Commencement

The snow was now more than ankle deep and still coming down fast when Allen left the hotel. He had just checked his cell phone to see if he had any messages, but there were none. Previously he tried to call Tim’s cell phone thinking that maybe he just needed time to digest whatever the doctor had told him. All he got was his voicemail like Tamiko had said. Then he called Bradley at the desk of New Towers. He still hadn’t seen him. Next he tried Allyson, but she hadn’t heard from him in a week. It seemed like Tim was in one of his ‘I want to be alone’ moods. There was no way that he could have gotten good news if he was pulling this stunt. And contrary to what Allen told Tamiko, there was no way of guessing where Tim could be. Despite what he told Tamiko, Allen was now beginning to worry. He would try his best to think of where he should go next.

  The first place Allen went was Tim’s own building. There was the chance that Tim could’ve sneaked past Bradley and then locked himself in the apartment with the lights off. The fact that Tim hated winter weather also made this possible, as it was highly unlikely that he would want to be out in all of the snow. Allen had Tim’s spare key so he was able to actually go in. He looked through every room, but he didn’t find him. Where could he be? Allen knew that any place Tim would go would be the last place where someone would look for him. The bar next door was too obvious. Then he thought of his mother. That was indeed the last place where he would expect Tim to turn up, especially given what he was going through. It was worth a shot though. Allen went back out into the winter tempest and took the train over to the Battery Park condo where Tim’s mom lived.

  Allen remembered the way from when he visited Tim during one Thanksgiving break a long time ago. The building had a doorman just like Tim’s where the tenants were paged. It turned out that she wasn’t at home, either. As Allen left the building and walked back into the stormy night, he tried desperately to think of where Tim could be. Then all of a sudden it came to him.