Lydia had been watching that girl standing in the corner for too long. To be precise, since her handsome dancing partner had abandoned her in the middle of the floor without giving her a second glance. Which was nothing short of bizarre, because Amalia was not the kind of woman a man would normally just leave standing there alone. After more than eighty years of experience Lydia could safely say that girls like Amalia usually had to fight off suitors, and that whole marathons would be undertaken in order to get near them.
There was something elegant in Amalia, an understated yet distinct elegance, that she played down but failed to completely hide. It was more than evident that she came from a very wealthy, cultured family.
“So, my dear, are you having fun?” Lydia asked as she approached her.
Amalia looked at her in surprise, unable to conceal a certain embarrassment.
“Oh yes, of course – it’s a wonderful party,” she congratulated her.
“All thanks to you. You were very sweet to offer to volunteer.”
A slight hint of a blush appeared on the girl’s cheeks. “Well, to be honest, I have to make a confession: we aren’t actually volunteers. We were ordered to come,” she murmured.
Lydia looked at her doubtfully. “Ordered? What is it, hard labor?” she asked, laughing at the idea.
“Not exactly. But kind of. We were ordered by the court to do community service,” she revealed, feeling the need to unburden herself of the fact. Lydia looked like the kind of person who could handle worse.
“My God, and what the heck did you two ever do that was bad enough to deserve this fate?!” the old lady asked without batting an eyelid.
Amalia laughed. This spirited old bird had a real sense of humor, she had to admit. “We screwed up a plea agreement and got into an argument in court.”
“Well, doesn’t everyone do that? I mean, argue. That’s the reason we have courts, isn’t it? To get our lawyers arguing,” said the birthday girl.
“Of course. But apparently you’re supposed to at least fake some kind of decorum. Even in court. And Ryan and I really did cross the line of what’s acceptable. But is it really that obvious that we are lawyers?” asked Amalia, amazed that she had been unmasked so easily.
Lydia was pretty forthright and spoke her mind. “I guessed it about five seconds after I first saw you. You both just have that way about you. You act like lawyers. My second husband, God rest his soul, was a lawyer, so I was able to spot you immediately. I have a radar for that kind of thing.”
Amalia smiled. “Just out of curiosity, what did your first husband do?” she asked.
“Oh my dear, he was a musician. Never marry a musician, remember that,” she advised her. “Too many dreams and too many disappointments. And they have a bad habit of always blaming you for everything. A lawyer is a much better husband. Lawyers always blame the judge and never their wives – a perfect situation.”
Amalia burst out laughing at all this wisdom. “I think I’ll probably make do without a husband. Musician, lawyer, whatever – I’d much rather not have one at all,” she confided once she had regained her composure.
“You’ll miss out on one of life’s great experiences though. You can’t possibly know anything about men, not without having been married to at least a couple of them. I recommend at least three, but even one would be alright… but always an odd number, remember that.”
Amalia decided to remain in ignorance of the reason for that rule. “Don’t worry, there aren’t any men at all on the horizon at the moment. If you happen to see any decent ones, make sure you give me a shout.”
“What about that handsome feller you were dancing with a little while ago?” Lydia asked casually.
Amalia’s expression suddenly became serious.
“Who? Ryan?”
Just the way she pronounced his name should have been warning enough.
Lydia didn’t miss her tone of her voice but was not one to give up that easily.
“Yes, him. A nice guy. A lawyer. I would say he’s pretty much perfect.”
“Oh…” was all Amalia managed to utter. “Oh yeah, really perfect! And anyway, I’m sorry to tell you that he’s outside your range of experience: Ryan’s an assistant D.A., and like all those who work for the prosecutor’s office he has this habit of dumping all the blame, not on the judge but on the lawyer for the defense. Which, of course, would be me,” she said, pointing to herself. “So I’m sure you can see where the problem lies?”
Lydia looked at her sympathetically.
“May I ask who seems to be winning in this clash of the Titans?” she asked curiously.
“Who? Nobody, of course! I think I can say without a doubt that we are both losing, big time.”
There was something very liberating about attending a strange woman’s birthday party at an old people’s home in a remote district of Brooklyn on a Saturday afternoon. Something that gave her an irresistible desire to tell the truth to someone who, just for once, could never use it against her. Either in court or elsewhere. It was actually something quite rare in her world.
