The Super let him in just before midnight. The apartment was stifling and oppressive and quiet. The walls still held the echoes of their passion.
Byrne had driven Center City looking for Victoria, visiting all the places he thought she might be, all the places she might not, coming up empty. On the other hand, he didn't really expect to find her sitting in some bar, totally unaware of the time, a graveyard of empties in front of her. It was unlike Victoria not to call him if she couldn't make their appointment.
The apartment was just as he had left it earlier that morning: their breakfast dishes still in the sink, the bedclothes still in the shape of their bodies.
Although he felt like a prowler, Byrne stepped into the bedroom, opened the top drawer in Victoria's dresser. The brochure of her life stared back: a small box of earrings, a clear plastic envelope with ticket stubs of touring Broadway shows, a selection of drugstore reading glasses in a variety of frames. There was also an assortment of greeting cards. He took one out of the envelope. It was a birthday card of the sentimental stripe, this one with a glossy fall harvest scene at dusk on the cover. Was Victoria's birthday in autumn? Byrne wondered. There was so much he didn't know about her. He opened the card to find a long message scrawled on the left-hand side, a long message written in Swedish. A few bits of glitter fell to the floor.
He slipped the card back into the envelope, glanced at the postmark. BROOKLYN, NY. Did Victoria have family in New York? He felt like a stranger. He had shared her bed, and felt like an onlooker into her life.
He opened her lingerie drawer. The scent of lavender sachet floated up, filling him with both dread and desire. The drawer was full of what looked like very expensive-looking camisoles and slips and hosiery. He knew that Victoria was very sensitive about her outward appearance, despite the tough-girl posturing. Beneath her clothes, though, it seemed she spared no expense to make herself feel beautiful.
He closed the drawer, feeling a little ashamed. He really did not know what he was looking for. Perhaps he wanted to see another segment of her life, a piece of the riddle that might immediately explain why she had not come to meet him. Perhaps he was waiting for a flash of prescience, a vision that might point him in the right direction. But there was none. There was no violent memory in the folds of these fabrics.
Besides, even if he were able to mine this area, it would not explain the Snow White figurine. He knew where that had come from. In his heart he knew what had happened to her.
Another drawer, this one filled with socks and sweatshirts and T-shirts. No clues there. He closed all the drawers, gave a hurried glance through her nightstands.
Nothing.
He left a note on Victoria's dining room table, then drove home, wrestling with the idea of calling in a missing-person report. But what would he say? A woman in her thirties didn't show up for a date? No one had seen her in four or five hours?
When he arrived in South Philly, he found a parking spot about a block from his apartment. The walk seemed endless. He stopped, tried calling Victoria's number again. He got her voice mail. He didn't leave a message. He struggled up the stairs, feeling every moment of his age, each facet of his fear. He'd grab a few hours' sleep and then start looking for Victoria again.
He fell into bed at just after two. Within minutes he was asleep, and the nightmares began.