I watch his face as the message pops up on his screen. He doesn’t try to hide his smile.
“What are you going to save my number as? Weird Elevator Girl?”
He laughs. “Not a chance.”
I look at his screen as he types ‘Cute Weathergirl’ to save my number in his contacts. I feel a smile tugging at the corners of my lips even as my face turns red.
“Cute, huh?” I tease him. “How many other weathergirls do you know?”
“A lot. You’d be surprised. I had to come up with a numbering system for all of the average weathergirls in my contact list.”
I lean back against the wall. “I’m kind of disappointed I’m not one of them. Average Weathergirl Number Seven has a nice ring to it.”
He shakes his head and waves his phone. “Nope. This name fits you better.”
The elevator shakes, startling me, and then it begins to rise. “Oh, thank God.”
We both stand up just as the doors open on the third floor. I step out into the hallway. He places his hand on the door jamb to keep it from closing. “We should do this again sometime,” he says.
I look back into the elevator and cringe. “Not a chance.”
He pouts.
“I’ll let you take me to dinner as long as there are no elevators involved.”
He smiles. “Deal.”
* * *
Inside my apartment, I continue my Facebook search for Luca Pichler. I try narrowing the search to all the cities I know he’s lived, starting with San Diego, where both his first and last letters came from before he disappeared. No results. I try again with the next city, and the next, with no luck. It seems like all the Luca Pichlers that came up in my initial search live outside the United States. I start checking their profiles, knowing it’s possible he moved out of the country, but none of these men look promising.
My upstairs neighbor is stomping around. I hear something dragging – or maybe rolling? – before a loud crash on the other side of the room. I duck my head as if the sound is in my own apartment, and then I roll my eyes at both myself and my loud neighbor. It sounds like whoever lives up there has a bowling alley in their apartment. I turn on some music to drown out the noise.
Despite my loud neighbor and the infamous elevator, this isn’t a bad place to live. It’s one of the nicer apartment buildings in my area of Miami. We don’t have a doorman, but we have Joel, the security guard. Sometimes when he’s bored – which seems to be often – he likes to hold the door open for the people who live in the building. He’s worked here long enough that he knows us all by name. He’s one of the few fixtures I’ll miss when I buy my house and move out of this building.
I make myself some lunch, and as I’m eating, my phone buzzes. I grab it and check the screen, hoping to see a message from Jake, but it’s not him. It’s Anne. She sent a link to a database called PeopleFinder where I can look up Luca Pichler.
Anne:You have to pay to get access to his address and all that.
I click on the link and type Luca’s name in the search bar. The results are populated with a few different men with the same name. The free version of the website only shows their age and their city. I’m not thrilled with the results I have so far. One of the men is in his mid-fifties, one is in his early twenties, and the last on the list is close to eighty. Either my Luca Pichler isn’t on this list, or someone got his age wrong. I decide to pay for the membership anyway. I can always cancel it after I get what I need.
The payment processes and the page reloads, this time with complete information. It turns out the geriatric Luca Pichler lives in a nursing home in Seattle. The mid-fifties Luca Pichler lives with his wife, his in-laws, and six children in Rhode Island. The younger Luca Pichler lives in a home for adults with disabilities. I sigh. None of this looks promising. Now I’m out twenty bucks, and my identity has probably been sold to the highest bidder.
Naomi:No luck. If I hadn’t received that letter today, I might assume Luca is dead.
Anne:Weird. I wonder if his parents still live in his childhood home. Do you still have that address?
It’s a good idea, and one that I was thinking of before she sent the link to PeopleFinder. I go into my bedroom and take the shoe box out of the closet. The most recent letters are on top, and the very first ones are at the bottom. I had written his return address on the back of every letter so that I’d always know where to send my next letter even if I threw the envelope away.
Using my phone, I take a picture of the San Diego address. I’m about to put the letters away when I have an idea. I skim through them, stopping at each one that has a new address, and take a photo. The first eight years of letters are all from the same San Diego address. After that, his letters had come from all over the country. He had moved frequently, but he always made sure I had his new address – until two years ago.
I know it’s unlikely he’s gone back to live at any of these old addresses, but it’s a good place to start. Someone, somewhere, has to know where he is.
* * *
I’ve already had two cups of coffee by the time Anne gets to the station with my third. I’m looking at satellite and radar data to prepare my weather report for the day when she sets the steaming cup next to me.
“Thank you.”
