I deleted the message.

I went upstairs to the spare bedroom where I keep my computer and pay the bills and went online to see if there'd been any action on the website.

Nothing.

I sat there for a while, stared at the screen.

The guy from the forensics department popped his head in, said he'd find his own way out.

Sure, I said. Thanks.

Finally, I went back down to the kitchen. I opened the fridge and stared into it for a good twenty seconds, thinking if I looked long enough something edible would magically appear. I hadn't bought groceries in a couple of weeks, and on the nights when Patty didn't show up with fast food was surviving mostly on a cache of microwavable dinners that had been collecting in the freezer over the last year or two.

I closed the door and put my palms on the kitchen counter, leaning into it. I took several deep breaths, letting each one out slowly.

If this was supposed to relax me, it wasn't working, because suddenly I took the back of my arm and swept everything off the counter in front of me: toaster, salt and pepper shakers, a day-by-day New Yorker cartoon calendar I hadn't turned the page on in three weeks, an electric can opener all were sent crashing to the floor.

I was filled with all this pent-up rage and frustration. Where was Syd? What had happened to her? Why did she leave?

Why the hell couldn't I find her?

I wanted to explode. I had so much anger and no place to direct it.

I'd only been home a few minutes, but I needed to go out again. Every moment I spent here, alone, reminded me that Syd was not here. I couldn't sit around. I had to burn off some steam. Drive around. Keep looking.

The phone rang. I snatched the receiver off the cradle before the first ring was finished.

What? I shouted.

Whoa.

I'm sorry, bringing my voice down, not knowing who it was. Hello.

I called earlier. Did you get my message?

Then I knew. I just got home, Kate.

It had started about six months ago. I'd met her in a rather unconventional way. She was backing her Ford Focus out of a spot at Walgreens and hit my bumper on the other side of the aisle. I was behind the wheel, engine off, listening to the end of a newscast before I went into the store, and jumped out when I felt the jolt.

I had a number of lines set to go. Are you blind? Where the hell were you looking? Did you get your driver's license off the Net?

But when she got out of the car, the first thing out of my mouth was, Are you okay?

I think that had a lot to do with the fact that she was such a striking woman. Maybe not beautiful, not in some supermodel sense (and here, I would defer to Bob anyway, of course), but arresting, with short brown hair, brown eyes, a slightly Monroe-esque figure. But instead of a squeaky Betty Boop kind of voice, her words came out soft and low and throaty.

Oh my God, she said. That was totally my fault. Are you hurt?

I'm fine, I'm fine, I insisted. Let's see if your car's okay.

It was fine, and there was only a minor scratch on my bumper. Even though it was not something worth repairing, I offered no objection when Kate wanted to give me her name and phone number.

You know, later, you might have whiplash or something, she said. Like she was hoping.

The next day, I called her.

Oh my God, don't tell me you have a concussion or something.

I wondered if you wanted to get a drink.

She told me, over a beer, that when I called she figured I'd be faking a spinal injury and suing her for a million dollars' worth of hospital bills because that's the kind of thing people do, that's the kind of world we're living in.

That should have been a clue.

But I didn't pick up on it, because things between us seemed to be clicking pretty good. They ended up clicking pretty fast.

We moved on from drinks to dinner, and from dinner to my house. Five minutes after we'd come through the front door, we were in bed. I hadn't had sex in several months, and it's possible I made that apparent more quickly than I would have liked. But it was a long evening, and I was able to redeem myself.

Kate seemed, at first, almost perfect.

She was warm. Attentive. Sexually uninhibited. She was addicted to DVD sets of television series. I worked so many evenings I'd never much gotten into TV, so she introduced me to shows I'd only heard of, including one about these people whose commercial jet crashes on an island, and somehow this is their destiny, they've all been brought to this island for a reason, it's all part of some big plan I could hardly make any sense of it. But Kate was obsessed with it, how everyone's lives were being manipulated by unseen forces. That's so what happens, she said. Other people are always pulling the strings behind the scenes.

That should have been another clue.

The thing was, she was fun to be with. And I hadn't been with anyone fun in quite some time. But it was when she started opening up about herself that things started to go off the rails.

She'd been divorced three years. Her husband was a commercial pilot. He fooled around. She got totally screwed over in the divorce. Her lawyer, she believed, was a friend of her husband's, although she couldn't actually prove it. Some kind of deal got cooked up behind closed doors, she said, otherwise she would have ended up with the son of a bitch's house. But guess what? He was still living there, and she was stuck in some shithole apartment in Devon half a block from a bar, and Friday nights you were likely to find some guy taking a leak on your front tire.

Okay.

