Lunar Park (20 page)

Outside, I nodded at the armed security guard patrolling the stone walkway leading to the library and asked if he had a cigarette. He just said no and that smoking wasn’t allowed on school grounds. I tried to make a joke but the security guard didn’t smile when he stepped away from me and into the darkness. The average platypus, I thought, wandering off. The average platypus.

The library was three stories tall and framed one side of a large open courtyard. The windows of the building were translucent panels emitting a soft white light that filtered out into the darkness. From where I stood I could see the shadows of parents milling around, their murmurings from inside the building a distant soundtrack, and behind them were the long rows of bookshelves carving through the space. In the courtyard was a bronze statue of the Buckley Griffin, the school’s half-eagle, half-lion mascot, and it rose up out of the courtyard, twelve feet tall, its wings outstretched, about to leap off its platform and into flight. I went down the steps to check out the griffin and to find some privacy, but when I reached into my jacket for the cell phone (calling Aimee Light had always been part of my plan for the evening) I realized I wasn’t alone.

There was a figure encased in shadow, slumped on a bench. As I moved closer it said my name and I saw that it was Nadine Allen. I hesitated when I realized who it was. I looked around to make sure the word “Bret” was directed at me, hoping uselessly that it was not—but then she said the name again in a wearying monotone and I sighed and just kept nearing her.

Without saying anything I sat next to Nadine on the small bench jutting out of a tall granite wall. We were below ground level, I idly noticed, looking up at the library, ignoring Nadine. But movement caused me to glance at her. She was lifting a plastic cup half-filled with white wine to her lips and leaning lazily against the granite wall, and I was relieved that she was drunk, because that would keep the dream safely projected onto the wide screen, where it played as an alternative to what I was actually seeing.

In the courtyard, a small waterfall splashed lazily into a man-made pond, in which I briefly glimpsed the orange flashes of koi. Trees swayed overhead and coarse, thick vines were draped along the granite walls that surrounded us, lit up yellow and green by the colored bulbs of ground lamps. Nadine pulled her jacket tightly closed, even though it was warm out (though rain clouds had begun to obscure the moon), and she finished her wine and then, without saying anything, leaned into me, and I let her. She was a pretty woman, youthful for her age, and I watched as she lightly touched the highlights weaved throughout her hair. And when she still didn’t say anything I turned my gaze on the bronze statue of the griffin. Nadine’s silence finally succeeded in unnerving me, and so I prepared an innocuous conversation (oh, weren’t they all?) about the dinner she served last night when suddenly she said something. I didn’t quite catch it and I asked her to repeat the words she had just spoken. Her head lolled against my shoulder, and she giggled.

“They’re going to Neverland.”

I paused and adjusted my shoulder, causing Nadine to sit up sluggishly. I turned to look at her face. Her eyes were half closed and she was seriously buzzed. I was going to give the rest of the conversation sixty seconds and then quietly vacate the courtyard.

“Who . . . is going to Neverland?” I asked.

“The boys,” she whispered. “They’re going to Neverland.”

I cleared my throat. “What boys?”

“The missing boys,” Nadine said. “All of them.”

I took this in. She was waiting for me to reply. I tried to make a connection.

“You think . . . Michael Jackson has something to do with all this?”

Nadine giggled again and leaned into me, but I felt nothing sexual because the mention of the missing boys began enveloping everything around us.

“No . . . not Michael Jackson, silly.” And then she suddenly stopped giggling. She made a flying motion with her hands, mimicking a large, inebriated bird. She lurched forward and started swaying. “Neverland . . . like in
Peter Pan.
That’s where the boys are.” Mimicking the bird had taken a lot of effort and she leaned back against the wall without focusing on me. Her face—lost and heavily made up and the almond eyes wooden tonight—was lit half green by a ground lamp.

“Your . . . point, Nadine?” I asked cautiously.

“The point?” She sobered up too quickly. The tone became harsh. Maybe I looked frightened, which was what spurred her on. “You want to know what the ‘point’ is, Bret?”

I sighed and leaned against the wall. “No. Not really. No, Nadine. I don’t.”

