Can you imagine the slut having to do it? Having to look through all the Smiths downtown? Her finger stopping at each one and then dialing, waiting for someone to answer, having to say, “This is your father’s girlfriend, do you know where he is?”

A drink by her, a tinkling one with lots of ice, and a tinkling bracelet on her wrist, the tennis kind. Wrinkles like scythes at her temples, curving down, slicing straight for her eyes. There are black things chipped in among the blue and green, so the eye seems scattered, once exploded, colors now caught in her iris, orbiting the black hole of her pupil. Her eyes dart and search the flimsy page.

“Everyone’s a goddamn Smith,” she says out loud. She stands, walks around the room holding the princess phone, taking it with her to the kitchen, the window, the mantel. She waits for answers. Some Smiths answer and they sound like Garcías or Lopezes instead. The ones that sound like girls interrupted while counting ceiling tiles she asks, “Is this Cal’s girl?” When she gets one, finally, she says nothing. She takes a drink of her drink, a loud one so the girl knows she’s still there. The girl can hear the tinkle of her bracelet and the tinkle of her ice. The girl knows who it is.

“Is this Cal’s girl?” the girl says.

“It’s Cal’s girlfriend,” the slut says.

“Just a minute,” the girl says. The girl puts the phone down on the floor. The dog comes to sniff it. The girl gets up and changes the channel on the TV. She goes around the dial more than twice, she stops it at a commercial. A swirly frosting ad for cake. The girl picks up the phone again. The frosting is chocolate spread thickly like whitecaps in a choppy sea. The girl holds the receiver to her ear and waits.

“Are you there?” the slut says.

“No, I’m here,” the girl says.

“Is this Louisa?” the slut says.

“Jody,” the girl says. The girl is not Jody. The girl is really Louisa.

“I’ve got a question, Jody,” the slut says.

“Hold on,” Louisa says. She hangs the phone by its cord off the arm of the chair. “Come here,” she says to the dog. “Too tight?” she says, and she lifts the collar off the dog and scratches the dog’s neck, the dog letting her head go limp in Louisa’s lap. Louisa picks the receiver back up.

“Oh, am I interrupting something important?” the slut says and rolls her exploded eyes to her ceiling, turning a glare to the tin tiles. Louisa puts gum in her mouth and starts to chew.

“I’ve got a question,” the slut says.

“Question away,” Louisa says.

“Have you, by any chance, seen your father?” she says.

“My father,” Louisa says, like the beginning of a story she is going to tell about her father. “My father was a Cretan. My mother was a spy,” Louisa says.

“What’s that?” the slut says.

“The beginning of something,” Louisa says. The slut goes into the bathroom. She likes the sound of her shoes on that particular tile floor. She walks around in little circles and then she puts the lid down and takes a seat.

“Are you in the john?” Louisa says. Louisa knows the slut calls the bathroom the john. “Is that the john?” Louisa says.

“Never mind,” the slut says. “Have you or haven’t you seen your father?” she says.

“When?” Louisa says.

“I don’t know when, lately,” the slut says.

“Oh, lately,” Louisa says.

“Well?” the slut says.

“I’m thinking who I’ve seen,” Louisa says. “Lately,” she adds. “There was Jesús, just a little while ago.”

“Not all the names, please,” the slut says. “This is difficult for me. You understand,” she says.

“Have you looked in the kitchen?” Louisa says, “or are you still in the john?” she says.

“He’s not here, anywhere, for days,” the slut says. “Can’t you see?”

“He’s left you, then?” Louisa says.

“Is that what you think?” the slut says. “What if he’s hurt? Aren’t you worried? He’s your father for chrissakes, Jody,” she says.

“Check your wallet,” Louisa says.

“What?” the slut says.

“Check it,” Louisa says.

The slut puts the phone down. She gets her slim crocodile wallet tanned black. After she opens it she gets back on the phone and says, “I can’t believe you made me do that.”

“Well,” Louisa says.

“I can’t tell,” the slut says. “He’s your father. The things you say,” the slut says. “Aren’t you ashamed?”

“What about the plastic?” Louisa says. “The Amex and all that. Check it too.” The slut checks.

“Here, all here,” she says. “Now what?” Louisa passes the phone to Jody.

“Hello?” Jody says.

“Who’s this?” the slut says.

“Louisa,” Jody says.

“Oh, what happened to Jody?” the slut says.

“I don’t know what happened to Jody,” Jody says.

“I thought you were looking for our father, not Jody.”

“Have you seen him?” the slut says.

“Did he really steal from you?” Jody says.

“No. I don’t know. Everything seems to be here. Listen, as I told Jody already, I’m in a difficult position here.”

“Are you on the john?” Jody says.

“Listen, I haven’t seen your father, you hear me, your own father, for days now. No note, no telephone call, not any kind of word at all. I’m, frankly, quite worried,” the slut says. “Louisa, are you there?” she says.

“I’m here,” Jody says.

“You see, really quite worried. What are we to do?” the slut says. Jody is now letting two of her mice climb up and down her arms while she talks on the phone. The receiver is held between her bent neck and shoulder. It drops to the floor when she giggles, when the mice run out to the edge of her fingertips she always giggles. Louisa picks up the phone.

