Chapter 29: The One Where Marcel Goes Missing
Sunday morning in Monica's apartment had the specific quality of a morning that had decided not to have any particular agenda, which was, after the week everyone had just had, exactly right.
The light through the windows was doing its late-March thing — genuinely warm now, not the tentative warmth of earlier in the month but something that meant it. Monica had made enough breakfast for twice the number of people present, which was her default and also, currently, a feature rather than a bug.
Ethan was on his second piece of toast when Joey came through the door.
He could tell from the walk. Joey had several distinct walks depending on his emotional state, and this one — the slightly faster than usual, shoulders back, chin up, the walk of a man carrying news he'd been waiting to deliver — was the one that meant something had happened that Joey considered excellent.
He sat down at the table, looked around at everyone with the contained energy of someone performing containment very poorly, and said: "I got the part."
A beat.
"The Fox project," Ethan said.
"The Fox project," Joey confirmed. "They called Friday afternoon. I've been sitting on it all weekend because I wanted to tell everyone at once." He looked around the table. "It's not the lead. It's the lead's colleague — significant scenes, actual lines, the kind of role where you're in the room when things happen." He paused. "I'm in a movie."
Monica put down her coffee. "Joey."
"A real movie," Joey said. "With a budget and a director and everything."
"We know what a movie is," Chandler said, but he was already smiling.
"I'm going to be on a screen," Joey said. "A large screen. That people pay to sit in front of."
Ross, who had been reading the Arts section with Marcel on his shoulder, looked up with genuine warmth. "That's really good, Joey. I mean that."
"Thank you," Joey said, receiving this with the specific gratitude of someone who had been working toward something for long enough that the arrival of it still felt slightly unreal. He looked at Ethan. "You got me in the room."
"You got yourself the part," Ethan said. "I got you the meeting."
"Still," Joey said.
"Still," Ethan agreed. "Congratulations."
Joey sat back with the settled expression of a man who had received something he'd been waiting for and was letting it be real. Chandler reached across the table and shook his hand, which was Chandler's version of a standing ovation. Monica produced a plate of something from the kitchen that she'd clearly been planning to bring out anyway but now felt appropriately celebratory.
Marcel, on Ross's shoulder, watched all of this with the focused attention of a creature who had registered that something was happening and was deciding whether it required his involvement.
"He's been doing things," Ross said, when the Joey conversation had reached its natural resting point.
"What kind of things?" Rachel said.
"The answering machine," Ross said. "Three days in a row. I come home, the messages are gone. All of them. I've watched him — he sits on the machine and he presses the button and he looks at me while he does it."
"He's making eye contact while he deletes your messages," Chandler said.
"Deliberate eye contact," Ross said. "And before I could read the paper yesterday morning, he—" He stopped. "He expressed his feelings about the crossword puzzle. Physically."
Ethan set down his coffee. "Ross."
"I know," Ross said.
"How are you responding to this?" Ethan said.
"I've been trying to redirect the behavior," Ross said. "I give him the designated objects, I maintain a consistent schedule, I've been very clear about expectations—"
"You've been having a formal conversation with a monkey about boundaries," Chandler said.
"I've been establishing behavioral parameters," Ross said.
"That's the same thing," Monica said, from the kitchen.
Marcel, as if aware he was being discussed, reached over and pressed the TV remote that was sitting on the coffee table. The channel changed. He looked at Ross.
Ross looked at Marcel.
"Marcel," he said. "Give Ross the remote. Marcel. Give — the — remote — to — Ross."
Marcel pressed it again. Different channel.
"He's not going to give you the remote," Joey said.
"He understands what I'm saying," Ross said. "I know he does."
"He understands perfectly," Ethan said. "That's the problem."
Monica appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Ross, your monkey is currently making editorial decisions about what we watch on Sunday morning."
"He's not my monkey," Ross said, which was the thing he always said and which nobody believed including Ross. "He's — I'm his designated caretaker."
"Your monkey," Monica confirmed, and went back to the kitchen.
Rachel came in from the hallway with the expression of someone who had been on the phone and had received news worth reporting.
"The Madison store," she said.
Everyone looked at her.
"I have a second meeting," she said. "The assistant director wants me to come back Thursday and meet the department head." She said it with the careful energy of someone holding something fragile. "That's the real interview. The Friday thing was screening."
"You passed the screening," Ethan said.
"I passed the screening," Rachel confirmed. The careful energy shifted slightly into something warmer. "She said my perspective on the seasonal buying calendar was — and I'm quoting — 'more considered than most candidates with twice the formal experience.'"
"Rachel," Monica said.
"I'm not celebrating yet," Rachel said immediately. "Thursday is the real thing. But—" She stopped. "I know what I'm talking about in there. I actually know. That's — that's new. Knowing that I know something."
"It's not new," Ethan said. "You've always known it. You just didn't have a context where it counted."
Rachel looked at him with the expression she sometimes had when he said something that landed differently than expected. "Thursday," she said, mostly to herself.
"Thursday," he confirmed.
The Sheldon conversation happened naturally, the way it usually did — someone asked about the Columbia situation and Ethan gave the current status, which was that Sheldon had confirmed Columbia over Princeton and would be arriving in New York the following week for an orientation visit before the semester began.
"He's actually coming," Monica said.
"He's actually coming," Ethan confirmed.
"The fifteen-year-old genius," Joey said, with the expression of someone who had heard about Sheldon enough times to have a mental image that he wasn't sure corresponded to reality.
