“You’ll make it right.”

“I will.”

Froehmer stood up and I knew he wouldn’t hit me or anything – he wasn’t that type of man – but I wasn’t sure. Maybe when he was younger, back in college, he could have taken me. Maybe he still could, but I could hold my own, I thought, if he tried something now. I was afraid of him, but I wasn’t afraid of fighting him, if I had to. “You stole from me,” he said. “You might think that your partner stole something from you, but really, you stole from me. So you need to do right in this. You need to make this right. Understand?”

I understood. I was on the hook for Frank and what he took. Froehmer left and I stayed standing where he left me, not knowing what to do. Not one idea. I texted Frank again. I called and left another message. There was no point to any of that. There was no point to anything until I heard from him, or could figure out where he’d gone.

—

I stayed in the room and tried not to look at the phone every five seconds. I tried to read; I tried to watch TV, but nothing could break through. The gears in my brain had seized, grinding together over and over without being able to move forward. The whole thing made me so anxious I was almost vibrating, shaking with frustration, dread and indecision and ignorance. I was going to go crazy in that room. I thought about going back to the bar; I thought about going to any bar, but it was just a thought. I knew where that would lead, farther from where I needed to be.

In the end, I went to the rental place and got a car and drove home. Maybe there was an answer there. The car was as big and lonely as the black, starless sky. It had been almost twenty-four hours since I last saw Frank. In the five years we’d been together I don’t think we went anywhere close to that long apart. We were together all the time. I tried not to think about it, but there’s nothing lonelier than a long drive in a half-empty car, except a long night in a half-empty bed.