SIMON TOOK THE STAIRS two at a time up to his apartment. He had agonized so much about his and Libby’s relationship, and now it was over, slammed shut like a door, and on the other side was his future, bleak and yawning in front of him.
He put the key in the lock. He was late. Stella had stopped asking him where he was anymore when he came home at odd hours, which both relieved and depressed him. He’d tend to her. He’d stop thinking about his own voracious need for love and fame and instead he’d focus on her and nothing else right now. He’d see to it that she could live the life she wanted, that she had a support system in place.
“Stella?” he called. The lights were off and he flicked them on. “Stella?” he said again, and his eyes moved to the open closet, to the racks where Stella’s clothes had hung. Then he saw a note on the table, and he picked it up. There it was, Stella’s careful scribble: Fuck you. You liar. I know you love Libby. And that’s when he began to be afraid.
How did she know? How had she found out? He looked down at the paper again. She had borne down on it so hard, it had ripped.
FOR ONE CRAZY moment he thought he should call Libby because Stella might have gone there, but then he lost heart. Who was he kidding? What would Libby know that he didn’t? He ran out to all the places Stella might be, her favorite spots. He scanned the little park on West Twenty-Second, where he’d been with Libby, but it was empty except for one exhausted mother trying to placate a screaming toddler who was up well past his bedtime. He passed the art store, which was closed of course, and then circled back to the apartment. He didn’t know where else to look.
The night was so dark now. Stella wasn’t picking up her cell, so he called her friends, his voice breaking. “I don’t know where she is,” he said. They were all sympathetic, but none of them knew either. “Truthfully, it’s not the way it used to be with us,” Debra said. “It makes me sad, but it’s true.”
It’s not the same for me either.
He thought about calling Bette, to see if Stella had reached out to her. But Bette was old and he didn’t want to upset her. Or maybe the truth was that he really liked her, and he didn’t want the truth of what had happened to make her stop liking him.
He went to the local police station and stammered out what had happened, but the cop was unimpressed. “She’s a grown woman,” he said to Simon. “And she’s barely been gone a few hours. Give it some time. Wait. Save your panic for later.”
“You don’t understand—” Simon said, and then he thought, How could this cop, or anyone else for that matter, understand? “She was in a coma.”
“But she’s not now, right?” the cop said. “Look. She’ll come back. They almost always do.”
ONE DAY PASSED, then two, and then four, and Simon kept looking for her, kept texting and calling her. What if she was hurt? What if her brain changed again? Doctors didn’t know everything that was possible with coma. They couldn’t predict how she’d proceed in life. He thought he saw her when he was driving a passenger uptown and swerved the car to the curb. “Jesus!” the woman in the back said as Simon pulled the car to a stop. He put his head in his hands and cried. “You okay?” the woman said. He straightened and saw in his rearview mirror that she was checking her watch.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m just not myself.”
And then he put the car in drive and headed on.