“Why not?” She seemed activated by my admission, and the indignation in her voice seemed based not on drunkenness but on fear. “The point, Bret, the point is”—and now she breathed in and made a muffled, sullen sound—“the point is that no one is taking them anywhere.”

I nodded thoughtfully, as if mulling this over, and then said, “Sorry, but that just really doesn’t resonate, Nadine.”

“The point . . .”—she was now openly scornful—“the point is that you need to know this . . .” She reached down next to the granite bench and I was shocked to see her pick up a near-empty bottle of wine. Nadine had actually stolen a bottle of the Stonecreek Chardonnay from the reception and was nursing it in the dark courtyard of her children’s school. She carefully poured what was left of it into her plastic cup. I might have laughed if it hadn’t been for my growing concern that the vines were coiling around us. Suddenly, I was afraid. I was losing the signal of the dream. And I realized that Nadine’s behavior was motivated not by alcohol but by a specific anxiety that was spiraling out of control. “The point is”—she took a sip and pursed her lips—“that none of them are ever coming back.”

“Nadine, I think we need to find Mitchell, okay?” was all I could say.

“Mitchell, Bret, is standing next to your wife while Principal Cameron takes advantage of a photo op.” The way Nadine said this opened something up while failing to clarify anything—all it did was add confusion. Suddenly, in the phrasing of the sentence, and the way she had pushed down on certain words, all of our relationships were rearranged. The dream was slipping away.

Nadine sipped her wine and kept staring at something invisible in the darkness. The vines rustled around us. I kept trying to avoid her face and then made an attempt to stand up. Nadine had been quiet for so long that I didn’t think she would notice, but her hand shot out once I made my move and she gripped my forearm, pulling me back to her. She was staring at me now—her eyes bleeding with fear—and I had to turn away. That dream I had constructed so carefully was melting. I had to leave Nadine before it vanished totally, before it was consumed by someone else’s madness. It was becoming Nadine’s dream now, but the urgency in which she was relaying it to me had the horrible texture of truth. As I sat back down she said in a rushed whisper, “I think they’re leaving us.”

I didn’t say anything. I swallowed hard and went cold.

“Ashton collects information about the boys.” Nadine was still gripping my forearm and she was staring at me and she kept nodding. “Yes. There’s a file on his computer, and he didn’t know I found it. He collects information about the boys”—she breathed in and swallowed rapidly—“and he trades it with his friends . . .”

“This is really none of my business, Nadine.”

“But it is, Bret. It’s very much your business.”

“Why is it my business, Nadine?”

I suddenly hated her for what she was confessing to me and again I wanted to walk away, but I couldn’t. She lowered her voice and glanced around the courtyard to see if there was anything in the darkness listening to us, almost as if there was a risk associated in confessing this to me.

“Because Robby is one of the boys he’s trading this information with.”

I paused for breath. Everything started wasting away at that point.

“What are you talking about, Nadine?” I tried pulling my arm from her grasp.

“You don’t understand, Bret”—she was almost panting—“there are hundreds of pages devoted to those boys that Ashton has downloaded.”

I could feel her trembling as I tore my arm free and turned away.

“He e-mails them, Bret.” Nadine said this so loudly that it echoed in the empty courtyard.

“He e-mails who?” I couldn’t stop myself. I had to ask.

“He’s sending e-mails to those boys.”

I stopped pulling away and then, forced by fear, slowly turned to face her.

“He knew . . . some of the boys who disappeared?” I asked.

Nadine stared at me. I felt that if she said yes, everything would collapse.

“No,” she said. “He didn’t know any of them.”

I sighed. “Nadine . . .” I started wearily.

“But he e-mailed them after they disappeared,” Nadine whispered. “That’s what I couldn’t understand. He e-mailed them
after
they disappeared.”

It took me a long time to ask, “How do you know this?”

