Live Wire
“Okay.”
Suzze started typing on her computer. “So I started looking at my own Facebook page, where that lie was posted. You know anything about how people fan you?”
“I assume they just sign up.”
“Right. So I decided to sort of do what you suggested. I started looking for old boyfriends or tennis rivals or fired musicians—someone who might want to harm us.”
“And?”
Suzze was still typing. “And I started going through the people who’d signed up recently for the fan page. I mean, I now have forty-five thousand followers. So it took some time. But eventually . . .”
She clicked the mouse and waited. “Okay, here. I stumbled across this profile from someone who signed up three weeks ago. I thought it was pretty odd, especially in light of what you told me about last night.”
She gestured toward Myron, who stood and circled around to see what was on the screen. When he saw the name in bold on the top of the profile page, he wasn’t really all that surprised.
Kitty Hammer Bolitar.
8
Kitty Hammer Bolitar.
Back in the privacy of his office, Myron took a closer look at the Facebook page. No question about it when he saw the profile photo: It was his sister-in-law. Older, sure. A little more weathered. The cuteness from her tennis days had hardened a bit, but her face still had that perky-pretty thing going on. He stared at her for a moment and tried to quell the hatred that naturally rose to the surface whenever he thought of her.
Kitty Hammer Bolitar.
Esperanza came in and sat next to him without a word. Some would assume that Myron would want to be alone. Esperanza knew better. She looked at the screen.
“Our first client,” she said.
“Yep,” Myron said. “Did you see her at the club last night?”
“Nope. I heard you call her name, but by the time I turned, she was gone.”
Myron checked the wall posts. Sparse. Some people playing Mafia Wars or Farmville or quizzes. Myron saw that Kitty had forty-three friends. “First thing,” he said. “Let’s print out a list of her friends, see if there is anybody we know.”
“Okay.”
Myron hit a photo album icon called “Brad and Kitty—A Love Story.” Then he started looking through the photographs, Esperanza at his side. For a long time, neither spoke. Myron just clicked, looked, clicked. A life. That was what he was seeing. He had made fun of these social networks and didn’t get them and thought of all the strange, even quasi-perverse stuff about the whole thing, but what he was seeing here, what he was watching go by, click by click, was nothing less than a life, or in this case, two.
His brother’s and Kitty’s.
Myron watched Brad and Kitty age. There were photographs on a sand dune in Namibia, canyoning in Catalonia, sightseeing on Easter Island, helping the natives in Cusco, cliff-diving in Italy, backpacking in Tasmania, doing an archeological dig in Tibet. In some photographs, like the ones with the hilltop villagers in Myanmar, Kitty and Brad sported native garb. In others they wore cargo shorts and tees. Backpacks were almost always present. Brad and Kitty often posed cheek to cheek, one smile almost touching the other. Brad’s hair remained a constant curly dark mess, at times getting long and unruly enough to mistake for a Rastafarian’s. He hadn’t changed much, his brother. Myron studied his brother’s nose and saw that it was a little more crooked now—or maybe that was projecting.
Kitty had lost weight. There was something both wiry and brittle about her physique now. Myron kept clicking. The truth was—a truth he should be happy about—Brad and Kitty glowed in every shot.
As if reading his mind Esperanza said, “They look damn happy.”
“Yep.”
“But they’re vacation pictures. You can’t tell anything from them.”
“Not vacation,” Myron said. “This is their life.”
Christmas was in Sierra Leone. There was a Thanksgiving in Sitka, Alaska. Another festival of some kind in Laos. Kitty listed her current address as “Planet Earth’s Obscure Corners,” and her occupation as “Former Miserable Tennis Wunderkind Now Happy Nomad Looking to Better the World.” Esperanza pointed at her “occupation” and made a gagging gesture with her finger and mouth.
When they finished looking through that first album, he went back to the photo page. Two more albums were there—one called “My Family,” the other labeled “The Best Thing in Our Lives—Our Son, Mickey.”
Esperanza said, “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“Then let’s get to it.”
Myron clicked on the Mickey folder and the thumbs—small iconlike photos—loaded up. For a moment he just stared, his hand on the mouse. Esperanza kept still. Then, almost mechanically, Myron started clicking through the photographs of the boy, starting when Mickey was a newborn infant and ending sometime recently, when the boy was probably about fifteen. Esperanza bent for a closer look, watching the images whir by, when under her breath she whispered, “My God.”
Myron said nothing.
“Go back,” she said.
“Which one?”
“You know which one.”
He did. He went back to the photograph of Mickey playing basketball. There were a lot of him playing hoops—in Kenya, Serbia, Israel—but in this particular picture, Mickey was taking a fadeaway jumper. His wrist was cocked, the ball near his forehead. His taller opponent was reaching to block it, but he never would. Mickey had hops, yes, but he also had the fadeaway, drifting back to safety from that outstretched hand. Myron could almost see the gentle release, the way the ball would rise with perfect backspin.
“May I state the obvious?” Esperanza asked.
“Go for it.”
“That’s your move. This could be a picture of you.”
Myron did not reply.
“Except, well, you had that ridiculous perm back then.”
“It wasn’t a perm.”
“Sure, right, the natural curls that left when you were twenty-two.”
Silence.
“How old would he be now?” Esperanza asked.
“Fifteen.”
“He looks taller than you.”
“Could be.”
“No question he’s a Bolitar. He’s got your build, but he’s got your dad’s eyes. I like your dad’s eyes. They’re soulful.”
Myron said nothing. He just stared at the photographs of the nephew he’d never met. He tried to sort through the emotions ricocheting through him and then decided to just let them be.