Free Other Resort Cities by Tod Goldberg Page B

nights for Tania, and the truth was that she was likely to pop some Two Buck Chuck tonight in front of the TV herself, Sundays her night off of the Internet, a night away from her search. Really, it was more a habit now than anything: Check the message board at LostAndFoundChildren.com to see if anyone responded to her photo of Natalya; read the listserv messages from her Yahoo group; scour every search engine, newspaper archive, and blog index on the planet for any mention of Natalya’s known names. This searching was
her infinity. A bottomless hope. But she gave Sundays up after her own mother told her to start weaning herself, that she had to grasp the idea that Natalya wasn’t really her child, that she’d just been a child who lived with her for a time. “Think of it like a car lease,” her mother said. “That’s how we’ve approached it emotionally; she wasn’t our granddaughter, just a child who lived with our daughter.”
    Like a car lease . Tania knew her mother meant well and so she tried, on Sundays, to treat Natalya’s disappearance like an episode of a TV show that she found particularly emotionally affecting, if only for twenty-four hours.
    Up ahead, Tania sees Gordon leaning up against the Sonny Bono statue. He doesn’t see her yet, so she takes a few seconds to stare at him, notices that a few of the passing tourist ladies are doing the same. It’s late spring and the air smells like a mixture of coconut tanning oil and jacaranda blooms, and it only makes sense that Gordon has changed from his casino uniform into tan pants and a white linen button-down, but for some reason Tania is surprised by this, by how effortlessly casual he looks, how he seems to fit in so perfectly. Even from several yards away Tania can see his tan skin through his shirt, the contours of his body. She wonders how old he is, thinks he’s probably thirty-five, maybe thirty-eight, too young for her now, anyway. And what does she know about him? What does she know about anybody anymore?
    “There you are,” he says when Tania finally approaches him. He puts an arm over her shoulder in a friendly way and gives her a pat, like they’re brother and sister. “I thought you were going to ditch me here with Sonny.”
    “You know I’m forty-seven,” she says.

    “How would I know that?”
    “I’m just telling you,” she says.
    “Is today your birthday?”
    “No,” she says.
    “Then why are we talking about it?”
    “I’m not sure why you asked me out,” Tania says. “What we’re doing here. That’s all.”
    Gordon exhales, and Tania realizes he’s been holding his breath, that he actually seems a little nervous now that she’s paying attention. “Can’t people go out for a drink, Tania? Isn’t that what normal people do?”
    “Are we normal people? All day spent watching people fuck up their lives. Who would call that normal?” Gordon nods, but it’s clear he’s not agreeing to anything, just happy to let Tania vent whatever it is she feels the need to vent. She likes that, though is certain he’s just trying to humor her. Give him a break, Tania thinks. Act like a person for an hour, see how it feels. “Where was this lamp store you were talking about? I’m in great need of track lighting.”
     
    What Tania remembers about Natalya is insignificant if looked at obliquely. She’s realized this before tonight, before she saw Gordon’s expression glaze over while she prattled on about the way Natalya used to sneeze every time she ate chocolate, or how Natalya’s eyes were brown on some days and green on others, or how, when she’s feeling particularly sentimental, she’ll spray a bit of Natalya’s perfume on her old pillow and will set it down across the room while she’s watching television or cooking something, so that she’ll just get a whiff of it in the course of doing regular things, and it will be like Natalya’s in
the other room, sitting on the floor like she used to do with her