Noah's Compass

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Liam could find such a string?

“Good afternoon, Dr. Morrow’s office,” the voice on the telephone said.

Liam said, “Ah, hello. Verity? I’m calling on behalf of Ishmael Cope. Mr. Cope has mislaid his appointment card, and he asked me to find out when he’s due in next.”

“Cope,” the receptionist said. There was a series of clicking sounds. “Cope. Cope. Ishmael Cope. He’s not due in.”

“He’s not?”

“Did he say he was?”

“Well, ah… yes, he seemed to believe so.”

“But he was just here,” the receptionist said.

“Was he? Oh, his mistake, then. Never mind.”

“Ordinarily he waits till closer to the actual time to make the next appointment, since we see him just every three months is all, but if you’d prefer to set something up for him-”

“I’ll find out and call you back. Thanks.”

Liam replaced the receiver.

That evening his sister arrived bearing a cast-iron pot. “Stew,” she a

“I’m not living miserably!”

She turned and ski

“Come out…?”

“You suppose if you play your cards right, you won’t have to buy more clothes before you die.”

“I don’t suppose any such thing,” Liam said. Although it was true that the idea had crossed his mind once or twice, just as a theoretical possibility. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” he asked her.

“Your pants are losing a belt loop and that shirt is so old it’s transparent.”

He had hoped nobody would notice.

Julia herself was, as always, impeccably put together. She wore what she must have worn to work that day: a tailored navy suit and matching pumps. It was obvious she and Liam were related-she had Liam’s stick-straight gray hair and brown eyes, and she was short like him although, of course, smaller boned-but she’d never allowed herself to put on so much as an extra ounce, and her face was still crisply defined while Liam’s had grown a bit pudgy. Also, she had a much more definite way of speaking. (This may have been due to her profession. She was a lawyer.) She said, for instance, “I’m going to stay and eat with you. I trust you have no plans,” and something in her tone suggested that if he did have plans, he would naturally be canceling them.

She marched on into the kitchen, where she set the pot on the stove and slid a canvas grocery bag from her shoulder. “Where do you keep your silverware?” she asked.

“Oh, um…”

Just then Kitty sauntered down the hallway from the bedroom, clearly summoned by the sound of their voices. “Aunt Julia!” she said.

“Hello, there, Kitty. I’ve brought your dad some beef stew.”

“But he doesn’t eat red meat.”

“He can just pluck the meat out, then,” Julia said briskly. She was pulling drawers open; in the third, she found the silverware. “Will you be joining us?”

“Well, sure, I guess so,” Kitty said, although earlier she’d told Liam not to count on her for supper. (All three of his daughters seemed drawn to Julia’s company, perhaps because she made herself so scarce.)

Kitty was wearing one of those outfits that showed her abdomen, and in her navel she had somehow affixed a little round mirror the size of a dime. From where Liam stood, it looked as if she had a hole in her stomach. It was the oddest effect. He kept glancing at it and blinking, but Julia seemed impervious. “Here,” she said, handing Kitty a fistful of silver. “Set the table, will you.” No doubt she saw all sorts of get-ups in family court. She slapped a baguette on a cutting board and went back to searching through drawers, presumably hunting a bread knife, although Liam could have told her she wouldn’t find one. She settled on a serrated fruit knife. “Now, I trust you’re researching burglar alarms,” she told Liam.

“No, not really,” he said.

“This is important, Liam. If you insist on living in unsafe surroundings, you should at least take steps to protect yourself.”

“The thing of it is, I don’t think this place is unsafe,” Liam told her. “I think what happened was just a fluke. If I hadn’t left the patio door unlocked, and if some drugged-up guy hadn’t come fumbling around on the off chance he could get in somewhere… But at least I seem to have neighbors who will call the police, you notice.”

He had met the neighbors that morning-a portly, middle-aged couple heading out to their car just as he was dropping a bag of garbage into the bin. “How’s your head?” the husband had asked him. “We’re the Hunstlers. The folks who phoned 911.”

Liam said, “Oh. Glad to meet you.” He had to force himself to proceed through the proper steps-thank them for their help, give a report on his injuries-before he could ask, “Why did you phone, exactly? I mean, what was it that you heard? Did you hear me say any words?”

“Words, well, no,” the husband said. “Just, like, more of a shout. Just a shout like ‘Aah!’ or ‘Wha?’ and Deb says, ‘What was that?’ and I look out our bedroom window and see this guy ru

“I see,” Liam said.

“It was a medium-sized guy, though; I will say that. Medium-sized individual.”

Liam said, “Hmm,” barely listening, because why would he care what size the man was? It was his own words he’d hoped to hear about. That was it? “Aah!” and “Wha?” Surely he had said more. He felt a flash of exasperation with the Hunstlers.

As Julia said, setting the bread plate on the table, “You’d be a fool to rely on neighbors.”

“Well, maybe you’re right,” Liam said. “I’ll give some thought to an alarm.”

But he knew he wouldn’t.

“And have any arrests been made?” she asked once they’d taken their seats.

“Not that I’ve heard of.”

“Any leads, at least?”

“Nobody’s told me of any.”

“Here’s what I think,” she said. “I think it was somebody in this complex.”

“A neighbor?”

“You can see this is a down-and-outers’ kind of place. Flimsily built rental units, opposite a shopping mall-imagine the sort of people who live here.”

“I live here, for one,” Liam said. He started buttering a slice of bread. “And so do the Hunstlers.”

“Who are the Hunstlers?”

“Julia, you’re missing the point,” Liam said.

“What is the point, then? Surely you want to see justice done.”

“This is more about me,” he said. “Why can’t I remember what happened?”

“Why would you want to?”

“Everybody asks me that! You don’t understand.”

“No, evidently not,” Julia said, and then she turned to Kitty and, in an obvious changing-the-subject tone of voice, started quizzing her about her college plans.

Which wasn’t much more successful, really. Kitty said, “I don’t have any plans. I’ve just finished my junior year.”

“I thought you were a senior.”

“Nope.”

“Shouldn’t she be a senior?” Julia asked Liam.

“Nope.”

Julia turned back to Kitty. “But still you must have visited some campuses,” she said.

“Not yet. I might not even be going to college. I might decide to travel a while.”

“Oh? Where would you travel to?”

“ Buenos Aires is supposed to be fun.”

Julia looked at her blankly for a moment. Then she shook her head and told Liam, “I thought she was a senior.”

“Just goes to show,” Liam said cheerfully. “This is the kind of thing that happens when you don’t keep in touch with your family.”

“I keep in touch!”