“Whatever happened to telephone poles?” Daniel said, after Allison handed him another poster, which he palmed against a tree.
She worried about this—attaching the MISSING posters to trees. She thought people would find it trashy or inconsiderate. Most likely both.
She shrugged. “I guess satellites, or whatever, have mostly replaced them.”
The day so far, an early morning in August, had been warm. But she now detected the growing heat of the day in the wind that picked up from the east in a fury. Daniel cursed the gust as he tried to pin down one of the fluttering corners of the poster, which, after he succeeded in doing ten or fifteen seconds later, squeezed the trigger to the staplegun.
The sharp clack startled Allison.
“They used to be all over the place,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her, and quickly pumped in three more staples. “Then one day it was, like—presto!— they were all gone.”
Daniel turned to survey the park, his face went slack with disappointment, as if he had expected, magically, to find that telephone poles were, in fact, all over the place. She herself couldn’t help but think of them now. Their deeply stained wood, the thick, taut metal wires with the yellow plastic protective coverings that rattled when she shimmied up them as a kid, and the dark halos of creosote that choked the grass at their bases, as if the earth had really bled when they were stabbed into the ground.
She was surprised by how much the way Daniel shook his head annoyed her, with this slow, contemplative severity. It was as if the mysterious disappearance of telephone poles were the subject of the posters they had been hanging these last thirty minutes, and not Miguel, the cat she adopted from her dead sister, who yesterday evening darted out of doors as they carried groceries inside.
The cat had gotten spooked. One of the plastic sacks Allison carried—overfilled, too heavy—which anchored her elbow to her hip, ripped as she stepped inside behind Daniel. The package of Swiss cheese, bag of pistachios, box of sparkling water, and a bunch of other crap, all came crashing down. Miguel, as always, had been waiting for her on the arm of the green couch next to the door.
Daniel motioned for Allison to follow. They made their way deeper into the park. Somberly, with the memory of Miguel’s escape fresher in her mind, she strolled behind him. Stiff grass crunched beneath her slip-on clogs. Sunlight stabbed through the trees in shimmering spokes. They passed the drained fountain teenagers skateboarded in and the brick-and-adobe Park Villa building set back fifty or so feet from it, which later today would likely be used for a child’s birthday party or quinceañera. The building, with its red clay shingles and turquois railings, stuck out like a sore thumb here in the Midwest, where everything else was so stereotypically American.
Allison paused in front of the building. “What about putting one there?” she said, pointing.
Daniel lifted the staplegun and waved it around. “Probably not a great idea to pin it to the door, you know?” he said, as if she were stupid.
The trees were Daniel’s idea.
“I know that. I mean to roll one up. Slide it into the handle like one of those door-to-door Christians warning people of eternal damnation,” Allison said. “Else ye be saved, or whatever.”
Daniel’s face froze in a look of stupefied incredulity. She knew even as a non-practicing, “recovering Catholic,” that he didn’t appreciate her making jabs at the church. Before he spoke—something he was gearing up to do, with the way he worked his jaw in sloping semicircles as if sucking out every ounce of medicine from a cough drop—Allison hoped he wasn’t about to go off on one of his tirades about Pascal’s wager or how she should show some respect for other peoples’ beliefs.
“It’ll just get blown loose. Wind up in the river or down the street,” he said, and ticked his chin in the direction he thought the poster might soon drift if she were to go through with this. “It would be a waste of time.”
There was something in the way he pronounced those last three words, too slowly: Waste. Of. Time. It felt confrontational. Or perhaps worse—condescending. His turn to deliver a subtle blow after her blasphemous remark. Was that it?
“You think this whole thing is a waste of time. Don’t you?”
Daniel took a step closer, let his head drop, and sighed. He wore unlaced tennis shoes. No socks. A bright pair of green shorts he always slept in. The wrinkled plain gray t-shirt he threw on last night as they got ready for bed. Before the wind messed it up even more, his bedhead had been already wild—a chunky cluster of spiky, black sea anemones piled on his scalp. Earlier this morning, when it was still dark, the printer woke him as it whirred and churned out one poster after another. MISSING printed in large, bold red letters at the top along with Allison’s phone number, Instagram and Bluesky handles in a slightly less obtrusive font size. Below all of this, was the picture of Miguel (three years old, ten pounds, give or take a pound or two, bright yellow eyes, all black, except for the pale sliver of fur that streaked across his belly). Rubbing his eyes, Daniel entered Allison’s office shuffling like a zombie as she straightening the thick stack with a final sharp knock against her desk, as if it were a gigantic deck of cards. He yawned. She recoiled slightly from his breath, sour from last night’s beers. He proceeded to complain. Didn’t she know how early it was? What the hell was she doing, anyway? And, after Allison explained, she could see behind his eyes a greater litany of grievances he wanted to unleash, but didn’t.
