work,” I said. “But any other time, yeah.”
“So if she was going to go away somewhere, if she’d planned to go away, she would have taken it,” Susanne whispered.
“I don’t know,” I said quietly. But that made sense to me. Syd hadn’t packed anything. The bag she used to bring her things from Bob’s place was here. All of her clothes were either in her closet or, as was often the case with her, scattered across her bed and the floor.
The iPod was recharged by plugging it into Syd’s laptop, which sat a few feet away on her desk. We’d already been through it, with the police, checking out Syd’s emails, her Facebook page, the history of sites she’d visited in the days leading up to her disappearance. We hadn’t come up with anything useful.
Susanne turned to me. “Is she alive, Tim? Is our girl still alive?”
I took the player and placed it into the recharging unit that was already linked to the laptop. “I want it all ready to go for when she gets back,” I said.
FOUR
T HE NEXT MORNING , I TOOK S YD’S TINY MUSIC SHUFFLER with me on the way to work, plugging it into the car’s auxiliary jack. When I was little, and my father was away on business, like when he made his annual trek to Detroit to see the new models before anyone else got to see them, I would wrap myself in one of his coats when I went to bed.
Today, I would surround myself with my daughter’s music.
The gadget was set to play tunes in a totally random order, so first I heard Amy Winehouse, then the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road,” one of my favorites (who knew Syd liked this?), followed by a piece by one of those two Davids who faced off at the end of a recent season of American Idol . I hadn’t quite gotten to the end of it when I pulled into the parking lot of the donut shop.
I arrived at the dealership with two boxes, a dozen donuts in each. I went into the service bay, where the mechanics were already at work on several different Honda models. It had been a while since I’d left donuts for the guys—and two gals, who worked in Parts—out here, and the gesture was overdue. You didn’t work in isolation at a car dealership. Or if you did, you were an idiot. Just because you worked in Sales didn’t mean you could ignore people in other parts of the building. Like on a Friday night at the close of business, and you couldn’t pry the plates off a trade-in to transfer them to a new car a customer was picking up, and you needed someone from Service to help you out with a bigger socket wrench. If you hadn’t made any friends in there, you might as well sit on your tiny wrench and rotate.
Most days, when my mind wasn’t preoccupied with bigger things, I loved coming in here and hanging out. The whirs and clinks of the tools used by the service technicians, as they preferred to be called, echoed together in a kind of mechanical symphony. The cars, suspended in midair on pneumatic hoists, looked somehow vulnerable, their grimy undersides exposed. Ever since I was a kid, when I would come down to the dealership where my father worked, I’d loved looking at cars from a perspective few people saw. It was like being let in on a secret.
“Donuts!” someone shouted when I set down the boxes.
The first one over was Bert, who was all smiles. “You are the best,” he said. If he had any inkling that I’d witnessed his visit to the porn shop, he didn’t let on.
He wiped his hands on the rag that had been peeking out his front pocket, then reached into the box for a cherry-filled. Then, reconsidering, he held it out to me.
“Cherry’s your favorite, right?”
“No,” I said. “It’s all yours.”
“You’re sure?” he asked, the filling oozing out the side of the donut and over his fingers.
“Positive,” I said. I took a double chocolate to make the point.
“How you doin’?” he asked.
I smiled. “Okay,” I said. I figured he was referring to Syd. It was a topic few around the building
“So if she was going to go away somewhere, if she’d planned to go away, she would have taken it,” Susanne whispered.
“I don’t know,” I said quietly. But that made sense to me. Syd hadn’t packed anything. The bag she used to bring her things from Bob’s place was here. All of her clothes were either in her closet or, as was often the case with her, scattered across her bed and the floor.
The iPod was recharged by plugging it into Syd’s laptop, which sat a few feet away on her desk. We’d already been through it, with the police, checking out Syd’s emails, her Facebook page, the history of sites she’d visited in the days leading up to her disappearance. We hadn’t come up with anything useful.
Susanne turned to me. “Is she alive, Tim? Is our girl still alive?”
I took the player and placed it into the recharging unit that was already linked to the laptop. “I want it all ready to go for when she gets back,” I said.
FOUR
T HE NEXT MORNING , I TOOK S YD’S TINY MUSIC SHUFFLER with me on the way to work, plugging it into the car’s auxiliary jack. When I was little, and my father was away on business, like when he made his annual trek to Detroit to see the new models before anyone else got to see them, I would wrap myself in one of his coats when I went to bed.
Today, I would surround myself with my daughter’s music.
The gadget was set to play tunes in a totally random order, so first I heard Amy Winehouse, then the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road,” one of my favorites (who knew Syd liked this?), followed by a piece by one of those two Davids who faced off at the end of a recent season of American Idol . I hadn’t quite gotten to the end of it when I pulled into the parking lot of the donut shop.
I arrived at the dealership with two boxes, a dozen donuts in each. I went into the service bay, where the mechanics were already at work on several different Honda models. It had been a while since I’d left donuts for the guys—and two gals, who worked in Parts—out here, and the gesture was overdue. You didn’t work in isolation at a car dealership. Or if you did, you were an idiot. Just because you worked in Sales didn’t mean you could ignore people in other parts of the building. Like on a Friday night at the close of business, and you couldn’t pry the plates off a trade-in to transfer them to a new car a customer was picking up, and you needed someone from Service to help you out with a bigger socket wrench. If you hadn’t made any friends in there, you might as well sit on your tiny wrench and rotate.
Most days, when my mind wasn’t preoccupied with bigger things, I loved coming in here and hanging out. The whirs and clinks of the tools used by the service technicians, as they preferred to be called, echoed together in a kind of mechanical symphony. The cars, suspended in midair on pneumatic hoists, looked somehow vulnerable, their grimy undersides exposed. Ever since I was a kid, when I would come down to the dealership where my father worked, I’d loved looking at cars from a perspective few people saw. It was like being let in on a secret.
“Donuts!” someone shouted when I set down the boxes.
The first one over was Bert, who was all smiles. “You are the best,” he said. If he had any inkling that I’d witnessed his visit to the porn shop, he didn’t let on.
He wiped his hands on the rag that had been peeking out his front pocket, then reached into the box for a cherry-filled. Then, reconsidering, he held it out to me.
“Cherry’s your favorite, right?”
“No,” I said. “It’s all yours.”
“You’re sure?” he asked, the filling oozing out the side of the donut and over his fingers.
“Positive,” I said. I took a double chocolate to make the point.
“How you doin’?” he asked.
I smiled. “Okay,” I said. I figured he was referring to Syd. It was a topic few around the building
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