Emily St. John Mandel - The Lola Quartet

He was frightening himself.

T h e p r o b l e m was that Gavin wasn't really sure what he was looking for, or whether he'd recognize it if he saw it. Daniel's routine was absolute. It wasn't that Gavin was necessarily expecting Anna or the child to simply appear at Daniel's house, if Anna was even in Florida, if Anna was still alive, if the child hadn't vanished into the hell of a homeless shelter. He was looking for something more subtle, a sign of some kind, but he couldn't imagine what it would look like or if he might have missed it a dozen times already. He brought his beloved 1973 Yashica and took photographs of Daniel leaving the police station, photographs of Daniel's house and of the pizza-delivery guy, but he didn't know what he was documenting aside from Daniel's apparently unremarkable life. He was tired from the late nights, and frustrated. In the office with Eilo he drank cup after cup of coffee until his heart raced.

There was more work than they could handle, a new foreclosure or two every day. She was talking about hiring more people. She had a gardener working for her now, a quiet man named Carlos who mowed lawns and planted flowers in front of the houses they were trying to sell. Sometimes instead of going to the police station to follow Daniel home he stayed at Eilo's house and they ate dinner together picnic-style on the living room floor, the way they had when he'd first come down reeling from New York.

"What do you do with yourself in the evenings?" she asked.

"Not much," he said. "Read, watch TV, do crossword puzzles. Drive around." He'd considered telling her about the search for Anna and the little girl, but there was something he liked about having one part of his life that was only his. He'd lost so much in New York and had been left with so little.

On a Friday afternoon he drove back to Mortimer Street. It was one of those golden-light afternoons when the suburbs are at their most beautiful. The air dense with humidity and the heat like a diving bell, sound muffled within. Gavin rang the doorbell. No one came to the door. He stood for a while on the cracked front step before he remembered Jack's tent in the backyard.

He walked around the side of the house, pushing through overgrown bushes that he couldn't identify, dark waxy leaves and bright flowers. An airplane droned in the sky overhead. He stepped out into the yard, grass up to his knees.

Gavin heard his name, but it was a moment before he saw Jack. He was sitting alone under an orange tree in a white plastic lawn chair, a bottle of Gatorade in his hand. There was a book open on his lap.

"You came back," Jack said.

"Of course I did." There were two other plastic chairs in the shade of the orange tree. He sat in the one closest to Jack. "Were you working today?"

Jack was wearing what looked like a uniform, a red polo shirt and black trousers. He was covered in dust. "My friend's got a company," he said. "I help rip carpets out."

"That sounds difficult."

"It's okay. It pays enough to get by." Jack didn't seem to want to talk about it.

"What are you reading?"

Jack passed him the book. Django Reinhardt: A Life. It was dog-eared and battered, small tears along the bottom of the dust jacket. Gavin opened the front cover and read the inscription: To my beloved son Liam on the occasion of his high school graduation with love and congratulations.—G.

"I wonder who Liam was," Gavin said. He'd found similar inscriptions in books he'd bought used.

"Liam? My roommate from college. You just missed him, actually." Jack took the book back from Gavin and set it on the grass by his lawn chair. "He used to do this thing," Jack said, "back in music school. It was pretty funny, he'd be drunk or whatever, and he'd say—" Jack raised his Gatorade bottle and dropped his voice—" 'My name is Liam Deval, and I am going to be famous.' "

"Wait," Gavin said, "Liam Deval? The guitarist? I used to listen to him play in New York."

"Yeah, he was up there for a long time. Always meant to visit him there." Jack's gaze was distant. Aside from his disastrous foray into South Carolina, Jack had never left the state of Florida.

"But he's here now?"

"Yeah, he's visiting Anna," Jack said.

"What?"

"I didn't— I'm sorry," Jack said, "I'm sorry, I always screw up." He was reaching into his pocket. Gavin looked away while he measured three pills into his hand.

"Did you just say Liam Deval's in Florida because of Anna?"

"I can't talk about it," Jack said. "I can't talk about Anna. I promised I wouldn't."

"Promised who?"

"Deval," Jack said. He looked like he wanted to cry. "Forget I said anything."

"It's okay," Gavin said. "It's okay. We won't talk about Anna."

Jack nodded. He was looking at his feet.

"But maybe you could tell me about Deval," Gavin said. "I really love his music."

"Yeah, he's good. Really good. I mean, I was sort of good. I maybe had something. But Deval, he had the music." Jack smiled. "He was trying to be Django Reinhardt. And you know what? He might be as good as Reinhardt was."

"Where's he staying? I'd love to meet him."

"I don't know," Jack said. "A hotel somewhere, I guess. Oh wait, wait, he told me." Jack rested his head on the back of the chair and stared into space. He was still for so long that Gavin glanced up to see what he was looking at. The leaves of the orange tree were brilliant green against the hazy sky. "The Decker," Jack said.

"The Decker?"

"It was something like that. The Dracker, or the Decker, or something."

"He say if he was coming back?" The heat was making Gavin's head swim. He wanted to lie down.

"No," Jack said, "but I hope he comes back. He said he was going to go visit Daniel."

"Of course he was."

"Did you just say something?"

"Nothing. Hey, is he playing anywhere while he's here?"

"Sure," Jack said. "He's got a gig at the Lemon Club."

T h e L e m o n Club had been open for thirty years and in high school Gavin had gone there a few times, trying to be sophisticated, trying to grasp hold of something that he might use to pull himself up toward adulthood, but he could never find it and as a teenager he'd felt uneasy there, pitifully young, out of his depth and unable to swim. The Lemon Club was a stop on the way to Miami and he'd seen a few big names there. The one he remembered best was a trumpet player, Bert Johnston. He'd brought Anna there in his last year of high school. They'd sat together at a round table just big enough for his Pepsi and her ginger ale— he wished he could order wine for both of them but didn't want to risk being laughed at by the bartender in front of her— and they listened to Bert Johnston's trumpet wail and sing. When Anna reached for his hand he didn't notice, only realized later that her hand was in his and he couldn't remember how it had ended up there. It was too warm in the club, the air conditioner laboring and spitting water over the door, and normally this would have bothered him but that night he was transfixed, that night things were becoming clearer. He was watching Bert Johnston and realizing that he wasn't going to be a musician. It wasn't an unpleasant revelation, just an understanding that his life was going to go in one direction and not another.

"I'll never be that good," he told Anna later, not upset, just stating

the fact, but she mistook his tone and tried to console him. The thought of the practice it would take to be a professional musician made him weary. He was reading a lot of noir and wearing a fedora, and he'd already developed backup plans. If he couldn't be a jazz musician he was going to be a newspaperman. If he couldn't be a newspaperman he was going to be a private detective.

The Lemon Club was already a little decrepit in his memories, but it had declined further since then and now the strip-mall parking lot was cracked and had a small palm tree growing out of the middle of it. Most of the other tenants were gone, sections of the mall boarded up. The only other tenants were an off-track betting parlor, an evangelical church and a pizza place with a torn awning.