“Well, anyway, it looks to me as though the assistant district attorney isn’t immune to your charms, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
It might well have been true, but to be honest, it wasn’t very reassuring.
“I think you are right, but I’m not going to chase after a man who can’t stand being close to me. And he’d prefer to be a thousand miles away from me.”
Lydia looked at her doubtfully.
“Darling, that’s a typical male reaction. It’s called fear. This is where our superior female capacity at grasping the important things comes into play.”
But Amalia didn’t want to know.
“Well, it’s something that I don’t really want to grasp. That man is full of unsolvable problems, and my own are more than enough for me. My resolution for this year was to reduce my stress levels, which are already in the red, and believe me, Ryan has managed to raise them to unprecedented levels since he moved back to New York. And it’s still only the beginning of the year! At this rate I’ll probably fail my next medical, and I’m only thirty-three! So do you see my problem?”
Amalia looked absolutely convinced of what she was saying – so much so that Lydia had to resort to drastic measures. She had hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. Lydia pretended to stumble over some balloons on the floor and then staggered in the direction of the refreshments table. Amalia tried to steady her, just as Lydia expected her to, but ended up wearing the contents of a large jug full of the stickiest, pink juice that the world had ever seen, which Lydia had somehow contrived to knock over her. And Amalia really hated pink.
“Oh dear!” said Lydia, looking at Amalia as the poor girl turned into a wet, sugary candy, and everyone else froze as if by magic to stare at her. The room began to echo with the hum of alarmed voices, but fortunately Steffany was ready to step in and save the day.
“Amalia, whatever happened to you?” she asked, handing her a cloth that was barely big enough to mop up the pool forming at her feet. She grabbed it instantly, trying somehow to dry herself. How much of the stuff had there been in that jug?! A quart?
“Everything’s more or less ok…” she said with a sigh as she tried not to lose her patience. She was seriously beginning to suspect that someone had put the evil eye or something similar on her – just lately she seemed to be the injured party in a shocking number of genuinely grotesque accidents. “Oh my dear, I’m so sorry,” said Lydia softly.
“Don’t worry, I’m starting to get used to this kind of thing,” Amalia assured her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Ryan had approached them but didn’t dare cross the threshold of safety that he, in all probability, had imposed on himself. ‘The coward’, she thought.
“I feel so guilty. I am so careless. You must excuse me, but at my age my sense of balance tends to play nasty tricks on me.”
“Believe me, it happens at my age too, so don’t worry about it too much,” replied Amalia, feeling stickier by the minute. She felt like a lump of marzipan waiting to be rolled into shape.
“Young man, come over here!” bellowed Lydia, turning towards Ryan. For a couple of seconds he remained immobile, trying to work out how he could avoid obeying her, but faced with a request from an old lady he had no choice other than to go along with her wishes.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” he asked solicitously – which infuriated Amalia, who was not only the only one of them to have been put out, and quite badly at that, but who was also being ignored.
“I’m fine, thank you,” said Lydia. “But I’m afraid that this beautiful young lady has gotten totally soaking wet because of me.”
“Amalia is used to accidents. I’m sure that she’ll manage to get over this one,” was his answer. And not in the least bit polite. The injured party glared at him belligerently. He received the message loud and clear but chose to ignore it.
“I’m so sorry but would you be so kind as to help her? Do you live near here?” she asked him with the utmost innocence.
“Who, me?” The dismay on Ryan’s face was clearly visible.
“Do you live near here?” Lydia asked him again. If she went on like this, they’d be nicknaming her ‘Bloodhound’ before long. And to think that Ryan had mistaken her for a harmless old lady… Never mind being harmless, she had a purpose in mind and was pursuing it big time. A remarkable strategist, you had to admit.
“Quite near,” he said evasively.
“How near?” Steffany intervened as well. Now it seemed that everyone had it in for him.
“Err… Three blocks away…” he muttered in a low voice, hoping that Lydia was a bit deaf. Lydia’s hearing was so good she could have picked up ultrasound as well.
“Perfect!” she exclaimed. “So if you would be kind enough to accompany my saviour to your house? A shower and a change of clothes – and you will be able to return for the rest of the party,” she added as an afterthought, with a cunning smile.
Amalia turned pale. “There’s really no need, I’m fine as I am, really.”
