‘So you can’t?’ he said.

I rose from my rest, I glided from the bed. ‘I think I can,’ I sighed. ‘Chris L, where are you?’

He was the only guy in town, or the only guy at the bar, but when I left the taxi I could only stop and stare: Chris L was wearing a crisp linen collar, the silhouette of Vivian. The effect was bewildering.

He was sitting at an outdoor table at Kent Street, a bar on Smith Street, and at the sound of my footsteps he swivelled on the seat.

‘I’m just wearing his clothes,’ he said. ‘None of mine were clean.’

He wasn’t wearing sunglasses and he looked babyish, defenceless.

Along with wallet, keys and phone Vivian had left a full sports bag in the beach house packed with holiday clothes.

‘Chris L, tell me everything.’

‘There’s nothing else,’ he said. ‘How good was last night, though?’ He kept nodding and grinning. I realised it was the smile of the hysterical, the desperate.

‘Totally good,’ I said.

He gripped a sweaty beer.

‘Did you check out his apartment?’ I said.

Chris L said, ‘I don’t know where he lives.’

I thought of Dan’s two kinds of men, the leavers and the leavings. Had Vivian left Chris L? Oh, of course he had. Although dyads were dyads and not essential truths, it remained the case that there were personalities and people, and I could tell that Vivian was a leaver through and through. You’re restless. You are an explorer. Things have not quite gone to plan. You are a classic scumbag. You march off in chukka boots.

‘There’s also these,’ said Chris L. From down below the table he fished up a pair of boots, which were dark with fluid, and he slopped them damply between us. ‘I found them on the beach today. They’re Vivian’s boots, right?’

My gut felt like a sour balloon, full of animal imminence.

‘Oh no, Chris L,’ I said. ‘I think we have a problem.’

‘And everybody left me!’

‘Have you called his parents,’ I said.

‘They weren’t in his phone. Here,’ he said. He picked up Vivian’s phone. He unlocked it – how intimate – and handed the phone to me.

‘There are just two numbers,’ he said.

‘Right,’ I said.

I looked at the phone.

I looked down at the table, between the boots and the beer, like there was something more to see than woodgrain and nothing.

‘I mean, when did he get your number?’ he said conversationally.

There was Chris L’s name, then mine; two options to choose from and nothing in between. Why were there no parents, friends, no pizza places, nothing? What was he, a dealer? A spy? The Somerton Man?

‘I’m not sure,’ I said lightly. ‘Did I give it to him when we were high?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I was there the whole time.’

‘Really? You were pretty high.’