Collecting Cooper by Paul Cleave Page B

almost white hair swings it open. She’s wearing a pair of shorts and a cream blouse and looks about as tired as the big pine tree out front. She adjusts her glasses and smiles at me and I tell her hello, and when she answers it’s obvious the woman is deaf, and I’m sure we’re not far away from a time where deaf will be considered an insult, and we start going with hearing impaired . She says hello and talks exactly the way people talk when they don’t know how they sound. I speak slowly and ask to speak to Rodney and she holds her finger up and taps her watch, telling me she’ll either be one minute or one hour and then disappears. Rodney comes to the door thirty seconds later. He’s a skinny kid with beer-colored eyes and black hair and his cheeks are flushed from the heat. He’s wearing jeans and his T-shirt is salmon pink and he looks well fed and tidy and not on drugs or wearing any dark eyeliner, and therefore I have no reason to immediately hate him. Except for the T-shirt, which hurts my eyes.
    “I’m Rodney,” he says. “You’re here about Emma?”
    “That’s right.”
    “What are you? A reporter? I’m sick of reporters. I swear to God if you’re a reporter I’m going to kick your ass.”
    I suddenly like him even more. “Her dad hired me. I’m a private investigator.”
    “He hired you to talk to me? Why? He thinks I had something to do with her going missing?” he asks, his voice starting to raise. His right hand grips the door frame as if he has to stop himself from lunging at me.
    “So you’re confident that’s what she is? Missing? That she hasn’t gone away for a few days?”
    “Emma’s not like that. I recognize you, you know,” he says, “but I can’t tell where from.”
    “I have one of those faces,” I answer. “And her dad doesn’t think you’ve done anything to hurt her. I’m here to help, to try and get her back.”
    He relaxes his grip on the doorframe. “Is she dead?” he asks, and his question is so genuine that it really seems he has no idea one way or the other, but I’ve been fooled by grieving boyfriends before.
    “Can I come in?”
    “You didn’t answer the question.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “But you think so.”
    “I hope not,” I say, giving Schroder’s answer from before.
    “What’s your name?” he asks.
    “Theo.”
    “Theodore Tate?”
    “Yeah,” I say, and for a second I look down.
    “The man who . . .”
    “That’s why I’m here,” I say. “It’s why her dad came to me. He knows I’m going to do what it takes to find her. That gives you two options. You can stand there and be pissed at me like you deserve to be before closing the door, or you can answer my questions and help me find Emma before it’s too late. What’s it going to be?”
    He leads me inside to a living room that nobody could come to an agreement on how to decorate. I sit down in a chair that tries to swallow me. Rodney’s mother carries out a tray with a teapot on it and three cups. She sits on the couch next to Rodney and pours me a cup, then points to the milk. I can’t stand tea and nod at the milk figuring it will help dilute the problem. There’s a light on the wall above the door that I figure must flash when somebody rings the doorbell. The mother signs something to Rodney, and he signs something back, and I feel like an outsider.
    “Mum recognizes you too,” he says.
    He doesn’t say it in an accusing tone and his mother doesn’t sign it in any aggressive way. I don’t apologize because it’s not why I’mhere. His mum nods, not hearing us but knowing what’s being said. I look at her. “I’m here to find her,” I say, and she nods and smiles.
    I turn back to Rodney. “How long have you been dating Emma?”
    “About four months.”
    “How’d you meet?”
    “School. I’ve known her for years. She was off from school last year for some time because of—well, you know why, and when she came back we just kind of started talking. I