But Steffany objected as well. “No, you’re not! You’re completely drenched! You really need to take a shower and get changed. I would offer you our facilities, but we’ve been having problems with the water. They’ve been adjusting the system and there is no hot water until tomorrow morning…” she explained.
“It’s no problem, Amalia can go home. I can clean up here, I swear, I’m perfectly capable of doing her job too,” Ryan suggested, hoping in that way to get Amalia and the other two off of his back in one fell swoop. He would quite happily have licked the sticky pink gunk off the floor until morning if it meant he could rid himself of the blonde at his side.
“But I want to see Amalia afterwards!” said Lydia.
Amalia looked at him as if to say ‘don’t blame me, it’s not my fault’.
Ryan knew that he had little hope of winning with this trio against him so he resigned himself to throwing the towel in. After all, at the end of the day it was only a shower.
“Ok, ok, I hear you! Amalia, would you like to go to my house to clean up and change? I live within walking distance from here,” he said with all the enthusiasm of someone on their way to the dentist’s for root canal work.
Meanwhile Amalia had decided to punish him.
“If I absolutely must,” she said reluctantly, arching an eyebrow.
Ryan sighed and stalked off towards the exit. Amalia went to follow but was almost immediately stopped by Lydia, who whispered in her ear: “Don’t forget – make the most of this opportunity.”
And actually even gave her a knowing wink!
Oh my God, was Amalia’s only thought – she had the worrying feeling that she was falling into a trap.
*
The trip to Ryan’s house was swift and silent. The host was in an awkward position and made no effort to conceal his discomfort – it was obvious that Amalia needed to get cleaned up, but he wasn’t willing to collaborate without expressing his evident displeasure beforehand. All of his evident displeasure.
Amalia didn’t really understand what the hell he was so worked up about. Did he think that she was going to jump on him? She was almost tempted to try and reassure him that she wasn’t, except that it was absurd to even try to joke about it. Even if Ryan was actually still able to recognize a joke when he heard one.
She remembered that at university her fellow students spoke of him as a brilliant person and great fun. Not that he had ever been with her. Even if he once had a sense of humor, he must have used it all up by now. She remembered how determined Ryan had always been at law school, though, his eyes always blazing with light and vitality.
Now, however, it seemed that no trace of that energy remained. Amalia was well aware that the change was not new and was not attributable to her. Not entirely, at least. Of course, she made him particularly nervous, and given the chance he would have wiped her off the face of the earth, but whatever the problem was, it had to have far more distant roots.
Ryan turned in front of an anonymous tower block, quickly pulling a ring of keys from his jacket. Then he opened a creaking, wooden door and headed for some stairs down a hallway. Not a particularly salubrious place, judging by appearances.
“Fourth floor, no elevator,” he announced, without even turning to look at her.
“No problem,” replied Amalia immediately. She was now beginning to feel weighed down by all that congealed sugar in her clothes. Four flights of stairs were the least of her problems.
He accelerated as they approached the fourth floor as though he was trying to put some distance between them, but she managed to keep up. She paused for a moment, staring at his morose face as he opened the door and made way for her.
“Welcome to my kingdom,” he said harshly. His obvious resentment showed no sign of diminishing. “The bathroom is down there on the right. I’ll get you a towel and then I’ll try to find something you can wear.”
He disappeared from her sight at the speed of light, and before Amalia could utter a word. As she was now alone, she couldn’t help but look around, trying to acclimatize herself to her surroundings. It was without doubt the most sparsely furnished apartment she had ever seen in her life. The front door opened onto a room whose emptiness made it seem even bigger than it actually was. In the middle of it stood a lonely couch, probably a recent purchase, in an uninviting grey color. There was a large television on top of a rickety cabinet, proof that the inhabitant of this castle was male. Amalia firmly believed in the rule that a man’s television was indirectly proportional to the size of something unmentionable which was located somewhere south of his belt. Men were all the same, deep down. In any case, the size of that appliance gave her great hope.
“Well you’d never guess that you’ve only moved in here recently,” she said sarcastically when he re-appeared holding a towel. A grey one. A very fashionable color around these parts, she thought with amusement.
“I didn’t invite you round here so that you could stick your nose into my stuff or pass judgment on the furniture,” he pointed out irritably. “In fact, to be precise, I didn’t invite you here at all.”