And if that wasn't enough, she was being treated totally unfairly at work. She was clearly the next in line to be head buyer at Jazzies, the clothing store where she worked in New Haven, but they went and gave it to this woman named Edith, if you can believe that any woman with a name like Edith would have a clue about what's fashionable.

Edith Head? I said. The Oscar-winning costume designer?

Are you making that up?

Anyway, she knew they had it in for her at work, that they didn't like her, and the most likely theory as far as she was concerned was that it was because she was so much more attractive than the others. They felt threatened. Well, they could all go fuck themselves, that's what they could do.

At first I welcomed her calls at work. I was quite okay with her telling me, in some detail, what she wanted to do to me the next time we were together. But sometimes, when you're trying to clinch a deal for a $35,000 loaded Accord, you have to end things, no matter how much you might be enjoying them.

Kate's feelings got hurt easily.

The more she called my work and home phones, and my cell, the less I called back. Give me a chance to be the one to make the call, I suggested gently.

But I told you that in my message, she said. I told you to call me back.

It certainly wasn't all phone sex. It was often more stories about how her ex was hiding money from her, or how they still weren't recognizing her talents at work, or how she thought her landlord had been in her apartment when she was out, going through her underwear drawer. Nothing was out of place, but she just had a feeling.

One night, when I had intended to break it off, I somehow allowed her to talk me into letting her meet Sydney.

I'm dying to see what she's like, Kate said.

I'd been in no rush to introduce them. I didn't see any need for Sydney to meet every woman I dated, and in the last year or two, there certainly hadn't been many. I figured, if it got to the point where things were getting serious, that might be the time for introductions.

But Kate persisted, so I arranged for the three of us to meet at lunch one Sunday. Syd, a seafood fan, picked a spot down along the waterfront that, for all I knew, got its fresh catch of the day from an ocean half a planet away.

Kate thought it went fabulously. We so hit it off, she told me.

I knew Syd would have a different take.

She was very nice, she said later when we were alone.

You're holding out on me, I said.

No, really.

Spill it, I said.

Well, you know she's crazy, Sydney said.

Go on.

She was the only one who said a word all through lunch. And it was all about how this person doesn't like her and that person she had a problem with, and how she didn't get along at this job because the people were all against her and gave her an unfair job review, and then she got this other job and even though it's going okay she knows people are talking about her behind her back, and how she's pretty sure that she got overcharged by the guy where she gets her dry cleaning done and Okay, I said. I get it.

But I understand, Syd said.

What do you mean, you understand?

She's hot. I mean, it's a sex thing, right?

Jesus, Sydney.

I mean, Dad, come on, what else would it be? If I had a rack like that, I'd be the most popular girl at my school. I tried to think of something to say, but before I could, Syd added, But she's very nice.

But she's a bit crazy, I said.

Yeah, Sydney said. But a lot of crazy people are very nice.

Did she ask you a single question about yourself?

Sydney had to think about that one. You know when you went to the can? She asked me my opinion of her earrings.

The thing was, Syd had nailed it. Kate was self-obsessed. She thought everyone was against her. She saw conspiracies where none existed. She jumped to conclusions. She was pushing too hard when I wanted to slow things down.

The day after the lunch, Kate, who had initially felt it went well, called me at work and said, Sydney hates me.

That's insane, I said. She thought you were very nice.

What did she say? Exactly?

She liked you, I said, leaving out the references to crazy and rack.

You're lying. I know you're lying.

Kate, I have to go.

We still saw each other, occasionally. Out of guilt, fearing I was using her, I made excuses not to sleep with her.

Most of the time.

After Syd disappeared, I stopped returning any of her calls. I had enough on my plate. Occasionally, I'd pick up without checking the caller ID.

Let me be there for you, she'd say.

I was reluctant to accept her offers of comfort.

So you didn't mind my being around when you needed to get off, Kate said at one point, but you don't want me there when the going gets tough?

And now she was on the phone as I stood here in my kitchen, the floor littered with debris after my explosion, still unable to think of anything but my daughter's car, bloodstains on the door and steering wheel.

Hey, you there? Kate asked.

Yeah, I said. I'm here.

You sound terrible.

Long day.

Are you alone?

Yeah.

The truth was, I felt very, very alone.

I know you've got a lot on your mind, she said.

Yeah, I said.

Neither of us spoke for a moment.

Have you eaten? she asked.

I had to think. Hadn't I just been staring into the fridge? That must have meant I'd not had dinner.

No.

I'll bring something over. Chinese. And I've got some new DVDs.

I thought a moment, and said, Okay. I was hungry. I was exhausted. And I felt very alone.