Now was his chance, Allison thought. And he was about to take it.
“He’s a cat. Which means he’s either going to come back or he won’t,” Daniel said, and lifted his head. “I really don’t think walking around the park, sticking posters onto every other tree is going to tilt the odds in your favor.”
“Why would you tell me that?” Allison gripped the stack of posters and drove her thumbs into the top pages. Of course, she knew why. Daniel was reductive and thought in terms of black-and-white, but that didn’t stop her from asking again, before she’d given him a chance to answer in the first place.
“That’s just how I feel,” he said.
“You don’t need to tell me every pessimistic thought that crosses your mind,” she said, now infuriated. “Next, you’ll say if Miguel doesn’t come back that I should—what? Just go and get a different cat?”
She almost lost it when Daniel lifted his eyebrows and bunched his shoulders. Allison could have interpreted this as a harmless gesture of submission, and continued to walk along with him and staple the rest of the posters—there were still a decent amount—before they drove home. Home, where she would spend the rest of her Saturday on the couch mindlessly watching ASMR on YouTube, running on the treadmill, meal-prepping for the week, all while the wondering with anticipation of when the phone would ring with good news.
But Allison decided: No. Daniel’s ostensibly flippant gesture was, in fact, calculated, loaded, and cruel.
“Miguel was Blair’s,” she said, frustrated at the tears that quickly wetted her eyes.
Daniel went to reach out, paused, and brought his hand back to run fingers through his messy hair, which made it messier.
“Listen. Maybe he went back to her house,” he said. “It’s like, what, two or three blocks from here?”
“It’s not her house anymore,” she said, trying not to move, afraid the slightest adjustment in posture would knock loose a tear to run down her cheek. “It’s just his.”
“All right, all right,” Daniel said. She couldn’t tell if it was desperation or irritation that spiked his voice. “All I’m saying is Miguel could be there now. Inside. Safe at his old stomping grounds. That isn’t beyond the realm of possibility, is it? And before you say anything,” (she wasn’t) “I don’t think after how things went down between the two of you that James would call. He might text or DM, but I don’t think that would work, right? So, I think you should at least call or text him.”
She would not call or text him. Daniel should’ve known better than to suggest such a thing. In the weeks after the accident, Allison and her former brother-in-law texted a few times each day. Just checking in. You good? Yeah. Good. You? All good here. Yeah. Sometimes, on days when he wasn’t doing well, James called; other times, on bad days of her own, Allison did. Unfailingly, they grabbed coffee each Saturday. 8AM. Reverie. They traded turns who bought. This was how she wound up with Miguel. One morning in late February, James—showing up forty-five minutes late, eyes streaked with bright red veins, puffy, greenish-blue bags beneath them—mentioned he hadn’t slept in days. After a taste of his americano, he mentioned Miguel strolled around, meowing incessantly now that Blair was gone. He only broke from this routine to piss and shit or eat and sleep. Allison asked if he’d taken him to the vet. Could be he has worms. Or is some other kind of sick. Of course, James had. And what did the vet tell him? Miguel was in perfect shape. A specimen—the vet actually called him that. “He’s figured out she isn’t coming back,” James said. “And he misses her. I know that’s it.” His face bizarrely lit up. Allison and Blair. They looked a lot alike. It was true they were often mistaken for twins their entire lives, even with a five-year gap in their birth years (something, as they grew older, Blair took as a compliment and Allison took with a stiff, insecure smile). Would she take him? James insisted that would do the trick. Miguel would be so much happier. Daniel wasn’t a cat person, but in that moment Allison’s subconscious had already agreed to foster the feline and started to prepare the convincing speech she would deliver in less than an hour: the onus of litter box duty, premium cat food costs, toys, and vet bills would be hers and hers alone. And that following week, Allison looked especially forward to her and James’s coffee date. She couldn’t wait to relay to him the news: That since taking Miguel in, he’d hardly made a peep. Other than to purr while she stroked his chin or while he slept curled at the foot of the bed. But that morning, James called to cancel. “Got a hot date or something?” Allison joked. And now, as Daniel stared at her, waiting for an answer, Allison remembered the way James coughed into the phone, kept clearing his throat as if a stubborn piece of food was stuck at the back of it. “A date or something,” he said, finally. “Yeah, actually… yeah. Brunch. Vora. Her name’s—” An unexpected rage erupted from Allison. How could he? Did he simply just dip his toes in one Stage of Grief after another, never fully submerging himself in any until he fucking swan dove into Acceptance? Had he ever really loved her sister in the first place? It hadn’t been a full three months since the accident.