Just the thing to say to make a guest feel at ease. Amalia frowned.
“Of course – especially because there is practically nothing here to criticize. Very, very minimalist, Mr District Attorney,” she teased, exasperated by the way he was treating her.
“Amalia, please, go and take this goddamn shower without another word. Is that too much to ask?” he snapped, pointing towards the bathroom again. He certainly made no secret of the fact that he wanted to be free of her as soon as possible.
“Ok, I’m going, I’m going…” she said, taking the towel. “And what am I supposed to do afterwards? Come out naked? I can’t very well put these clothes back on…”
It was evident that the image of her naked body was something Ryan wanted to banish from his thoughts at all costs. But which, judging by the size of his pupils, he couldn’t quite manage to do.
She wiggled conspicuously until she had completely disappeared behind the bathroom door, which clicked shut. “And don’t forget the clothes!” she shouted, feeling rather amused.
Perhaps she had gone over the top a bit – but he’d asked for it.
The jet from the shower meticulously washed away all remnants of that disgusting drink which Amalia had the misfortune of encountering, and she found some shower gel with a distinctive strong musky smell. She suspected that wearing Ryan’s fragrance might drive her completely out of her mind. Her skin was destined to have the same smell. It wasn’t so bad, she tried to reassure herself. But then she made the mistake of inhaling deeply again. What terrible lack of judgment: a knot formed in her stomach immediately.
So she got out of the shower and began to rub her wet body with the towel.
“Come on, Amalia, don’t lose your head right now. You managed alright years ago, you can do it again,” she said aloud, pointing at the image staring back at her from the mirror. “You just have to find a way to get out of it gracefully – maybe by turning it into a joke.”
Her little monologue, however, was interrupted by an impatient knock at the door. She would have bet on the fact that Ryan was in a hurry. Amalia opened the door slightly, knowing full well that she was wrapped in a giant towel.
“Here’s a shirt and a sweater, but I swear that I don’t know which pants you could wear. Mine would be too big for you and no belt could ever hold them up,” he said nervously, handing her the clothes. Stubbornly he refused to look at her, staring instead an imaginary point behind her.
“Never mind, I’ll wash my jeans and try to get them dried off somehow.” She took the mound that was offered to her, pressing it to her chest and he muttered something in a sign of acknowledgement then disappeared at full speed around the other side of the door. He really seemed to be in a great hurry, she thought with a chuckle. All that remained for her to do now was to slip on the white shirt and the sweater. It took her a moment, as she tried not to dwell too much on the strange sensation she felt about wearing Ryan’s clothes. Her reflection in the mirror was nothing short of comical: the sweater was huge and covered a good part of her legs, as if it were a kind of dress. A very wide blue dress with a v-neck. Touching it again, she realized it was cashmere, and for a moment she was puzzled by this discovery – he could quite easily have foisted some smelly old woollen sweater on her. It wasn’t entirely clear whether he had taken the first thing that he’d come across or whether the choice had been intentional. The latter idea was a little unsettling, because a kind gesture on Ryan’s part towards her was rarer than water in the desert.
Steeling herself, she tried to focus on a much more pressing problem, namely that of her jeans. She washed away every single stain with determination, rubbing thoroughly with the soap she found next to the sink. The only problem was that now she had clean jeans, but they were soaking wet – putting them on was totally out of the question. She draped them over the radiator in the bathroom and with tremendous effort decided to leave the room. In the past she had worn dresses a lot shorter than the jumper she was wearing now, so all she had to do was to imagine that she was wearing one of those now. If she didn’t give much thought to her clothing, Ryan wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
“Where the hell have you left your jeans?” he bellowed as soon as he saw her.
Maybe she had been a bit naive to expect that everything would go smoothly. His reaction was still a tad over that top, though – he actually leapt from the couch when he saw her enter! Did she look so unseemly?
“They’re on the radiator in the bathroom. Where do you think I put them? When I said that I would try to wash them, I meant exactly that: soap and water, you heard of those?” she replied quietly, walking in his direction. She sat on the couch not too far away from him, crossing her legs with deliberate malice. Ryan had made her angry and she wanted to make him pay for it. By showing as much skin as possible.
She didn’t have to wait long for his reaction and in fact a whining groan escaped from him moments later.
