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kiss before she goes into the bedroom to change. The fantasy is disrupted before she comes back out. I return to The Royal Tenenbaums and Dudley walking into the bathroom, finding Richie lying on the bathroom floor amidst splatters and smears of his own blood. I wonder why Richie said he was going to kill himself tomorrow and then attempted to kill himself today.
    In this moment I decide I have to do whatever it takes to find Naomi.
    I don’t have much money. I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to subsist. I can’t say if the message from the stranger is a clue or a hoax, but it has become an act of provocation.
    I walk back to my computer, and I email Tim, asking him to check-in on my place while I’m gone. I might need him to sell my belongings and vacate the apartment if it takes too long for me to find answers, and I run out of cash.
    Driving is the best option. I take a shower, pack some things, walk downstairs into the garage, and get in my car.

ON THE WAY
     

 
 
    In Texas, I stop at a Coffee Bean with a flat screen TV on the wall. The news, the weather, sports scores, and some other tidbits not worth mentioning are playing on the TV, different pieces of colorful text rotating on and off the screen without the accompaniment of sound. This is the new newspaper, I think. But the thought doesn’t last for long because the next thing I notice on the crawl is that a F-18 fighter jet has crashed in a residential portion of Phoenix, where Naomi’s brother and sister-in-law live.
    For the first time, I wonder if she went to visit them. Why I hadn’t thought of this before I don’t know. It upsets me that I missed one possible destination. Who knows how many other mistakes I’ve made?
    As I walk back outside, I stare at my phone. I’ve called and texted Naomi so many times by now that the thought of trying her again makes me feel helpless. There’s no power in dialing phone numbers and leaving messages, but I press send anyway. When it goes to voice mail, I hang up without leaving a message.
    I start back towards the coffee shop, but I can’t shake my uneasiness about the situation in Phoenix. I stop and try Naomi’s parents. I need to eliminate all sources of worry.
    The phone at their house rings three times before someone picks up. I can’t hear exactly what they say because of a loud banging in the background, like a whole slew of heavy things are repeatedly being dropped. I try talking over it, but the noise keeps coming. It’s useless. I end the call and re-dial.
    It rings five times and then the answering machine crackles on. Unexpectedly, Naomi is the voice on the machine. This is new. Her tone is happy, “We can’t come to the phone right now but leave a message!”   She sounds younger to me, as if this is an old recording being re-used. In the background, her mom and dad laugh before the beep cuts them off.
    “Hello?” I say. “If you’re there, it’s Mike. I just tried calling a second ago…”
    No one answers.
    I head back inside Coffee Bean. I gaze at the TV until the plane crash comes up again on the crawl. There is no new news. I order a large coffee and leave, with a film clip of the fighter jet obliterating Shawn and Emily’s house playing in my mind.
    I hope the movie I’m imagining doesn’t turn out to be a documentary.
    I hope Naomi wasn’t in Phoenix.
    I hope the archival answering machine recording wasn’t a tribute to her memory.

DAVENTRY
     

 
 
    It took me 37 hours to drive all the way from California to Ohio, from Los Angeles to Daventry . To make it without spending the night at a motel, I consumed Vivarin like peanut butter M&M’s. I still had to stop three times, twice at rest stops in Oklahoma and once on the side of the road in Texas. I slept in each place for an hour at a time. A giant vanilla milkshake from McDonald’s helped carry me through St. Louis and Indianapolis and into Ohio. When I reached the turnpike in Toledo, it was night (again), and I