“Fuck James,” Allison said. Her anger sometimes flared like a struck match—a few bright crackles before abruptly igniting. She thought about using the woman’s name, which she knew due to her social media lurking, but opted for something less personal. “And fuck that woman who’s moved in with him.”
“Wait,” Daniel said. “How do you know she’s moved in?”
This would have been, what—back in May? The backdrop of the photo had been the partial side of a U-Haul, the “e-s-o-t-a” of “Minnesota” visible above their heads. That woman next to James, arm draped over his shoulder. She wore a low tank top, revealing inches of perky, sweaty cleavage; short shorts that showed off her legs. Her head was shaved. A golden septum ring hung above the lips stretch thin in a smile, a perfect set of teeth. Allison hated to admit the woman was beautiful. Gorgeous, even. And while her heart crashed against her ribs as she continued to scrutinize the photo, pinching it to zoom in, she wondered if Blair’s belongings still occupied parts of the house: paintings on the walls, the 60s mid-century modern dresser she scored at flea market in New Mexico, if the rim of a coffee cup or wine glass tucked somewhere in the depths of a cabinet was smudged with lipstick.
“Instagram,” Allison said.
“I thought you blocked him.”
“He was. For a while.” She avoided Daniel’s judgmental gaze, and followed the snaking bike trail that abutted the river, followed it with her eyes for nearly a minute, noting the meandering geese, a lone, silhouetted jogger who grew smaller and smaller, before they dried. The breeze snapped up again, stronger, hotter now that the sun had risen above the trees and the few tall buildings miniaturized in the distance between the park and heart of downtown. The remaining posters in Allison’s hands fluttered. “What can I say? Curiosity got the better of me.”
“Listen, Ali. Don’t jump down my throat for saying this—”
“I’m not promising anything.”
“—but the guy’s got every right to move on,” he said, and bent his head against the wind. “And you do too.”
“This isn’t about me,” she said.
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s about Miguel.”
She scoffed and Daniel shook his head. He transferred the staplegun to his left hand and decided now would be the perfect time to reach out for her—what? Shoulder? Elbow? Surely he wasn’t stupid enough to try and pull her in for a kiss. Regardless, it didn’t matter. Allison took a step back, a solid foot out of reach, and let go of one hand from the posters to slap Daniel’s away. But she missed. And now, sagging beneath their collective weight and awkward to maintain a firm grip on them now with a single hand, the posters slipped from her fingers. Like small sails, each poster harnessed the wind and crackled like soft thunder as they blew apart and, as it turned out, took flight in the direction of the river.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she said.
Allison moved toward the posters in quick, stuttering steps. Hunched, she reached wildly for several posters that somehow snagged on taller blades of brittle grass not far from where she stood half a second ago. It didn’t matter that in her thin fists they crumpled into brittle bowties. These were saved. That’s what mattered. She continued to move with the dedicated litheness of a trained athlete as she deftly collected the posters. Soon, both hands were nearly full, and her thoughts focused on proximity—save the closest ones and, if possible, as many of those that have now blown into the street. Forget the rest. Because the rest would likely wind up either glued to the muddy banks of the Arkansas River or in its murky brown water, where they would languidly be carried off downstream.
The problem was her shoes. Those obsidian black slip-on clogs weren’t built for running. They had precariously remained on her feet, though when she stepped off the curb and into the street, one of them slipped off completely, and she came down on her foot at an awkward angle, rolling her ankle, which sent an intense heat up her leg.
The first part of her that made contact with the ground was her knee. It created a dull thud like a cantaloupe dropped to the cement. Letting go of the posters, she fanned out her hands to brace herself, but this did little else but shred the skin at the bottom of her palms. She rolled twice (later, when she will tell the story at a party, Miguel purring on her lap as she strokes the soft velvet of his nose, Allison will embellish this amount, ratcheting the times she rolled up to seven; and at yet another gathering, this time at a friend’s house, having learned from the sidelong glance her friend Marty had given her at its first telling, will reduce this amount to a more believable three) and the sky, trees, grass, ground, posters—the bronze glint of the sun bouncing off the river—all became dizzily kaleidoscopic.
