Hello Beautiful

Sylvie watched Kent become more drawn. He didn’t joke with the other guys, who occasionally laughed because, even though this was a grim situation, they were happy to be together. Most of the players assumed they would find William drunk somewhere, unhappy about his failed marriage. He must be on a bender was a comment Sylvie heard more than once. This seemed unlikely to Sylvie, since William drank very little, but she hoped they were correct. In the meantime, Kent seemed to be aging as the minutes ticked by, as if he were living out a long life with his missing friend, compressed into a single night. The only person he spoke to regularly was a player named Gus, who seemed to have endless energy. The young man jogged ahead of the group and then circled back and talked into Kent’s ear.

A player named Washington said to Sylvie, “You look worn out. You okay?”

Sylvie peered up at him in the shadows. She had been near tears as she ran after the men. She was wearing sneakers that she’d thought were comfortable but had given her a blister on her heel. She was worried about William. She was worried about her sister. She was worried, in a detached way, about herself. Sylvie was also moved by the players’ commitment to help her brother-in-law, and in the face of it, she realized that she was committed too. She had to see this search out until the end, whatever the end turned out to be.

“I’m okay,” she said, and stopped paying attention to the discomfort in her body. She just kept moving forward, as fast as she could. In the players’ wake, Sylvie was aware of how different her physical life was from theirs. The players were powerful, unassailable. In Sylvie’s normal life, she avoided quiet streets after dark and crossed the road if she sensed any aggression or worrisome behavior from a man. She ignored catcalls, kept her head down, turned the nearest corner. In the library, even, she knew when to slump her shoulders, minimize her hips when she walked, and cross her arms over her chest. She, and all women, were prey. But in the company of these men, Sylvie dropped her usual worry over her physical safety. Their proximity meant that strangers would leave her alone.

Each block they covered looked like a puzzle, and Sylvie turned her head from side to side, trying to spot the missing piece: William. When they reached a far corner of Northwestern’s campus, they met Arash — an average-sized man with heavy eyebrows and an intense stare. He reported that he’d asked all over the university and that it had been several days since anyone had seen William. “Arash is our physio,” Washington told Sylvie, and she nodded. She no longer questioned Washington’s use of the present tense. These men were still on a basketball team together in their hearts, and they had a physio and probably a coach or two. Her own team was her sisters, and she was apart from them. She knew Julia must be awake now and upset at her. Sylvie felt like part of herself was in that apartment, on the couch beside her older sister.

Standing behind Arash were a cluster of young men, who turned out to be seniors on the current Northwestern basketball team. They had been William’s teammates too, and Kent had been their captain, and so they’d showed up. Sylvie’s eyes smarted, and when she reached up to touch her face, she realized she was crying. Relieved that no one noticed, she stepped deeper into the shadows.

“We should split up,” Kent said. “William’s been missing for over twenty-four hours. We need to cover more ground.” He broke the group in two and sent Arash and the young players in one direction. Everyone else, including Sylvie, would travel deeper into the city with him.

There were now upward of twenty current and former basketball players jogging through Chicago, scouting parks famous for their basketball courts, checking the identity of people sleeping on benches. At some point, the sun began to rise — an orange orb filled the spaces between buildings. Sylvie tried to remember the last time she had seen a new day begin. She tried to remember what day of the week it was and what time she was due at the library. She asked Washington, who was wearing a watch, what time it was, but she was so tired that the numbers he said didn’t make sense. She wouldn’t show up at work, she knew that. She also knew that Head Librarian Elaine wouldn’t be happy; she had a few favorite themes, and one of them was accountability.

At one point, Kent dropped back to walk next to Sylvie. He spoke like a man conserving energy, and she had to lean closer to hear him. “William’s gone dark before. He has this in him. He stopped talking and eating for a week once when he thought Julia was mad at him and the coach had benched him. He bounced back pretty quickly, but I think I’m the only one he let see him like that.”