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the dirty way, like you’re thinking,” she said with a devilish tone and an accusatory index finger. “You can get to the Upper East Side on your own.”
    “All right, then. Very nice to meet you, McKenna.” We ended like we began, with a handshake, but this time I didn’t want to let go.
    Susan hugged me as we left the bar. “Aw, you look like a puppy who got left at the shelter. Don’t worry, girl. I just did you a favor.”
    “How’s that?”
    “You don’t get out enough. You don’t know the rules.”
    “What rule was I about to break?”
    “You put out on the first date, and a guy never respects you. And don’t you go looking at me with all that virgin-y indignation. If you’d left with him, you totally would have dropped those drawers. Knowing what a dry spell you’ve been in, they’re probably granny panties, aren’t they?”
    All I could do was laugh.
    “Ah, see? I did you a favor. Don’t worry. He knows how to find me, and I know how to find you. He’ll call.”
    As crass as Susan could be, she always managed to do it in a silly way that was never threatening or offensive. When we were roommates, I had hoped that her brand of infectious directness might rub off on me, but no such luck. She told me once that her sense of humor had gotten her through army culture. Susan was by no means the first female West Point cadet, but even now women made up only a tenth of the class, and cadets still referred to military-issued comforters as their “green girls.”
    As one of the most attractive women on the West Point campus, Susan could have had her choice of boyfriends. But she was the daughter of a general. All eyes were on her. She had to choose her company carefully. For the most part, she stuck with the “Dykes in Spikes,” as the female athletes were called, but got along with the men by joking around like a kid sister.
    I thought Susan had fallen asleep in the cab, her head resting on my shoulder, but then she reached into her briefcase and handed me something wrapped in a white cloth napkin. She pulled out a Westvleteren beer stein.
    “You stole a glass? That’s a Class A misdemeanor, I’ll have you know.”
    “Then you’re about to commit receipt of stolen property.” Her speech was slurred. “Because I saw how you were with Patrick. And I saw him with you. And neither of you is ever like that with anyone. Someday you’re going to marry that man, and you’re going to want a souvenir from this fateful night.”
    Five years later, on my two-day anniversary, I gave that glass to my husband as a wedding gift.
    I saved that beer stein for five years, through three moves, two changes in profession, and countless on-and-offs with Patrick. I saved it because I wanted more than anything for Susan to be right.
    When the cab stopped that night outside my apartment on Mott, Susan tucked the beer stein into my bag as I kissed the top of her head. “Drink some water when you get home. I love you, Bruno.”
    I made sure the cabdriver knew Susan’s address, and I covered the fare plus a generous tip before hopping out.
    I was too distracted to take seriously Susan’s prediction about Patrick and me. At the time, my entire focus was on making this the year when I finally got the attention I deserved at work.
    Both Susan and I turned out to be right.
    M cKenna stopped typing and read the last sentence again. Both Susan and I turned out to be right. Neither McKenna nor Susan had been prescient enough to realize that 2003 would also be the year when Susan would disappear without a trace.
    Now McKenna wondered if Susan was finally back, resurfacing to pull Nicky Cervantes from the tracks of a 1 train.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    M cKenna was sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, hunched over her laptop, when she heard keys in the front door. Patrick maneuvered his bicycle into the apartment, careful not to let the tires bump the walls, a practice that had taken months of training after the building had