I wanted to think Tad had been kidnapped, taken away and beaten, tied up and shipped to some far-off place of foreign horror. But as the days after the eclipse party elapsed, the mundane, heart-wrenching reality seemed to be that he had quietly, and without event, slid away.
I thought of him as I went through my completed sets of designs the first night back, recalling at what stage our affair had been during different incarnations of the Wolfe project, acknowledging that he was like the erring pencil strokes there, hastily erased late at night, gone. We had been together for a short time, but his imprint languished.
I had made it back to the city after the Taylor weekend, on the edge of panic, rushing home. The apartment was still. I found no note, just the cage, still intact, giving me
