Kansas City several hours later, she finds a taxi and asks the driver to recommend a hotel, repeating almost word for word the same question her husband asked Ed Victory the previous Monday. The only difference is that she uses the word good instead of best , but for all the nuances of that distinction, the driver’s response is identical. He takes her to the Hyatt, and little realizing that she’s following in her husband’s footsteps, Eva checks in at the front desk, asking for a single room. She isn’t someone to throw away money and indulge in expensive suites, but her room is nevertheless on the tenth floor, just down the hall from where Nick stayed for the first two nights after he arrived in town. Except for the fact that her room is a mere fraction of a degree to the south of his, she has the same view of the city he had: the same expanse of buildings, the same network of roads, and the same sky of suspended clouds that he catalogued for Rosa Leightman as he stood by the window and talked into her answering machine before skipping out on the bill and leaving the place for good.
Eva sleeps badly in the unfamiliar bed, her throat dry, waking three or four times during the night to visit the bathroom, to drink another glass of water, to stare at the bright red numerals on the digital alarm clock and listen to the hum of fans whirring in the ceiling vents. She dozes off at five, sleeps uninterruptedly for about three hours, and then orders a room-service breakfast. At quarter past nine, already showered, dressed, and fortified with a full pot of black coffee, she rides the elevator to the ground floor to begin her search. All of Eva’s hopes revolve around the photographs she’s carrying in her bag. She will walk around the city and show Nick’s picture to as many people as she can, beginning with hotels and restaurants, then stores and food markets, then taxi companies, office buildings, and God knows where else, praying that someone will recognize him and offer a lead. If nothing materializes after the first day, she will have copies made of one of the snapshots and plaster them all over town – on walls, lampposts, and telephone booths – and publish the picture in the Kansas City Star , along with any other papers that circulate in the region. Even as she stands in the elevator on her way down to the lobby, she imagines the text that will accompany the handbill. MISSING . Or: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN ? Followed by Nick’s name, age, height, weight, and hair color. Then a contact number and the promise of a reward. She is still trying to figure out how much the amount should be when the elevator doors open. One thousand dollars? Five thousand dollars? Ten thousand dollars? If these stratagems fail, she tells herself, she will move on to the next step and engage the services of a private detective. Not just some ex-cop with an investigator’s license, but an expert, a man who specializes in hunting down the vanished, the evaporated beings of the world.
Three minutes after Eva enters the lobby, something miraculous happens. She shows Nick’s picture to the desk clerk on duty, and the young woman with the blond hair and gleaming white teeth makes a positive identification. This leads to a search through the records, and even at the sluggish pace of 1982 computers, it doesn’t take long to confirm that Nick Bowen was registered at the hotel, spent two nights there, and disappeared without bothering to check out. They had a credit card imprint on file, but after running the number through the American Express system, the card proved to be invalid. Eva asks to see the manager in order to settle Nick’s bill, and once she’s sitting in the office, handing him her own newly validated card to cover the delinquent fees, she begins to cry, breaking down in earnest for the first time since her husband went missing. Mr. Lloyd Sharkey is discomfited by this outpouring of feminine anguish, but with the smooth and
Eva sleeps badly in the unfamiliar bed, her throat dry, waking three or four times during the night to visit the bathroom, to drink another glass of water, to stare at the bright red numerals on the digital alarm clock and listen to the hum of fans whirring in the ceiling vents. She dozes off at five, sleeps uninterruptedly for about three hours, and then orders a room-service breakfast. At quarter past nine, already showered, dressed, and fortified with a full pot of black coffee, she rides the elevator to the ground floor to begin her search. All of Eva’s hopes revolve around the photographs she’s carrying in her bag. She will walk around the city and show Nick’s picture to as many people as she can, beginning with hotels and restaurants, then stores and food markets, then taxi companies, office buildings, and God knows where else, praying that someone will recognize him and offer a lead. If nothing materializes after the first day, she will have copies made of one of the snapshots and plaster them all over town – on walls, lampposts, and telephone booths – and publish the picture in the Kansas City Star , along with any other papers that circulate in the region. Even as she stands in the elevator on her way down to the lobby, she imagines the text that will accompany the handbill. MISSING . Or: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN ? Followed by Nick’s name, age, height, weight, and hair color. Then a contact number and the promise of a reward. She is still trying to figure out how much the amount should be when the elevator doors open. One thousand dollars? Five thousand dollars? Ten thousand dollars? If these stratagems fail, she tells herself, she will move on to the next step and engage the services of a private detective. Not just some ex-cop with an investigator’s license, but an expert, a man who specializes in hunting down the vanished, the evaporated beings of the world.
Three minutes after Eva enters the lobby, something miraculous happens. She shows Nick’s picture to the desk clerk on duty, and the young woman with the blond hair and gleaming white teeth makes a positive identification. This leads to a search through the records, and even at the sluggish pace of 1982 computers, it doesn’t take long to confirm that Nick Bowen was registered at the hotel, spent two nights there, and disappeared without bothering to check out. They had a credit card imprint on file, but after running the number through the American Express system, the card proved to be invalid. Eva asks to see the manager in order to settle Nick’s bill, and once she’s sitting in the office, handing him her own newly validated card to cover the delinquent fees, she begins to cry, breaking down in earnest for the first time since her husband went missing. Mr. Lloyd Sharkey is discomfited by this outpouring of feminine anguish, but with the smooth and
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