Free Without a Word by Carol Lea Benjamin Page A

players at the southwest corner of the park. Two of the kibitzers were kibitzing here now, at the run, their arms hanging over the fence, watching a different kind of game. The woman was tall and horsey, long face, long nose, big chin and hair pulled back so tight it made her ears seem to stick out. Her coat looked worn, even from across the run, and while it wasn’t cold out, and that may have been why she had it unbuttoned, it might not have fit across her considerable girth. The man was small, shorter than I am, lost in a hunter’s orange jacket at least two sizes too big for him, a watch cap on his head, the hood over the cap, aviator glasses, unlaced workman’s boots with unmatched socks peeking over the top. They might have both been homeless, having picked their outfits out of the trash, neither willing to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if your coat won’t close, or the color of it gives the impression that someone is about to start shooting deer in Washington Square Park, you can’t be fussy about size and color when winter’s coming and you’re lucky enough to find something you can get into that will keep you warm.
    When I got home, I checked my Brooklyn directory and located Lincoln High, way the hell at the far end of the borough. Then I checked under Abele, to see if Celia lived in Brooklyn. There was a Claire Abele on Bedford Avenue, a Richard Abele in Brooklyn Heights, and that was it. I tried the Manhattan directory next. There were six Abeles in Manhattan, Audrey, Harrison, J., Louise, Philip and a C. Abele on Bethune Street, a block from Leon’s apartment andjust a short walk to her former job as receptionist for Drs. Willet, Bechman and Edelstein.
    Of course the Celia Abele who had worked for Dr. Bechman at one time could live in Queens, the Bronx, on Staten Island or in New Jersey. She might have relocated to Denver, Colorado, or Wake Forest, North Carolina. Nothing said she’d remained close by or that she even had the same last name now that she did then. For all I knew, she’d left her job to get married to an Eskimo who lived fifty miles north of Fairbanks.
    Still, I wrote down the address and the phone number, but I didn’t plan to call. I thought I’d walk by, see how big the building was, see if there might be some way, by hook or by crook, to talk to Celia Abele face-to-face. It was too easy to hang up the phone, and too tempting, too, especially with the glut of telemarketers invading what used to be the privacy of your home.
    I turned on the computer and typed in Classmates.com. They’d been after me weekly to sign up and get in touch with my old classmates, something I had no desire to do. What would they think of the life I’d chosen? I couldn’t imagine. Or maybe I could and that was why I’d had no desire to get in touch. But I did finally accept Classmates.com’s invitation, signing up not as Rachel Kaminsky, the name I’d had in high school, but as Sally Bruce because it was her long-lost friends I was hoping to hear from, not my own. I backtracked to the year she would have graduated, then back four from that to give the range of time she’d attended Lincoln. Now all I had to do was wait and hope.
    If Lincoln was like any other New York City public school, its senior class would have had around a thousand kids in it. I didn’t know the chances of anyone recognizing Sally’s name and responding. I figured they were slim, like everything else in this case. All the more reason to try anything I could think of.
    At a quarter to eight, I called Leon. Dashiell and I headed a block and a half west to Greenwich Street, then a few blocks north to Bank Street. I could see Leon sitting on the steps out front, a black gym bag on his lap.
    He handed me the bag. “I hope this helps.”
    â€œMe, too,” I said. I weighed the bag by hoisting it up and down. “Not much in it.”
    â€œI wasn’t