Chapter 22

Fingal’s Cave/28
A CLUE

For the next two years, Yuudai lived in despair. Sumiko, inconsolable, divorced Yuudai and returned to Japan to live with her father in double mourning. Yuudai quit his Hollywood job to spend his days stapling photos of his sons to telephone poles and bulletin boards throughout the lower Sierra. He followed up every lead, haunted police stations and hospitals. He visited the camping area a hundred times, stalking the paths in the most violent seasons, searching for a clue, a sign, the echo of a voice, but the forest was silent.

After two years, he gave up. His sons were dead. Either at the bottom of some remote canyon or in some shallow backyard grave.

For another ten years, he lived without solace.

At the end of that twelfth year, as winter turned to spring, he once more returned to the site of their disappearance. Not much had changed, and when he walked into the roadhouse—which he had avoided during his two years of searching—he half expected to see his old girlfriend sitting on her stool, her flannel shirt thin and faded. The seat was empty, but the bartender remembered Yuudai, and that sad night. Yuudai got drunk, cried and raged at the woman who tempted him. Where did she live? He wanted to put his hands to her throat. The bartender calmed him down, revealing that the woman was a stranger. He had seen her that night and never again.

It was as though her purpose was to draw Yuudai into his fate.

Yuudai set his chin on his fists, dispiritedly scanned the bottles of booze and promotional items, yellowed cartoon strips and shelf of dusty children’s toys. The dinosaurs remained but one: the triceratops. Well . . . Yuudai closed his eyes. There was a tap on the bar. “She left these.”

Yuudai looked down to see a pair of glasses.

“I tried to catch her to give them back but she was already burning rubber. A sweet little red Mustang.”

Yuudai lifted the eyeglasses. “She’s never been back?”

“Nope.”

“If she ever does . . .”

“Not going to hurt her, are you?”

Yuudai shook his head. “I’d just like to ask her a question.” Yuudai stared at the woman’s glasses and then took off his own glasses. The wall of license plates blurred. He put on Demi’s. The license plates still blurred without a degree of difference.

“Maybe this will help,” said the bartender, setting a scrap of paper on the bar. Yuudai exchanged glasses and looked down at the paper.

“What’s this?”

“Her license plate number. I caught it as she was taking off. I thought I might try to contact her to get her back the glasses. Never bothered.”

“How—”

The bartender gestured to the wall. “My hobby. I dig license plates.”

Yuudai read the letters: CSNDRA.

“Thank you.”