Corazon didn't know the guy at her door. Some muscled white guy with a reddish blond beard. "Hi," he said. "You know Victor Aldridge?" It was like in the movies, when the guys in uniform come to tell the mother her boy is dead. Corazon felt her knees go weak. "Vic?" she said. "Come in, I know Vic." He came into the foyer but stopped there, awkward. "I can't really stay long." "Is Vic all right?" she asked. "He, um, had to go out of town. He asked me to give this to you." The guy held out a key. "What is it?" "It's a key," the stranger said. Of course it was a key. It looked like a safety deposit box key. Victor had a safety deposit box. "He had to leave town?" Corazon said. "Yeah, that's what he said." "Why?" The stranger shrugged, "Something about a job." "Who are you?" she demanded. "Kerry. You're Corazon?" It suddenly occurred to her she was interrogating this guy. He was still holding out the key, which she took. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm being rude. I've just been really worried, you know? He didn't even call his mother and he always calls his mother. If this is his safety deposit box key, he puts copies and stuff in there. You know, just in case something happens. It's weird he would give it to me." The guy shifted from one foot to another. "How do you know Vic?" she asked. "I don't, really," he said. "I just work for a guy who hired him and when Victor...Vic...stopped by to drop off some stuff, he asked me to bring this to you." She looked him full in the face, looking up at him. "He's a sweet guy, but kind of clueless. Sometimes when he gets a job, he gets all caught up and forgets to call," she said. Hoping. This Kerry guy wouldn't meet her eyes but then he did and he looked at her and she shivered. He looked so...sad. "Yeah," he said. "Was it documentary work?" she asked. "He's a documentary filmmaker, but he has to do other stuff to pay the bills. If it was a documentary, he'd be so excited." "I don't know." Give me something, she pleaded. She knew she was pleading. "Come on in, have a glass of iced tea. What kind of work do you do? Are you a PA?" He didn't look like a PA, but on porn shoots, everybody looked a little scruffy. "I know he does soft core." She smiled up at him, to show him it was all right, that she wasn't going to freak. "So he puts copies in the safety deposit box?" Kerry asked. "Yeah, sometimes. Negatives. Stuff like that. He says it's like a back up." She couldn't stop searching his face. "He's okay, right?" The guy looked at her for a long moment before he looked away. "Yeah," he finally said. "He's okay." "If you hear from him, would you call me?" she asked. "Wait, let me give you my card." She had cards printed up for escort work, just her name and number. She was carrying her big leather purse from Ecuador and everything fell to the bottom of it and it took her forever to find anything but she finally managed to present him with a card. "Thanks for the key," she said. He didn't say anything.
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