“You okay?” Amalia asked, pretending as if nothing was happening.
Ryan stared at her icily, raising an eyebrow as if to say ‘what do you think’?
“So now what do we do, just sit here all night waiting for your jeans to dry?”
“We’ll just wait for the heat to get rid of a bit of the damp then my body will do the rest.”
Ryan snorted again, staring at the ceiling. It seemed as if his weak and precarious patience was all but exhausted.
“We could chat to pass the time,” suggested Amalia, after two minutes of enforced silence.
It was evident that the apartment’s owner wasn’t particularly thrilled by that idea. “What about?” he cried, turning to stare at her. But at least she had been able to force him to look at her.
“I don’t know – tell me about what you did in Chicago,” she suggested, “and about how you like being back in New York…”
He remained seated, edging away from her in a rather conspicuous fashion. A little further and he would actually be sitting on the armrest.
“What do you think I did in Chicago? I worked from morning till night. At first I was just a trainee and I had to roll up my sleeves and work hard to get noticed by the district attorney. I spent endless weekends slaving away on all different kinds of cases. I would have earned a place as assistant district attorney there sooner or later, but in New York there was that mess with Height, so I found myself in the uncomfortable position of not being able to refuse: who can say ‘no’ to the Big Apple?”
“Yes – without mentioning that this is your home town too,” she added.
“That isn’t really an advantage…” Ryan said.
Amalia looked at him in surprise.
“From what I understood I thought you had a very close family. That’s a really nice thing, isn’t it?”
“I have an interfering family. Loveable, but always breathing down my neck, and I’m not the type who likes always explaining myself. I’ve been independent for so long that I’m not used to it any more. So at the end of the day, nobody’s happy: they would like to see more of me and I don’t want to have to share my diary with my mother. She’s a wonderful woman, but we generally get on better when we are further apart.”
Amalia smiled.
“If you want we can swap: I’ll take your mother, who’s so very present all the time, and you can have mine. I can assure you that you would be very satisfied: she never calls, and if you see her it’s almost always by accident, usually at some event, where, however, there are always other people she has to talk to, so you end up barely having said a word to her even on those occasions. What do you say?” she asked, well aware that her facade had finally cracked. It was just meant to be a joke to make him think, and instead she had made the usual mistake. Never talk about yourself, she should have remembered that.
Her statement, in fact, didn’t go unnoticed. He turned round again to look at her, with a gentle expression on his face. Ryan pitying her was really the last thing she needed.
“So you’re not really very close to your parents then?” he asked, watching her face.
She almost laughed. But in reality it was all her fault – she was the one who had moved the conversation onto personal issues.
“No, the relationship is very cold,” she said sincerely. Then she crossed her legs again very slowly, hoping to distract him and shift his attention onto something else.
The gesture hit home. Ryan stiffened instantly and, against his will, his gaze came to rest on those toned, freshly tanned legs.
“I use a spray tan every now and then,” he heard her say, before he could ask a question.
“Excuse me?” Ryan asked, forcing himself to look away from that wonderful sight and raise his gaze to meet hers. But there was something dangerous and mischievous even about her eyes.
“I said that I sometimes resort to using a spray on tan. That’s why my legs look like this,” she repeated, as though it were a perfectly normal thing to say.
“Ah…” was all he said.
“So did you leave anyone behind in Chicago?” she asked immediately afterwards, point blank.
“Who would I have left?” was his gruff reply.
“I don’t know. A dog, a cat, a girlfriend…” she said.
Ryan smiled. “Sure – I’d imagine, that for you, humans and animals have the same kind of importance.”
He had decided to take it the wrong way and so she refused to even respond. As far as she was concerned, Ryan came after all living things on earth – after mice, lizards and even insects.
“Oh, quit trying to be clever. I’m a lawyer too, in case you’d forgotten, so stop twisting things around to suit yourself.”
Ryan raised his eyes up towards the ceiling in search of consolation.
“Believe me, I wouldn’t be able to forget our profession even if I wanted to.” He sounded annoyed and edgy. “I know full well that nothing you say is said by chance. I always have to remember that I have someone like me in front of me. Not a good combination.”
“For every answer you refuse to give me I’m going to move six inches closer,” Amalia warned him, realizing how important it was for him to keep this physical distance between them and to change the subject.
