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one sense of the word, which is to say the supplier of your name, the person under whose aegis you’d first experienced chocolate, books, swing sets, antinomies, pencil games, contract bridge, the Desert, the person in whose presence you’d first bled into your underwear (at sixteen, now, late sixteen, grotesquely late as we seem to remember, in the east wing, during the closing theme of “My Three Sons,” when the animated loafers were tapping, with you and Lenore watching, the slipping, sick relief, laughter and scolding at once, Gramma used her left arm and there was her old hand in Lenore’s new oldness), the person through whose personal generosity and persuasiveness vis à vis certain fathers you’d been overseas, twice, albeit briefly, but still, your great-grandmother, who lived right near you—were just all of a sudden missing, altogether, and was for all you knew lying flat as a wet Saltine on some highway with a tire track in her forehead and her walker now a sort of large trivet, and you’ll have an idea of how Lenore Beadsman felt when she was informed that her great-grandmother, with whom all the above clauses did take place, was missing from the Shaker Heights Nursing Home, in Shaker Heights, right near Cleveland, Ohio, near which Lenore lived, in East Corinth.

/c/
    Combination Embryonic Journal and Draft Space for Fieldbinder Collection
    Richard Vigorous
    62 Bombardini Building
    Erieview Plaza
    Cleveland, Ohio
    Reasonable reward for proper and discreet return.
     
    25 August
     
    Lenore, come to work, where I am, remove yourself from the shower immediately and come to work now, I’ll not come down for my paper until you are here, Mandible is getting suspicious when I call.

/d/
    The outside of a door, which like all the doors here looked like solid wood but was really hollow and light and rattled in its latch when the office window was open and the wind blew, said DAVID BLOEMKER, ADMINISTRATOR OF FACILITY. The office, like the rest of the Home, smelled faintly of urine.
    “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I understand what you’re saying,” Lenore said.
    Mr. Bloemker had sad wet brown eyes and blinked behind round glasses as he pulled and scratched at his beard, in the heat. “What I am saying, Ms. Beadsman, is that with all possible apologies and every assurance that we are doing everything within our power to resolve the situation, I must report to you that area F’s Lenore Beadsman is at this point in time missing.”
    “I don’t think I understand what ‘missing’ means.”
    “I am afraid that it means that we are unable to determine her present whereabouts.”
    “You don’t know where she is.”
    “That is unfortunately right.”
    “What,” said Lenore, “you mean you don’t know where she is in the Home?”
    “Oh my no, if she were on the grounds, there would be no situation of any significance. No, we have—those of us on hand at the moment have covered the entire facility.”
    “So, what, she’s somewhere off the grounds?”
    “That would seem to be so, to our extreme distress.” Mr. Bloemker’s fingers, with their long nails, sank into his beard.
    “Well how may I ask did that happen?” said Lenore.
    “This is not entirely clear to anyone,” looking off, out the win . dow, at the sun through the trees on a car right by the window. It was Lenore’s car, with the spot on the windshield.
    “Well was she here last night?”
    “We are at this time unable to determine that.”
    “There must have been a nurse who looked in on her last night—what does she say?”
    Mr. Bloemker looked at her sadly. “I’m afraid we are at present unable to contact the relevant nurse.”
    “And why is that.”
    “I am afraid we don’t know where she is.”
    “Either?”
    A sad smile. “Either.”
    “Gee.”
    Mr. Bloemker’s telephone buzzed. Lenore eyed it as he went to answer it. Not a Centrex, no crossbar. Something primitive, single-line unretrievable transfers, no hunters.