How long? The answer is a year and twenty-one days. It’s been a year and twenty-one days since I had sex. A year and twenty-one days since Vicky disappeared. Literally disappeared along with her sister.

I try not to think what she’d say about my sex hiatus, how she’d tease me about losing mymost eligible bastardstatus.

I don’t care. It’s only her. Her or nobody.

My PI hasn’t turned up jack. It’s a lot easier to hack through somebody’s fake identity than to scour the planet for a person who knows how to disappear.

Last I heard, Denny was up to his eyeballs in debt, drinking heavily and trying to borrow money from the people he once snubbed for being beneath him.

A spate ofWhere is Vonda?articles came out, but nobody ever found her.

One year and twenty-one days.

“You sure?” Smitty tries.

“I’m not over my last thing,” I explain. “Final answer.”

He turns to Theo. “What’s your excuse? You’re not dating anybody. Look at them—smokin’ hot!”

“I’m notdatinganybody,” Theo says. “But there is somebody.”

“What?” I ask. This is the first I’ve heard of Theo with anybody. “Who is she?”

“I don’t know who she is,” he says. “That’s the problem.”

“I don’t understand,” Smitty says.

“This is going to sound a little crazy, but I’ve been having…conversations…with my wake-up call girl.”

He’s got our attention now. “Conversations?” I ask.

He gets this faraway expression. He sucks in a breath.

“Are we talking phone sex here?” Smitty demands.

“No. I mean, yeah, but it’s more than that,” Theo says. “We talk about everything,” he says.

“But to be clear, phone sexisinvolved,” Smitty presses.

Theo says nothing. I take it as a yes. “Jesus,” I say.

Smitty just laughs.

“You’ve never seen her,” I clarify. “You literally have no idea what she looks like…”

Theo shakes his head. “No information about her whatsoever. I’ll find her, though. I’m scouring this fucking city.”

“You know she could be a total troglodyte,” Smitty points out with his usual sensitivity.

“I don’t give a shit.” Theo gazes out the window at the people going by. “I have to find her.”

He looks exhausted. Is he even sleeping?

I nod. “Dude. Hard to find a woman who doesn’t want to be found.” I should know.

He tells us the scant details he has on her. We brainstorm ways to us it to find her.

I tell him about my attempts to find Vicky. How I sometimes scour the jewelry collections, but nothing I see ever comes close to what she’d make.