“Was it, really?”
“As far as I’m concerned it was,” Darvelle said. “I don’t care what people say, it was an ordinary college thing except for that stupid charade about the pregnancy, and I didn’t go anywhere with that after we had that dinner. If Chester decided to disappear for twelve years after that, I’ll bet anything it had nothing to do with me.”
TWO
1
Shpetim Kika sometimes spent all evening worrying about the skeleton of the baby in the backpack—not worrying about it, exactly, but brooding about the way it seemed to have disappeared from public view. Maybe it was because he had seen it face-to-face, so to speak—but that made no sense. It really didn’t. In Shpetim’s mind, everybody should be concerned about the skeleton of a baby in a backpack. It should be on everyone’s mind, all the time, instead of a side issue that might as well not have happened. Shpetim got up every morning and checked the television news on all three of the local stations. Never once did he hear a single word about the baby. That news had come and gone in a day after Chester Morton’s body was found hanging from that billboard.
“Listen,” he told Lora sometimes, at night. “It’s a terrible thing. You should have seen it. No, all right, nobody should have seen it. But somebody should be caring about it. A baby is dead. That’s not a small thing. A baby is dead and nobody knows who it was, or why it died. There should be an outcry.”
Public outcries were one of the things on Shpetim’s long list of confusing facts about America. He loved America. He really did. He was overjoyed to have had a chance to come here, and he’d done very well since he’d set up shop, too. He would not have been able to build a business like this back in Albania. He would not have a son who had been to college and was about to be married to a girl whose wedding would be something out of a fairy tale. He did truly love America. He just thought Americans were crazy a lot of the time. The news would give you day after day and week after week about some politician who wasn’t even in office anymore, or running for anything, making a sex tape with his mistress—and not say a single thing about the skeleton of a baby in a backpack.
Right now, Shpetim was sitting in the little construction shed, watching men walking along girders on the second floor of the new tech building. It was going to be a beautiful building when it was done. That was something else he liked about America. They talked and talked, back home, when the Soviets were still in power, about how they were doing everything for the people, and how in America the people were left to fend for themselves. Well, it was in America that there would be this beautiful new tech building and anybody who wanted to study in it could just come in and sign up, no approval necessary except for a high school diploma. And if you didn’t have the money, there was financial aid.
Nderi was walking back across the site to the shed. Shpetim straightened up a little. He knew it was silly, but he wanted Nderi to be proud of him. He didn’t want to be the kind of ignorant immigrant parent whose children couldn’t wait to leave home.
Nderi made a pretense of knocking at the side of the shed door and poked his head inside. “We’re going to get the shell on the south end of the second floor done today,” he said. “We’re going a lot faster than I expected. I think we can be sure we’ll have the whole thing enclosed before the really bad weather hits. Then we’ll have to deal with the electricians.”
Shpetim nodded. There was an English word he had truly learned to hate. It was “subcontractors.”
“I thought that would cheer you up,” Nderi said. “I thought you were all worried we were getting behind.”
“I wasn’t worried about getting behind,” Shpetim said. “Construction projects are always behind. I was worried about impossible.”
“Well, there’s nothing impossible about this. I’ve been feeling really good about it. First really huge project we’ve had, and we’re going to do a spectacular job. And that’s sure to mean more big projects. So, you know, if everything works out all right—”
“I want to go out for awhile.”
“What?”
“I just—I want to go out. I want to take a drive. I’ll be gone about an hour, I think. Could you look after things here?”
“I look after things here all the time,” Nderi said. “I did it for three days last spring when you had the flu. But you don’t just go places. Where do you want to go?”
Shpetim took his keys off his belt and handed them over. “I’ll be about an hour. Maybe two. I’ll be right back.”