Ramsey Shehadeh: Red

The yellow and blue detectives lay toppled between the dice: yellow on her back, gun pointed up at the sky, blue facedown on the sidewalk between the Library and the Jewelry Store.

“Sorry guys,” said Ansel.

“Good roll,” said his father, righting the figurines.

Ansel moved his own detective—the green one, as usual—two spaces down the board, turned left, and then four more, into the pharmacy. It was roofless, like all the other buildings in the game. The pharmacist stood behind a counter, hands resting on the glass. He was drawn in an isometric three-quarters view: a mop of auburn hair, tinted glasses, silk shirt with wide lapels, suede red pants that flared at the ankles.

Ansel played one of his Interrogate cards— Did you know the MISSING PERSON? —and then drew an Answer card from the Pharmacy’s stack. It said:

Sure, I knew him. Great guy. He really liked to hang out in the LIBRARY. You might try asking the LIBRARIAN when she saw him last.

“What you got there?” said his father. “Something good, I’ll bet.” He looked at Ansel’s mother. “He’s got something good there.”

She smiled and nodded.

The library was a long narrow building in the center of the board. Lines of shelves ran perpendicularly down its length, with trestle tables interspersed between them. Each table had a single lamp, casting a perfect circle of yellow light on its surface. The librarian stood on the western end of the building, reaching for a book. She wore heels, a tight floral skirt, a yellow chemise with its top button unbuttoned. There was the mildest suggestion of cleavage there—nothing more than a quick pen stroke—but it had been more than enough to inflame Ansel’s imagination when they’d starting playing this game, almost 5 years ago, when he was 12 and Louise was 9.

“Care to share, son?”

Ansel could probably have gotten a couple of Detective cards out of this, but he didn’t feel like bargaining. He shrugged and glanced at the red figurine—Louise’s detective—lying on its side in the box.

“ Oho. Well,” said his father. “Let’s see what’s going on here.” He plucked a Detective card out of his hand with a flourish and slapped it on the table.

EAVESDROP. You overhear another detective’s conversation with a suspect! The player must show you the card from his last INTERROGATION.

Ansel grinned and showed his father the clue. It was a dead end. Ansel knew the rhythms of the game, and all its permutations. He’d once spent a whole day reverse engineering the algorithm the game used to build the skein of clues that led to the missing person. The library led nowhere.

“I knew it!” He glanced sidelong at Ansel’s mother. “Now both of us know something you don’t, my dear.”

Ansel felt suddenly very tired. It was exhausting, watching them pretend. He stood up. “Can we finish this tomorrow? I have some more studying to do.”

“Sure,” said his father. “But don’t think you’re getting out of this, son. I’m on your heels now!”

Ansel smiled, leaned over to accept hugs from both of them, then made for his room. He felt their gaze on his back as he mounted the steps, and imagined their waxen smiles melting down to the expressionless masks they wore when they thought he wasn’t looking.

The LIBRARIAN plucked a book off the shelf and fanned through its pages.

“Nope,” she said, and put it back.

Ansel shifted nervously from one foot to the other. “Is there a Crime section?”

“Getting there, Kiddo. Hold your horses.”

The LIBRARY was quiet today. His father had come in about an hour ago, asked a question (“When was the last time you saw the MISSING PERSON?”), doffed his blue fedora and left. His mother walked by every so often—the flash of a yellow trench coat, blurring past the doorway— but she never came in.

The LIBRARIAN picked up another book, whisked it open and frowned at the table of contents. “Nope,” she said, and put it back.

“I can look too.”

“This is my job, Honey.” She glanced over her shoulder. “We’ll find it. You’ll see.”

They’d drawn her as a kind of caricature. She had a large undifferentiated shelf of breasts, bee-stung lips, absurdly high heels. But she was philosophical about it. They just made me, she always said. I am me.

Ansel wandered back to his table and sat down. The timeline he’d been working on lay between two teetering stacks of books, in the lamp’s yellow circle of light. He read over what he’d written so far:

9:33pm. Left SCHOOL. Me on foot, LOUISE on her bike.

9:34pm. Turned right on ROCK SPRING DRIVE.

9:36pm. Turned right on OLD GEORGETOWN ROAD.

He closed his eyes and tried to picture it: Louise weaving back and forth on her bike a few feet ahead, leaning into one turn until she was about to topple, recovering at the last minute, leaning the other way, the tassels on her handlebars flaring with each dip.

He picked up his pen.

9:42pm. Approach CHESHIRE DRIVE. ALLISON GRANIER and EVE PRESCOTT and MELISSA NG approximately 40 feet ahead, walking in the same direction.

9:43pm. Confer with LOUISE.

9:45pm. Call out to ALLISON.

Every other streetlamp was off that night—a county power-saving initiative—so the sidewalk was striated with alternating stripes of darkness and light. The moon hid behind an unbroken canopy of cloud.

Louise had outgrown the tassels on her handlebars a long time ago, but she shrugged whenever he pointed it out. Outgrowing stuff is depressing, she’d say. I’d rather not.

“Shouldn’t you be investigating somewhere else, Honey?” said the LIBRARIAN, her voice muffled by the shelf of civic history she’d disappeared behind. “I love your company, but you already know everything I do.”

“I’ve asked everyone all the questions,” he said, absently and wrote:

9:47pm. Stop and speak with ALLISON.

9:50pm. Turn left on CHESHIRE DRIVE, with ALLISON. LOUISE proceeds home.

9:51pm - 10:00pm. Walk to ALLISON’S house.

10:15pm. Start home.

10:30pm. Arrive home.

He sat back and studied the page. He’d written this same thing, more or less, at least a hundred times over the last few months. The working theory—suggested by a therapist, one of the half dozen his parents sent him to after Louise disappeared—was that the act of writing and rewriting the events of that night would shake something loose in his subconscious: a latent detail or word or image or something to fill the empty spaces in the timeline.

He stood up and paced the LIBRARY, weaving in and out of the shelves, trailing his fingertips across the spines. The History of Police Endeavor in the City, said one. George Cameron Carver and the Birth of Square Symmetrical Positivism, said another. A Walking Tour of Downtown said a third.

The LIBRARIAN slotted another book back into place and straightened, frowning at the shelves. “I don’t know, Honey. Are you sure you saw it?”

“Yes,” said Ansel, emerging from the shelves. He stepped into the shallow canal that ran through the center of the building and tightroped down its length, arms out, one foot in front of the other.