Alix Ohlin - The Missing Person

“So, we’ll divide,” Angus was saying. “Kickoff time is midnight. Stan and Berto, you two take the roads. Wylie and Irina and I will take the tram.”

“Who’s going to secure the airspace?” I asked. There was a silence. “Just kidding,” I added, but nobody laughed. “Where do I go?”

“Home,” Wylie said.

“No.”

“Yes.”

We glared at each other, both of us cross-legged on the floor.

“Children,” Angus said quietly, seeming amused. “Lynn, you’ll come with me. We’ll all meet back here at midnight. Class dismissed.” He clapped his freckled hands, and the dog jumped.

Angus wanted me to while away the afternoon in a motel, but I had other plans. Cornering Wylie, I told him there was something I wanted him to do with me.

“Not go home,” I said, before his scowl could harden. “Someplace else. Come on, I’ll let you drive the Caprice.”

“You’ll let me drive my own car?” he said.

“Yes. I’m that generous.”

I directed him through traffic without telling him where we were headed, though he figured it out soon enough.

“Nice butterflies,” he said, looking at our old house. “You’re on a big nostalgia trip, aren’t you?”

I opened the car door. “I want you to meet somebody,” I said. I got out, walked up to the Michaelsons’ front door, and knocked, Wylie following slowly behind me.

Daphne herself opened the door, wearing a navy-blue business suit with white hose and matching blue pumps with little white leather bows. She looked beautiful, glassy and severe, like a Midtown skyscraper. For a second I thought I’d imagined the entire thing: her insanity, her room, her collection of Vogue magazines.

Then she said, “I knew you were coming.” She stepped back from the door and walked away down the hall.

I followed her, and could hear Wylie behind me, although I didn’t look at him. Daphne Michaelson led us into the same room, the magazines neatly lining the walls, and sat down in the same chair, arranging her skirt neatly over her knees. She smelled like Chanel No. 5. There was nowhere else to sit, so Wylie and I just stood there.

“What I’m about to tell you,” she said, “cannot leave this room.”

“Mrs. Michaelson, do you remember us? Wylie and Lynn Fleming, we used to live next door?”

She nodded. “You’re here for the files. Everything is carefully maintained.” She pointed to a box on the floor that held another stack of magazines, an issue of Mademoiselle on top. “Rose red, romantic red, red in the afternoon,” she said, looking back and forth between me and Wylie with a gaze of such intensity that I had to will myself not to nod. She took a manicured finger and wiped the pad of it across her mouth, then held it up. “Ragtime red,” she said.

I realized that she was naming lipstick colors. “Mrs. Michaelson,” I said, “I think—”

“Listen,” she said, “I tried to tell you earlier. It’s a permanent wave.”

Wylie said, “Mrs. Michaelson, are you taking your medication?”

She stood up. In her classic pumps she was as tall as he was. “Light is what makes every color,” she said. “Especially red. I prefer a red with bluish undertones myself.”

Wylie was looking away from her, at the door.

“Light can be both particle and wave,” she said to me. “Did you know that?”

I couldn’t get enough of looking at her. I was fascinated by her conviction, her craziness, her aging, manicured beauty, and I wanted to hear what she would say next. She could have been a performance-art piece, a portrait of a madwoman in an attic of fashion magazines; yet she wasn’t acting. I could have stayed there all day, and I probably would have if Wylie hadn’t physically dragged me — exerting a surprisingly strong grip around my shoulders — from the house.

On the sidewalk, in the painful, brilliant sun, Wylie punched the air and said, “Why did you show me that? Why?”

“Because,” I said, “there’s nobody else to show.”

At midnight, there were more people in Wylie’s apartment than I’d seen since that first, partylike meeting, and the same atmosphere was building. Some people were drunk or at least tipsy, and Berto greeted me with an uncharacteristic hug, his breath sweet with beer. From what he and Stan said, I knew Angus had been out drinking with them, but it didn’t show. His posture was as straight as ever, and when I came in, alone— after our little excursion, I’d gone back to my mother’s and Wylie had taken off somewhere on foot — he only winked. I sat down on the sleeping bags next to Sledge, who was gazing balefully around the room.

There were at least ten people I didn’t recognize, all wearing hiking clothes; some had clipboards and milled around with what looked to me like a false air of efficiency. One of them cornered Wylie, just as a young woman with a long braid and a red T-shirt sat down next to me, smiling brightly.

“I haven’t seen you before,” she said. “Would you like to be on our mailing list?”

I looked at her. “Um, I’m just Wylie’s sister,” I said. She nodded, still beaming, and held out her hand.

“I’m Panther,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

“I’m the media coordinator. Would you like to sign our petition?”

“Sure,” I said. I scribbled my name without even bothering to read the sheet, distracted by Wylie, whose quiet conversation had turned into an argument.

“We’ve put a lot of work into this,” he was saying, “and you won’t even listen to my position paper?”

“Because that’s not how you deal with the media,” the other guy said, exasperated. “Because there are proven ways to conduct effective activism. Because antics like draining pools detract from those of us making real change.”

Wylie got right in his face, the toad-killer look back in his eyes.

“What do you call real ? Sitting in a tree again? Helping suburban moms master recycling techniques? Giving inspirational talks to schoolchildren about saving the cute little animals of the forest?”

“Damn,” Panther said quietly, next to me.

“Nothing ever changes. Go sell some more greeting cards.”

“Those were postcards,” the other guy said, “and they raised money for overhead.”

“Get out of here,” Wylie said.

Stan and Berto were staring at the ground. Angus was watching, avidly and without distress, as if it were a gripping scene from a movie. Irina, standing in the bedroom doorway with Psyche in the ever-present sling, went over to Wylie and touched his arm. It was the first time I noticed the way she looked at him — as if he were a hero whose most sterling qualities she alone appreciated. She stood on tiptoe to whisper something in his ear, and he shook his head and folded his skinny arms.

“Let’s go,” the other guy said. “This is bullshit.”

“But you were supposed to help us with the media, man,” Berto said.

“Wylie doesn’t think you need any help,” he said. All the strangers filed out behind him, with their clipboards and backpacks and water bottles, and some of them, I noticed, looked like they regretted leaving the party.

When they were gone Wylie pulled a folded piece of paper out of the back pocket of his dirty jeans. “I’ve written our position paper,” he said very quietly.

“Go ahead,” Angus said.

Wylie read like a kid giving a book report, forgetting to pause at commas and periods, assuming he’d used any to begin with. “We are creating a wilderness refuge. What is the nature of a wilderness refuge? We think of it as a place where animals are guaranteed a livable habitat, but this guarantee is all too limited in scope. It is the habitat itself that requires a refuge from the constantly encroaching structures of civilization. We must develop a form of resistance to these structures. We must be willing to imagine an alternate world.” As he read, I closed my eyes and remembered those middle-of-the-night e-mails; their tone seemed different to me now, less ranting than lonely. I bet he wished I were still in New York, the conveniently silent recipient of his ideas.