“I found one the other day.” She was sitting up, ignoring the wine, composing herself; suddenly she realized that she had a partner in this conversation. “It was in a code of some kind, and he forwarded it to Robby.” She was trying to explain this by gesturing with her hands. “One message he sent to Cleary Miller, and another to Eddie Burgess, and when I checked the dates they were sent after they disappeared, Bret. It was after—do you understand?” She was panting again. “I found them in the filing cabinet of Ashton’s AOL account but I had no idea what it meant or why he would do this, and when I confronted him he just yelled at me about invading his privacy . . . and now, the last time I looked, the files and the e-mails weren’t there anymore . . .” And just when it seemed her lucidity had returned, Nadine broke down. She began sobbing. I was vaguely aware that she was clutching my wrist. I remembered last night and Ashton’s tear-streaked face and how Nadine kept excusing herself to check up on him. How many others had been the target of her paranoia? How many others were lured by this crazed theory of Nadine’s? She kept wanting to guide me to a point that she was not capable of making.

I tried to calm her by playing along. “So Ashton was writing to the boys in Neverland, right?”

“That’s right.” She choked back another sob. “The Lost Boys.” Her eyes were pleading, and the taut expression on her face was morphing into relief because someone now believed her.

“Nadine, have you told Mitchell?” I asked this in a soothing tone but I was so hyped up at this point that my voice sounded high and cracked. “Have you contacted the police and told them about this theory?”

“It’s not a theory.” She shook her head like a little girl. “It is not a theory, Bret. Those boys were not abducted. There’ve been no ransom demands. There’ve been no bodies.” She was rummaging through her purse and pulled out a tissue. “They have a plan. The boys have a plan. I think they have this plan. But why? Why do they have a plan? I mean, there’s no other explanation. The police have nothing. Do you know that, Bret? They have nothing. They—”

I was talking over her. “Where are the boys, Nadine?”

“No one knows.” She breathed in and shivered. “That’s the point. No one knows.”

“Well, maybe if we talked to them, to Ashton and—”

“They lie. They will lie to you—”

“But if—”

“Don’t you think the boys have been acting strange?” she asked, cutting me off. She wanted me to validate something for her that, admittedly, I had not been paying attention to.

“In . . . what ways?”

“I don’t know . . .” Now that she had admitted the worst, I thought she might relax and become less furtive, but her twisted hands kept bunching up the Kleenex. “Secretive . . . and . . . and . . . not available?” She phrased this as a question so I would have to answer and then become trapped in her own dream.

“Nadine, they’re eleven-year-old boys. They’re not comedians. Fifth-grade boys are hardly the most outgoing group. I was the same way at that age.” I just wanted to keep on talking. I just wanted to say anything that might drown her out.

“No, no, no—” She had closed her eyes and was shaking her head violently. “This is different. They have a plan. They—”

“Nadine, come on, stand up.”

“Don’t you understand? Don’t you get it?” Her voice was rising. “If we don’t do something we’re going to lose them. Do you understand that?”

“Nadine, come on, we’re going to find Mitch—”

She grabbed my arm again, her hands tearing at the sleeve of my jacket. She was breathing heavily.

“We’re going to lose them if we don’t do some—”

The dream was rushing in the opposite direction, rewriting itself. I was trying to lift Nadine off the granite bench but she kept forcing her weight back onto it. And suddenly she shouted, “Let go of me!” and wrenched herself away. I stood there, also breathing heavily, not knowing where to go. I kept straining to piece this information together.

And then: an interruption.

“Is everything okay down there?” a voice above us called.

I looked up. The armed guard I had asked for a cigarette was standing against a railing and staring down into the courtyard before sweeping the beam from a small flashlight over my face. Covering my eyes with a hand, I said, “Yes, yes, we’re fine,” as courteously as possible. From my point of view the griffin’s massive head floated directly below him.

“Madam?” the guard asked, training the ray of light on her.

Nadine composed herself, blowing her nose. She cleared her throat and squinted up at the guard and called back, smiling, in a restrained and faux cheerful voice, “We’re fine, we’re fine, thank you very much.” The light was absorbed by Nadine’s mask before the guard, peering down at us uncertainly, finally moved on. The guard’s interruption had brought an air of reality to the proceedings and it caused Nadine to stand up and, without looking at me, walk quickly toward the steps as if she was now ashamed by what she had admitted. I had rejected her on some level and the embarrassment was too big to deal with. The stab at a tryst had failed. It was a gamble that hadn’t paid off. It was time to go home. She would never mention any of this to me again.