He shrugged as if nothing had happened. “Go ahead.”
In all probability, looking alarmed would have meant revealing weakness, so Ryan had opted for his usual response, but Amalia had absolutely no intention of throwing in the towel so easily. As promised, she lifted herself off the sofa for just long enough to move a few inches in his direction. Ryan noticed, but said nothing.
“Okay, since you don’t want to tell me whether you left someone back in Chicago or not, we can move on to the next question. Were you living with anyone in Chicago?” she asked him bluntly.
Ryan at least had the decency to look annoyed. “That’s the same damn question as before!” he objected, giving the first signs of a slow but inexorable collapse of his patience. Just as she hoped.
“Often it is simply the way in which it is phrased that makes a question inadmissible,” she said.
“Hey, does this look like a courtroom to you? In here, form and substance are the same thing, my dear,” he said sarcastically, with particular emphasis on the last two words.
In his heart, Ryan suspected that the entire female sex had decided to give up on semantics and logic a long time ago. But woe to whoever pointed that out.
Amalia, though, was not the type of woman who would give in so easily…
“Then I’ll have to assume that you’re refusing to answer this question as well…” she said, not in the slightest bit convinced by his argument. She moved nearer to him smiling slyly. “Another six inches closer.”
She was really enjoying having the opportunity to torture him like this, and made no secret of the fact.
“You’re playing with fire, Amalia,” rumbled Ryan, warningly.
“Who, me?” she asked with the utmost innocence, batting those long eyelashes her mascara made jet black.
“You’re courting disaster and you know it. Use that big brain of yours for once and get back over there where you were,” he said looking very serious and staring at her with particular intensity.
The threat seemed to have been effective, because for a moment Amalia couldn’t move, undecided whether to continue or not. “I’m joking,” she said, trying to calm things down a bit.
But he didn’t seem to fall for it.
“You are about to start something you really don’t intend to. I’m warning you – move away.”
Backwards or forwards? It seemed that Amalia wasn’t really able to make that decision. She quickly tried to remember how she had ended up in that absurd situation and what she actually wanted, but her mind seemed empty. Did she really want to continue with this stupid game?
“Well, you could always just decide to give me an answer…” she said. “Then I can go back to my corner of the sofa.”
“I never change my mind, “Ryan replied without taking his eyes off her. “And I never go back on what I’ve said. Just to clarify things.”
“So it’s actually you who’s courting this famous disaster,” she pointed out. “It wouldn’t take much to send me far away, over there…”
“Come on, be serious – even sending you off to the Sahara desert wouldn’t be enough to consider you ‘far away’, never mind the other end of the couch…”
“We can start with the other end of the couch and then we can think of all the remotest and least hospitable places in the world,” she suggested, leaning in his direction.
At that point, however, the look in Ryan’s eyes changed and he suddenly seemed more determined. He leaned towards Amalia, helping to close the distance between them.
“You are a damn stubborn woman. I warned you to keep a safe distance,” he said, touching her cheek with one hand. It was boiling hot.
“I’ve never been very good at listening. My nannies had plenty to complain about over the years, I’m sorry to say,” she babbled, trying to defuse the electricity which had filled the room with the simple touch of his hand.
“Your poor nannies…” replied Ryan, his hand now stroking her cheek and moving down towards her neck. And there he paused for a moment to think about how to proceed. Amalia gulped as she watched him scrutinizing her, sensing doubt and indecision in his face. Not really balm to a woman’s ego, especially when she was sitting half naked on a couch next to a man who wouldn’t have invited her in if he’d had any choice in the matter. Her pride couldn’t have awoken at a less appropriate moment. Or maybe it was the most appropriate moment. Who could say. In any case, in an instant Amalia found herself making a decision and with a sudden gesture, moved Ryan’s hand away from her neck and stood up from the couch.
“Well, I think we’ve had more than enough fun here. I’m going to see what state my jeans are in. Worst comes to worst, I can always finish drying them off with a hair dryer. You do have a hairdryer, right?” she asked, turning to face him. Poor thing, he had the most confused and incomprehensible expression on his face that a man could ever have. All he was able to do was nod at her, unable to utter a word.
“In the bathroom?” she asked. Ryan nodded again. “Great.”
And so saying Amalia disappeared from view.