Don DeLillo - Point Omega

In the market he moved along the shelves choosing items, tossing them in a basket. I did the same, we divided the store, moving quickly and capably and passing each other now and then in one of the aisles, avoiding eye contact.

On the way back I found myself engaged by the scribbled tar of repair work on the paved road. I was drowsy, staring straight ahead, and soon the spatter on the windshield seemed even more interesting than the tar. When we were off-road, on rubble, he reduced speed drastically and the easy bouncing nearly put me to sleep. My seat belt wasn't fastened. He usually said "Seat belts" when he started the car. I sat up straight and rolled my shoulders. I looked at the grit under my fingernails. The rule of seat belts was meant for Jessie but she didn't always comply. We went past a spindly creek bed and I wanted to pound the dashboard a few times, tom-tom-like, to get the blood pumping. But I just closed my eyes and sat there, nowhere, listening.

When we got back to the house she was gone.

From the kitchen he called her name. Then he went through the house looking. I wanted to tell him that she'd gone for a walk. But it would have sounded false. She didn't do that here. She hadn't done that since she'd arrived. I left the groceries on the kitchen counter and went outside to scan the immediate area, kicking through thorny bushes and ducking under mesquite snags. I wasn't sure what I was looking for. My rented car was where I'd left it. I checked the car's interior and then tried to detect fresh tire marks on the sandy approach to the house and later we both stood on the deck looking intently into the stillness.

It was hard to think clearly. The enormity of it, all that empty country. She kept appearing in some inner field of vision, indistinct, like something I'd forgotten to say or do.

We went into the house again and looked more closely, room to room, finding her suitcase, poking through her closet, opening drawers in the bureau. We hardly spoke, did not speculate on what or where. Elster spoke but not to me, a few puzzled mutterings about her unpredictability. I crossed the hall to the bathroom that she and I shared. Toilet kit on the windowsill. No note taped to the mirror. I threw back the shower curtain, making more noise than I'd intended.

Then I thought of the shed, how had we forgotten the shed. I felt a strange brainless elation. I told Elster. The shed.

This was the first time we'd gone anywhere without her. She hadn't wanted to come with us but we should have said something, and her father did, but we should have insisted, should have been unyielding.

All right it was not impossible, a long walk. The heat had diminished these past few days, there was cloud cover, even a breeze.

Maybe she didn't want to spend another minute here and walked all the way out to the nearest paved road hoping to hitch a ride. This was hard to believe, that she might expect to reach San Diego and then get on a flight to New York, apparently carrying nothing, not even a wallet. The wallet was on her dresser with bills and change scattered around it, credit card in its slot.

I stood at the entrance to the shed. A hundred years of junk, this is what I saw, glass, rags, metal, wood, alone here, we'd left her, and the feeling in the body, the sheer deadness in my arms and shoulders, and not knowing what to say to him, and the chance, the faint prospect that we'd be standing on the deck in faded light and she'd come walking along the sandpath and we'd barely believe what we were seeing, he and I, and it would take only moments to forget the past several hours and we'd go in to dinner and be the people we always were.

He was in the house, on the sofa, leaning well forward and talking into the floor.

"I tried to get her to come with me. I talked to her. You heard me. She said she wasn't feeling well. Headache. She gets headaches sometimes. She wanted to stay here and take a nap. I gave her an aspirin. I brought her an aspirin and a glass of water. I watched her swallow the damn thing."

He seemed to be trying to convince himself that all of this had happened precisely as he was stating it.

"We have to call."

"We have to call," he said. "But won't they say it's too early? She's only been gone an hour or two."

"They must get calls for lost hikers all the time. People missing all the time. Out here, this time of year, whatever the situation, they have to take action fast," I said.

The only phones were our cell phones, the quickest link we had to assistance of any kind. Elster had a map of the area with numbers he'd written down for the caretaker, the sheriff's office and the park rangers. I got both our phones and snatched the map off the kitchen wall.

I reached a man in the park rangers' office. I supplied name, description, rough location of Elster's house. I explained Jessie's circumstances, not a trailwalker or mountain biker, not driving a car, not prepared to withstand even a limited period in the elements. He said he was a volunteer and would try to reach the superintendent, who was with a search party now, looking for Mexicans who'd been led across the border and then abandoned, no food or water. There were search planes, tracking dogs, GPS hand units and they often searched at night. They would be on lookout, he said.

Elster was still on the sofa, phone at his side. No one answering in the sheriff's office, he'd left a message. He wanted to call the caretaker now, someone who knew the area, and I tried to recall the man clearly, face stained by sun and wind, eyes tight. If Jessie was the victim of a crime, I'd want to know where he was when it happened.

Elster called, phone rang a dozen times.

I finished putting away the groceries. I tried to concentrate on this, where things go, but objects seemed transparent, I could see through them, think through them. He was out on the deck again. I went through the house one more time, looking for an indication, a glimmer of intent. The impact, gathering from the first moment, hard to absorb. I didn't want to go out there and stand watch alongside him. The fear deepened in his presence, the foreboding. But after a while I poured scotch over ice in a tall glass and took it out to him and soon night was everywhere around us.

Passing into air, it seemed this is what she was meant to do, what she was made for, two full days, no word, no sign. Had she strayed past the edge of conjecture or were we willing to imagine what had happened? I tried not to think beyond geography, every moment defined by the desolation around us. But imagination was itself a natural force, unmanageable. Animals, I thought, and what they do to bodies in the wild, in the mind, no safe place.

The day before, with all the phone calls made and everyone alerted, I'd stood outside and seen a car on the horizon floating slowly into motion, rippled in dust and haze, as in a long shot in a film, a moment of slow expectation.

It was the local sheriff, broad red face, cropped beard. A helicopter was in the air, he said, trackers were on the ground. First thing he wanted to know was whether there had been any recent deviation in Jessie's normal pattern of behavior. The only deviation, I told him, was the fact that she was missing.

I walked him through the house. He seemed to be looking for signs of a struggle. He checked Jessie's room and spoke briefly to Elster, who sat on the sofa throughout, barely able to move, either from medication or lack of sleep. He said nearly nothing and showed confusion at the sight of a uniformed man in the house, large man shrinking the room, badge on his chest, gun at his belt.

Outside the sheriff told me that at this point there was no evidence of a crime to investigate. The procedure over time would be to coordinate a program with officials of other counties in order to examine motel records, phone records, car rentals, airline reservations and other matters.