The concrete was surprisingly warm. As she lay there blinking up at the pale-blue, cloudless sky, Allison wished it were hotter. Not scalding or anything. But a strong enough sensation to help take her mind off the other injuries which, all combined, coursed through her in a single, excruciating pulse.
Now, came Daniel’s voice. He shouted her name, kept shouting it. Then yelled, “Wait!” and “Hey!” and finally, in a pitch elevated to a soaring tenor—“Please fucking stop!”
It was then she heard an engine. Not the deep bellow of a large truck, but the smoother whir of something more compact and practical. Allison, slightly dazed (had she hit her head?) propped herself on her elbows in time to see the gleaming grill of a blue Hyundai careening toward her with one of her poster’s pressed against its bumper.
She lifted an arm to cover her face, turned slightly, and screamed. Maybe it was because of this—the sheer volume of her cry—that Allison didn’t hear the tires lock up, or the subsequent skid. When she realized she hadn’t been plowed over, reduced to bloody wreckage, the acrid stench of hot tires suddenly filled her nose.
There was a hand on her shoulder now.
She dropped her arm and opened her eyes. It was Daniel.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. He looked like he was more in disbelief than he did terrified. “That was close.”
Allison’s legs were under the car up to her knees. The bumper less than a foot from her chest. She felt the heat of the engine beating on her shins. The poster that had been pasted to the bumper lightly trembled on lap.
She grabbed it as the door to the Hyundai flew open.
“Oh, fuck.” A woman’s voice. Allison couldn’t get a good look at her over the hood, with the way the sun glinted off the windshield. “Oh, fuck,” the woman said again. Allison detected the tremble in her voice, the phlegmy rattle behind it. “Did I? Did I?”
“I’m okay,” Allison said. She had to say it again to believe it. “I’m okay,” she groaned. “Really. I’m fine.”
Daniel helped her to her feet. The knee she’d come down on made it difficult to stand straight, so she put most her weight on her other foot, leaned into him. She looked at her left hand, beading with blood and peppered with grit. Her right hand wasn’t much better, and the poster she held in it was dotted with pinpricks of blood below the photo of Miguel.
Two sneakered feet moved closer to her. The bright yellow laces laced for someone with narrow heels, like a corset pulled suffocatingly tight. Allison also had narrow heels.
The woman was around her age, maybe at most a year or two older. She had recently finished a run. The band of her shorts a deeper blue than the rest. A large, thin diamond of sweat staining her shirt between her breasts. The woman’s brown hair was cut in a short pixie, hardly an inch at its lengthiest bits, and when she removed her hands from her face, Allison noticed the small golden septum ring.
Her mouth went dry. This woman didn’t look like James’s new girlfriend, but she didn’t not look like her either.
“Are you okay?” Daniel said to the woman now.
The woman, who’d been staring at Allison, turned to looked at him. She nodded. “I—I think so,” she said, her eyes darted back to Allison. “I have a first-aid kit in the glovebox.”
She did not have time to protest. The woman bolted to her car, was plunged halfway into it, and before she returned with a small red medical case, snapped on her hazard lights.
Now, she and Daniel helped Allison over to the curb, each with a hand jammed into a pit of each arm. They eased her down, gently. The woman gently extended Allison’s leg and winced at the sight of her knee, which Allison saw now had started to take color—a blotchy nebula of red and orange with a vague incoming of blue and purple.
The woman unzipped the case. “Give me one of your hands,” she said.
Without thinking, Allison held out her right arm.
“What’s this?” the woman said, and set the case down to take the poster.
“Miguel,” Allison said. “He went missing last night.”
“Mind if I take this? I’ll be sure to keep an eye out.” The woman glanced to her left. “I live right around the corner.”
This had to be her, right? The house so nearby. Her hair grown out a bit, that’s all. “That’s Daniel,” Allison said, motioning toward him with her head. He waved. “I’m Allison.”
“It’s nice to meet you both,” she said. “I only wish the circumstances were different.”
Allison watched the woman as she folded the poster into a square small enough to fit into the pocket of her shorts. She then lifted the case back off the ground and removed a disinfecting wipe.
“What’s your name?” Allison said.
The woman tore open the packet and Allison caught a whiff of alcohol and other chemicals as the woman unfolded the wipe. She grabbed Allison’s hand, not hard, but firm enough to where she knew if she tried to pull it back, it would be no use.
“What’s your name?” Allison said again.
“Get ready,” the woman said. “This might sting.”