“Jody here,” Louisa says.

“Jody? All right. It doesn’t matter who. Listen, we’ve got to do something, fill out some kind of report. Go to the police,” the slut says. The slut is standing in the hall now. She stands and looks down the stairwell as she talks. “Because, you see, he’s not coming. He’s not here,” the slut says. The slut holds out her hand over the empty space above the stairwell, emphasizing.

“He’s not missing from here,” Louisa says. “He doesn’t live here.”

The slut laughs and then wipes her nose with her hand. “Jody, you’re a smart girl. Aren’t you a smart girl? I’ll answer for you, because I know. Think how it looks. I’m in the station. The girlfriend. I’m telling the fat cop behind the desk I can’t find my lover, that he’s been gone for days. Are you with me? And you, now you be the fat cop behind the desk, Jody, you tell me what the fat cop says to me, the girlfriend,” the slut says. “‘Lady, what makes you think he didn’t get up and leave you?’ That’s it, that’s what you, Jody, say, if you, Jody, are the fat cop. Forms need to be filled out, Jody. That’s what I’m saying,” the slut says. The slut is back in her kitchen now. She takes a dirty tall glass that holds the remnants of gin and an old lemon and she tosses the gin into the sink and then fills the glass with tap water and puts the old lemon back in the glass and then she drinks. Louisa hears her swallow.

“Lady, what makes you think he didn’t get up and leave you?” Louisa says.

“That’s exactly what he’d say,” the slut says.

“Lady, what makes you think he didn’t get up and leave you?” Louisa says again.

“You want me to answer that? Is that what you’re doing?” the slut says. “I’ll answer that. No, wait, why should I answer that? You’re smart, you Smith girls, but you’re also cruel. But never mind that now. We’ve got work to do. You’ve got to get up here. A.S.A.P. All right? Do you hear me. Hello? Hello?” Louisa goes through the channels again. A nature show shows dying elephants searching for water, their trunks looking stretched out and dragging on the ground.

“Uptown. Take the bus. Take whatever you take. The subway, it’s faster,” the slut says.

“I can’t watch this,” Jody says to Louisa. “It’s not my cup of tea.” She walks back to her room, her arms out in the style of zombies, her mice running on them.

“A cab, I think,” Louisa says, “is what you want us to take. It’s what will get us there faster. Pay for our cab, meet us at the curb with your wallet ready. And victuals,” Louisa says, “buy some in advance. We like hamburgers. Two apiece.”

“When are you leaving? Leave now,” the slut says. “Remember, it’s your father,” and then she says, “I’m hanging up now. I’ll expect you no later than twenty minutes from now. That’s plenty of time. Isn’t that plenty of time? Jody? Twenty minutes?”

“One hour,” says Louisa, “you’ll need it to get the burgers.” She hangs up the phone and then she says to me and Jody, “It’s all right when it’s bugs dying or being eaten, their hairy legs being torn off, but when it’s these drooping elephants they show, I can’t watch it. Who can watch this?” She turns off the television and leans back in her chair and closes her eyes.

Imagine the slut now still holding her hand on the receiver of the phone. Frozen in the act of putting it down and ready to pick it up all at once. Call the girls back. Tell them one thing more. Tell them anything to get them to really come, because she doesn’t think they really will. Except, ah yes, the food. They will come. And she lets go of the phone and pulls takeout menus from the night table by the side of the bed. She jiggles the drawer, the paper menus are caught up under whatever runners or knobs there are that make a drawer slide. “Oh, damn it,” she says. She yanks harder, and her tennis bracelet gets caught up on a hook and breaks, falling with a jingle.

She stands and looks out the kitchen window. There is nothing out there, no person, only trees in the dark, maybe a wind off the river.

The girls eat in the station. Blood drips on their hands. The cop is not fat, too thin maybe, his chin meant for putting up in the air, his elbows for getting by in crowds, angled for jabbing.

“Shauna,” she says, and maybe he’s Irish because he spells it S-E-A-N-A-H and she corrects him, taking the pen from him, warm from where he held it.

“And them,” he grabs the pen back to point.

“Direct relations,” she says, “his daughters. Come along, girls. Come give your names.”

The cop has a few questions. He wants them to name places their father might be.

“We don’t know,” Louisa says. “Have you got a globe?” The cop does not. He only has maps of uptown, huge ones in plastic hanging from wooden sticks on a rack.

“So when can we expect the dogs to be unleashed?” the slut says.

“There are no dogs,” he says.

“I know,” she says. “When will you start the search, I mean?” The girls have gone outside. They have two jump ropes they uncoil. She gives the cop a photo. Cal at Easter, a roast duck in the foreground. Crystal and eyelet linen. They start the jump ropes circling.

“The search is going on, right now,” the cop says. “For the father of those girls,” he says, his chin pointing out the precinct’s glass doors. The girls now double-dutching, skipping over what could be a mirror image of the nighttime sky, a sidewalk sparkling under street lamps lighting all the flecks of starry rock and sand.