Free A Person of Interest by Susan Choi Page B

he’d liked enormously. He and Fasano had both been newly divorced, with young daughters, when Fasano had joined the department in the late 1970s. They had gotten into the habit of jogging the riverside trail together and then going to a nearby restaurant called something like the Corral, or perhaps it had been the Chuck Wagon, for steaks and beer afterward. Now this lost period of Lee’s adult life seemed as remarkable and Arcadian to him as certain scenes from his childhood. When Fasano had been offered a much better job at Cornell and had left, Lee had felt the loss keenly. He and Fasano had only been friends—but the very simplicity of that formulation had been painful for Lee, for how rare he had realized it was. Fasano’s two daughters had been two years apart, the younger just about Esther’s age, and he had been an undisguisedly impatient and frustrated weekend father. He’d had a temper, like Lee. “Count your blessings,” he’d said to Lee of Esther, who after the divorce had continued to be a watchful and reserved—perhaps too reserved—child. This had entirely changed in adolescence, but by that time Fasano was gone.
    “Lee,” barked Fasano’s wonderfully familiar yet, through the machine, strangely abstracted voice. “I don’t like it when the bullshit do-ings of sociopaths are responsible for getting me back in touch with my friends, but I don’t deserve to complain. Neither do you, since I don’t think you’ve been in touch either, so let’s call it even and set the clock back to zero. I have to tell you, I could hardly believe it when I saw your face in the paper. First of all, I can hardly believe you’re still A P E R S O N O F I N T E R E S T 47
    stuck in that midwestern shithole. No, I’m honestly kidding. I actually miss it sometimes. But I can hardly believe you still have the same phone number. You’re a sentimental fool, Lee. I’m kidding again, but seriously, be sentimental enough to call me. Obviously, I want to hear how you are and how Esther’s doing, but there’s a more immediate reason. I know you read the papers, too, so I won’t insult you by reca-pitulating the whole thing, but I’m calling about the incident we had here in Los Angeles, about four years ago. Jesus, you probably think I’m still at Cornell. I’m not, I’m at U—”
    Here Lee’s machine had cut Fasano off, but after a beep and a click, Fasano resumed. “Sorry, Lee. These goddamn machines aren’t designed for old Luddites like me who forget that they’re not talking to a sympathetic human. As I was saying, I’m at UCLA. Been here since ’90. And of course, as you must know by now, we had a bombing here in ’91. I wasn’t anywhere near it. Nothing like how near you were to this one.
    I’m goddamn glad you weren’t closer. Anyway, give me a call and we’ll chew it all over. It’s good to hear your voice, though you sound like some terrified kid in elocution class on your outgoing message. Christ, I’m about to hang up without leaving my number.” He did leave his number, and Lee, grinning, wrote it on his notepad and then drew a crisp rectangle around it and stared in amazement. Fasano.
    The fourth message was from the mother of a girl who had briefl y been a friend of Esther’s in elementary school. Another tremulous, earnest voice; platitudes. Lee thought he remembered the woman, a famished, chain-smoking churchgoer. He hadn’t cared for the daughter as a playmate for Esther; she’d struck him as stupid, as intellectually developed at nine as she’d be in her life. He was still gazing at Fasano’s phone number; the churchgoing smoker left her number, but he ignored it.
    He ate his dinner at his magnificent desk, the only thing of value in the house that Michiko—he winced hearing the name of the second Mrs. Lee in his mind—hadn’t demanded and gotten. She had probably assumed she couldn’t get it down the stairs. The desk had been the captive monarch of his first apartment in