Harlan Coben - Gone for Good

There was one older couple in particular, the Segals, who'd been dancing together since a USO gathering in the forties. They were a handsome, graceful couple. Mr. Segal always wore a white ascot. Mrs. Segal wore something blue and a pearl choker. On the floor, they were pure magic. They moved like lovers. They moved like one. During the breaks, they were outgoing and friendly to the rest of us. But when the music played, they saw only each other.

On a snowy night last February we thought that the club would probably be canceled, but it wasn't Mr. Segal showed up by himself. He still wore the white ascot. His suit was impeccable. But one look at the tightness in his face and we knew. Sheila gripped my hand. I could see a tear escape from her eye. When the music started, Mr. Segal stood, stepped without hesitation onto the dance floor, and danced by himself. He put out his arms and moved as though his wife were still there. He guided her across the floor, cradling her ghost so gently that none of us dared disturb him.

The next week Mr. Segal did not show at all. We heard from some of the others that Mrs. Segal had lost a longtime battle with cancer. But she danced until the end. The music started up then. We all found our partners and took to the floor. And as I held Sheila close, impossibly close, I realized that, sad as the Segal story was, they'd had it better than anyone I had ever known.

Here was where I entered the quasi-dream, though from the beginning I recognized that it was just that. I was back at the JCC Dance Club. Mr. Segal was there. So were a bunch of people I had never seen before, all without partners. When the music started, we all danced by ourselves. I looked around. My father was there, doing a clumsy solo fox-trot. He nodded at me.

I watched the others dance. They all clearly felt the presence of their dearly departed. They looked into their partners' ghostly eyes. I tried to follow suit, but something was wrong. I saw nothing. I was dancing alone. Sheila would not come to me.

Far away, I heard the phone ring. A deep voice on the answering machine penetrated my dream. "This is Lieutenant Daniels of the Livingston Police Department. I am trying to reach Will Klein."

In the background, behind Lieutenant Daniels, I heard the muffled laugh of a young woman. My eyes flew open, and the JCC Dance Club disappeared. As I reached for the phone, I heard the young woman whoop another laugh.

It sounded like Katy Miller.

"Perhaps I should call your parents," Lieutenant Daniels was saying to whoever was laughing.

"No." It was Katy. "I'm eighteen. You can't make me "

I picked up the phone. "This is Will Klein."

Lieutenant Daniels said, "Hi, Will. This is Tim Daniels. We went to school together, remember?"

Tim Daniels. He'd worked at the local Hess station. He used to wear his oil-smeared uniform to school, complete with his name embroidered on the pocket. I guessed that he still liked uniforms.

"Sure," I said, totally confused now. "How's it going?"

"Good, thanks."

"You're on the force now?" Nothing gets by me.

"Yep. And I still live in town. Married Betty Jo Stetson. We have two daughters."

I tried to conjure up Betty Jo, but nothing came. "Wow, cong rats

"Thanks, Will." His voice grew grave. "I, uh, read about your mother in the Tribune. I'm sorry."

"I appreciate that, thanks," I said.

Katy Miller started laughing again.

"Look, the reason I'm calling is, well, I guess you know Katy Miller?"

"Yes."

There was a moment of silence. He probably remembered that I'd dated her older sister and what fate had befallen her. "She asked me to call you."

"What's the problem?"

"I found Katy on the Mount Pleasant playground with a half-empty bottle of Absolut. She's totally blitzed. I was going to call her parents "

"Forget that!" Katy shouted again. "I'm eighteen!"

"Right, whatever. Anyway, she asked me to call you instead. Hey, I remember when we were kids. We weren't perfect either, you know what I mean?"

"I do," I said.

And that was when Katy yelled something, and my body went rigid. I hoped that I'd heard wrong. But her words, and the almost mocking way she shouted them, worked like a cold hand pressed against the back of my neck.

" Idaho!" she yelled. "Am I right, Will? Idaho!"

I gripped the receiver, sure I heard wrong. "What is she saying?"

"I don't know. She keeps yelling out something about Idaho, but she's still pretty wasted."

Katy again: "Friggin' Idaho! Potato! Idaho! I'm right, aren't I?"

My breath had gone shallow.

"Look, Will, I know it's late, but can you come down and get her?"

I found my voice enough to say, "I'm on my way."

Squares crept up the stairs rather than risk the noise from the elevator waking Wanda.

The Yoga Squared Corporation owned the building. He and Wanda lived on the two floors above the yoga studio. It was three in the morning. Squares slid open the door. The lights were out. He stepped into the room. The streetlights provided harsh slivers of illumination.

Wanda sat on the couch in the dark. Her arms and legs were crossed.

"Hey," he said very softly, as if afraid of waking someone up, though there was no one else in the building.

"Do you want me to get rid of it?" she said.

Squares wished that he had kept his sunglasses on. "I'm really tired, Wanda. Just let me grab a few hours of sleep."

"No."

"What do you want me to say here?"

"I'm still in the first trimester. All I'd have to do is swallow a pill. So I want to know. Do you want to get rid of it?"

"So all of a sudden it's up to me?"

"I'm waiting."

"I thought you were the great feminist, Wanda. What about a woman's right to choose?"

"Don't hand me that crap."

Squares jammed his hands in his pockets. "What do you want to do?"

Wanda turned her head to the side. He could see the profile, the long neck, the proud bearing. He loved her. He had never loved anyone before, and no one had ever loved him either. When he was very small, his mother liked to burn him with her curling iron. She finally stopped when he was two years old on the very day, coincidentally, that his father beat her to death and hung himself in a closet.

"You wear your past on your forehead," Wanda said. "We don't all have that luxury."

"I don't know what you mean."

Neither of them had turned on the light. Their eyes were adjusting, but everything was a murky haze and maybe that made it easier.

Wanda said, "I was valedictorian of my high school class."

"I know."

She closed her eyes. "Let me just say this, okay?"

Squares nodded for her to proceed.

"I grew up in a wealthy suburb. There were very few black families. I was the only black girl in my class of three hundred. And I was ranked first. I had my pick of colleges. I chose Princeton."

He knew all this already, but he said nothing.

"When I got there, I started to feel like I didn't measure up. I won't go into the whole diagnosis, about my lack of self-worth and all that. But I stopped eating. I lost weight. I became anorexic. I wouldn't eat anything I couldn't get rid of. I would do sit-ups all day. I dropped under ninety pounds and I would still look at myself in the mirror and hate the fatty who stared back at me."

Squares moved closer to her. He wanted to take her hand. But idiot that he was, he did not.

"I starved myself to the point where I had to be hospitalized. I damaged my organs. My liver, my heart, the doctors still are not sure how much. I never went into cardiac arrest, but for a while, I think I was pretty close. I eventually recovered I won't go into that either but the doctors told me that I'd probably never get pregnant. And if I did, I'd most likely not be able to carry to term."