( i )

Two words. One name. Baxter Bilingual.

Late fall, 2003, on the precipice of what was to be a very cold winter. 
She bought a one-way rail ticket to visit him again for the weekend. It would be the last time she made the trip to see him in that city, but not the last time they'd meet.
His one-room, sparsely furnished third floor apartment near Nathaniel Street--Dernier Square Station gave a view below of the only six-street intersection in the city and a nearby park with white stone statues of people dancing. Each frozen in time and form, one of the sculpted couples had their heads thrown back in laughter. On the bench closest to them an elderly man dressed in shabby clothes made his morning ritual of tossing bread crumbs to the pigeons while yelling obscenities at people passing by. 

"So, when you leaving?" he asked.
"Nice to see you, too, Bax."
"What?"
"I just got here" she said.
"Let me rephrase-- how long will I have the pleasure of your company?"
She laughed. "I didn't buy a return. Sunday. Mid-morning Monday at the latest."
"No return? That's good. Maybe this time you'll stay."
"Yes, til Sunday or Monday."
He lightly placed his hand at the small of her back. "Or longer."
"Right. And maybe you'll get a real job. How's the whole unemployment thing going, anyhow? You going about it or letting it go about itself?"
"The latter, m'dear." 
"Figures. You are so frustrating."
"And you're lovely." He pulled his coat off the hook by the door. "Hungry?"
"Always" she said.
His keys lay on his desk on top of the morning paper. Picking them up, he paused. "Get this," he said. "Says here 'Prominent Activist Went Missing.' Who the hell goes missing?"
She smiled. "You. You would, Baxter. But in your case it wouldn't be some grammatical pet-peeve. You'd do it on purpose."


And later, that's exactly what he did. Baxter Bilingual went missing. The one person she was confident could help her find a stolen notebook had stolen himself away.