Cold Feet (9 page)

CHAPTER 9

T
he San Francisco Public Library is exactly what you would expect—colorful, welcoming, and more than a little offbeat. Upon entering on Sunday, Liv and I were immediately confronted with a cardboard cutout of a human-sized lime green iguana holding the second book in the Hunger Games series.

“Are you here to see the Lizard Lady?” asked an extremely tall man. He was sporting black-plastic-framed glasses and wearing a plaid collared shirt and Fair Isle sweater, topped off with a gray tweed blazer.

“Not today,” I answered. “Out of curiosity, who is the Lizard Lady? I assume it has something to do with the iguana reading
Catching Fire
?”

The well-layered man, who was holding a stack of books for
reshelving and wearing a name tag that read
RICK
, grinned widely. “Sure does, although
Mockingjay
is her favorite.” Rick gestured to the main sitting area, where a woman wearing a khaki safari jacket was pulling a tortoise out of her pocket to display to a group of squealing children gathered on a colorful patterned floor.

“She's kind of a lizard lady slash magician,” he explained. “Everything these days has to be cross-promotional.”

“Are you the librarian?” Liv asked, clearly surprised.

“Technically, I'm an archivist. But I can assist you with anything you need,” he added, readjusting the display on Russian Cubism advertised for next month—did this library even have books?

“Actually, we would love some help, but it's kind of complicated.”

“Take a seat,” he said, pointing to two ergonomic chairs in front of a light blond wood circulation desk, and walking around to sit down behind the computer.

“Here's the thing, Rick,” Liv explained once we took our seats. “We need to find someone.” She paused meaningfully. “Someone who might not want to be found.” Most likely this was a line she'd once heard in a TV movie, but it must have been the right thing to say because Rick leaned forward, his black frames slipping down his nose a fraction of an inch, looking back and forth between us meaningfully as if trying to figure out which of us was the fugitive.

“Who?” he nearly whispered.

“It's Emma's—this is Emma, by the way.” I threw in a wave as Liv continued. “Her father.” Rick looked at me for approval and I
gave him a nod, feeling a bit like the mob boss who doesn't have to speak while his underling does his bidding.

“You don't hear that every day. Outside of Lifetime Original Movies, that is,” Rick exclaimed, barely able to contain his excitement. “I can definitely help you look for him.” He slipped back into professional mode, noticeably pleased that he wasn't being asked which reptiles would be in attendance today or for the library's wireless password. He opened his computer and quickly started typing.

“Do you have a current address or a street name? There's a reverse lookup system where we can cross-reference Google Maps with phone records.”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Any past residences?” he asked, still typing and scrolling.

“We know he lived in D.C. at one point when Emma was little,” Liv answered, glancing at me for verification. “I know that doesn't really narrow it down, sorry.”

“We're pretty sure he lives in San Francisco now. That's basically all we have to go on,” I said apologetically. “I really think he's out there, only I don't know how to find him.” I realized as I said this that it was true.

“How about his name? Do we know that? Or are we going to have to do a DNA test?” Rick joked.

“Yes,” I said quickly, glad to have finally gotten a question right.

I watched him print the name carefully as I recited the letters. “H-u-n-t-e-r M-o-o-n,” he repeated, pushing his glasses back up and turning the pad of paper slightly to the side, as if by doing so he could shake out some information. “Got it. This should be easy.”

After researching what felt like a thousand different paths on the Internet, Rick quickly found that wasn't exactly the case.

“We're thinking too big. We are trying to find him on these global networks, where there are either too many people or it would be easy to miss him by getting one little thing wrong. What about his membership in a smaller group?”

“Like a country club or something?” I asked.

“Exactly. One of the advantages we have is that he's in San Francisco. Let's use the city to our advantage.” He rifled through some drawers and finally pulled out a stack of directories from the depths of his desk.
San Francisco Clubs and Organizations
.
Bay Area Golf and Tennis
.
Theater and Music of San Francisco
. The list went on. He handed Liv and me a stack each. “This is just the beginning. We have several shelves devoted to these local clubs in the archives, going back twenty years at least.”

“Are you thinking we should call the organizations and ask if Hunter Moon is a member?” Liv said, quickly catching on.

“Or ever has been. If so, they should have his contact information.”

“It's not a bad idea.” I marveled at the relative simplicity of the plan. “And it really might show us stuff that isn't online.”

“It definitely will. Groups like this don't keep their membership records online. Especially past ones.” Rick looked back and forth between the two of us. “I think this is what they call good old-fashioned detective work.”

Once Rick had set us up in a private reading room with two phones, we lugged the boxes of directories and spread them out to approach our task systematically. Rick was in and out for the rest of
the day, helping us call, tending to the Lizard Lady, sneaking us sandwiches from the catered staff meeting. It was a slow-going, arduous process, but the fact that we were talking to real people made it at least entertaining.

Like when the guy who answered the phone at the SF Food Adventure Club accused me of being a spy from the NSA. “Sir,” I explained reasonably, “if I were from the NSA, I would just tap your phone lines and be done with it. In fact, they're probably listening to us right now.” He hung up shortly after that.

