I supposed that explained the lack of art. Maybe Daire just hadn’t gotten to it yet. Curiosity got the better of me. Shocker, I know.

“What’s Mr. Daire like?” I asked.

And just like that, our friendly chat was over. Mr. Guzman turned his back to me and began clipping the tree. Over the motor of the trimmer, he yelled, “I’d best get back to work. Lots to do today.”

I nodded, waved, and continued on my way. It was clear I’d crossed a line—the “do not ask questions about the boss” line. Huh. No problem. This was exactly why the Internet existed.

I had another meeting with my chief graphic designers, Christian and Luz, where we tweaked the print ad we were confirming with a client that afternoon. It was exhilarating to be working with other people again when the ideas started popping. Before I knew it, I was eating a peanut butter and strawberry jelly Uncrustable—don’t judge, those frozen sandwiches might be made for kids but they are yummy—at my desk while opening the Internet to do a deep dive on my landlord.

I started wide with a search engine using his name and city of residence. Nick Daire and Phoenix. Nothing came up, so I tried variations of Nick, like Nicholas and Nicolai, still nothing. I opted to be more specific and pulled up the website for the local paper, but there was nothing.

That seemed weird. Wealthy old guy in a premier neighborhood in Phoenix, and there was no mention of him. Hmm.

I opened up the social media apps and started searching those. Not surprisingly, there were no listings for Nick Daire in Phoenix. While every generation seemed to have an app that reflected their demographic, like Facebook for oldsters, Instagram for middles, and Snapchat for youth, it was possible that my landlord, given his decidedly introverted tendencies and being of an advanced age that required around-the-clock care, wasn’t interested in any of those or in social media at all. Good for him. Bad for me.

I doubled back to the newspaper. Not to have any articles about him seemed so strange. Had he never been married? Divorced? Had children? Had he done nothing noteworthy in the community all these years? Maybe he was a typical Midwestern transplant, who retired to Arizona after a full life in Iowa. Maybe I had to search out of state. Great. Which state? I had so many questions. How did a person live in this world and leave no cyber footprint? It boggled.