuberant, and I could picture her, long limbs stretched out, a glass of wine in her hand, engaged, chatty, charming everyone she met, including some guy who told her he designed the space buggy. At forty, Maxine looked ten years younger. She was smart and practical and she loved me. I didn’t want to lie to her. Still, I was nervous about Billy.
    I said, “Hey, are you smoking? Did I hear you exhale?”
    â€œI had one. I couldn’t help it. You?”
    â€œMe too,” I said. “I’m trying, but I had a drink with Tolya and I