Another woman, who worked the front office of the Humboldt County Green Party, said she knew a Hunter once, who used to frequent the interpretative art scene, but readily admitted she'd done too many drugs to provide much more information than that. She had no clue what his last name might be. There was even one helpful, slightly bored-sounding man, who found a Moon listing in the membership records of the San Francisco Opera's Bravo! Club. When we called the number listed, however, Flowering explained that this was her chosen name, and she wasn't related to any other Moons, “in this realm at least.”

“Emma, come here,” Liv whispered loudly at one point, covering the receiver of the phone. She turned back to her call. “You don't have any record of one, but you
knew
a Hunter Moon? Uh-huh. He was your dentist?” She looked at me when she said this, raising both eyebrows. “When was that? Do you know if he's still practicing? Do you know his number or address, by any chance? Right, I understand. Let me give you our number in case
you remember anything else after you talk to your wife. Thank you!” After scribbling down his number, she hung up and turned back to me dramatically.

“Hunter Moon was the name of his dentist about ten years ago, he thinks.”

“How do we contact him? Does he have his number?”

“Oh. Well, no,” Liv said, slightly deflated. “He doesn't remember any of that. And he said it might have been Harry. But it's a start!”

We scoured the Internet for every possible combination of
dentist
,
Hunter
,
Harry
, and
Moon
, but still nothing turned up.

While Liv was getting us some more coffee, and I was aimlessly scrolling through different organizations on the Web, I searched for Sam on the Writers Guild of America website, and reread his IMDB page. I'd seen it a million times before, of course, but I wanted to see his name again. I wanted to see if I felt any differently when I saw it. I read the entry critically. It was only when I got to
On the Royal Road
that I started to feel slightly sick. Would I ever be able to think about that movie again without wondering what may have happened in Charleston?

Val's disappearance after that summer had been unexplained, yet in some ways, it made perfect sense. We'd never had that much in common, and besides I didn't exactly match her effortless Hollywood style. No matter what kind of hair product/blow-dry combination I tried, my hair would never be as smooth as hers. When we hung out, we spent most of the night with her explaining who I'd been eating dinner across from for the last three hours—I had
a serious problem with actor recognition—and the night usually ended with me begging off from the next bar because I had to cite-check a brief when I got home.

Despite that, when Val first got back from South Carolina and was ignoring my texts religiously, I was convinced I had done something wrong, that maybe Sam had unintentionally passed on some kind of miscommunication from me. I wondered if I was too needy, always asking her for advice while struggling with my first ever long-distance relationship. I couldn't figure out what I had done to upset her. I wondered if maybe something bad happened to her over the summer, if maybe she was going through something that had nothing to do with me and needed me to push through to show her I was there for her. So I did. I wrote her umpteen messages and e-mails to that end, all different versions of the question “Is everything okay?”

I told myself to drop it, that sometimes we never know why people do the things they do. But something had arisen in me, the old familiar feeling of being summarily rejected for no reason. It drove a pit of fear and anxiety into the lining of my stomach. It made me wonder what I was doing to drive people away. This led me to do something I'd never thought I would do. I signed up for therapy.

I attended for a grand total of three weeks. My therapist was named Dr. Majdi, a sexy Persian psychiatrist in Downtown Los Angeles who took my insurance and shouted at me while she posed meaningful hypotheticals that served only to confuse me.

“Suppose my only
familial
relationship was with a person who wasn't really capable of
being there
, who disappeared halfway through my
adolescence
. I would have an issue with
abandonment
,”
she stressed during my second session. I wasn't sure if she spoke this way because it was her general cadence, or because she was incredibly frustrated with me.

“That sounds awful. That happened to you?” I asked, genuinely concerned, sipping my water cup and relieved the attention was off me for a minute. I studied a bowl of Nature Valley granola bars she had set out on the coffee table. Did anyone actually eat those during therapy? They were so crumbly, that had to be a gigantic mess. There weren't even any napkins. It was a disaster waiting to happen. Although I supposed you could use a tissue if you were really desperate. There were certainly plenty of those.

“This is an
example
, Emma. No, this did not happen to me. It happened to
you
. I am trying to explain why you always assume the
worst
, why you always think everyone around you will fail you, will let you down, will
leave
you. Why you are terrified of being, and yet convinced you will be,
left
.” As she spoke, she gestured wildly with her pen, but her carefully blown-out caramel-brown hair remained perfectly in place.

“Oh, right. Definitely. I completely agree.” I wanted Dr. Majdi to know how much I appreciated her opinion and what a good job she was doing. I also wanted to ask her what wrinkle cream she used. She looked ridiculously young for a shrink. She stared back at me, as if I wasn't quite getting it. I suspected this was the case.

“Emma, when children experience any sort of
trauma
they blame themselves, because children cannot see the experience through any other
perspective
. They are not old enough to understand that people have other motivations, which have nothing to do with
them
.”