"He's going to be in the city," Ethan said. "I told him I'd show him around a bit before the department gets hold of him. New York has a learning curve and it helps to have someone walk you through it the first week."
"You're going to shepherd a fifteen-year-old physicist through New York," Chandler said.
"I'm going to introduce him to the city," Ethan said. "There's a difference."
"What does he eat?" Monica said immediately.
"Monica," Ethan said.
"I'm asking a practical question," Monica said. "If he's coming here, which he obviously will because that's how this works, I want to know if there are dietary requirements."
"I'll find out," Ethan said.
"Does he like pasta?" Monica said.
"I genuinely don't know," Ethan said.
"Find out," Monica said, and went back to the kitchen with the decisive movement of someone who had identified a project.
Monday arrived with the specific quality of a Monday that intended to be productive, and Ethan was in the lab by eight-thirty working through the final revisions on the microplastics paper. The defense was five days out. The paper was almost ready. The Fox pre-production timeline was moving in the background at its own pace.
He worked through the morning with the focused quiet of someone who had learned to operate well in the final stretch — not the anxious productivity of someone running out of time, but the clean, clear work of someone who knew what they were doing and was doing it.
He got home at three.
His phone rang before he'd taken his coat off. Monica.
"Marcel's gone," she said.
He held very still for a moment. "What do you mean gone."
"Rachel was watching him," Monica said, and in those four words he could hear the entire story. "He's not in the apartment. We've checked everywhere. He's been gone for about forty minutes."
"I'll be there in five minutes," Ethan said.
Monica's apartment had the controlled chaos of a situation that had been tense for long enough that people had started managing their own anxiety through activity. Monica was moving through the rooms checking places she'd already checked. Rachel was standing in the kitchen with the expression of a woman who had made a mistake and was measuring its dimensions.
"The door," Ethan said.
"I went to deal with — there was a situation with Monica's shoe, and Marcel, and I was — I went to handle it and I didn't—" Rachel pressed her hands flat on the counter. "I didn't close the door all the way. I was gone maybe three minutes."
"Three minutes is enough," Ethan said, without blame. "Okay. Where have you checked?"
"This floor," Monica said. "We looked in both stairwells. Joey's checking the lobby."
"Which direction does the building face?" Ethan said.
"North," Monica said.
"His usual movement pattern when he's on the windowsill," Ethan said. "Which side does he always go to?"
"The west side," Monica said, immediately. "He likes the afternoon light."
"Then he went west," Ethan said. "Or tried to. Which means either another floor in this building, the alley on the west side, or—" He paused. "Is the roof accessible?"
Monica looked at him. "The maintenance door is sometimes propped."
"I'll take the roof," Ethan said. "Monica, you and Rachel take floors two and three again — knock on doors if you need to. Phoebe's on her way?"
"I called her," Monica said. "She's coming."
Chandler appeared from the hallway with the expression of a man who had just jogged up a flight of stairs. "Nothing on four. I asked Mrs. Kaminsky — she hasn't seen anything."
"Roof," Ethan said, already moving.
"I'll come," Chandler said.
Rachel caught Ethan's arm as he passed. "If Ross gets back before we find him—"
"We're going to find him before Ross gets back," Ethan said. "Don't tell Ross until we know something."
"And if we don't find him before—"
"Rachel," Ethan said. "We're going to find him."
He said it with the specific confidence of a man who had a reasonable basis for the statement, which he did — Marcel was a creature of habit and comfort, not an adventurer. He'd gone somewhere that felt like a reasonable extension of his usual territory. He wasn't lost in the way that was irreversible. He was lost in the way that was solvable.
He went up the stairs with Chandler behind him.
The roof door was, in fact, propped. A piece of folded cardboard in the latch, the kind of thing maintenance left when they were making multiple trips.
The roof was a tar surface with a low parapet wall and some HVAC equipment and, in the late afternoon March light, the specific quality of a New York rooftop that had been absorbing warmth all day. Ethan came through the door and stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust.
He heard it before he saw it.
The small, particular sound of a capuchin monkey who had found something interesting and was investigating it — a quick series of movements, a pause, another movement. Coming from the far corner where the parapet met the HVAC unit and the afternoon sun had been hitting the roof surface for the last three hours, making it the warmest spot available.
Marcel was sitting in the corner with his back against the warm concrete, holding what appeared to be a bottle cap he'd found somewhere, examining it with the focused interest of a creature for whom a bottle cap was genuinely worth examining.
He looked up when Ethan and Chandler came over.
He looked at the bottle cap.
He looked back at them.
"Marcel," Ethan said, in the calm, even tone he'd learned worked better than anything else. "Hey, buddy."
Marcel tilted his head.
Ethan crouched down to his level, not moving toward him, just being at the same height. "You find something good up here?"
Marcel held up the bottle cap. It glinted in the afternoon light.
"That's a quality find," Ethan said. "Can I see?"
Marcel considered this for a moment with the seriousness of someone weighing a real decision. Then he put the bottle cap in Ethan's hand.
Ethan looked at it. "Nice," he said, with complete sincerity.
Marcel made a small sound that communicated approval, reached over, and took it back.
Chandler, who had been watching all of this from two feet back, said very quietly: "Are you having a conversation with this monkey."
"Yes," Ethan said, also quietly.
"About the bottle cap."
"About the bottle cap," Ethan confirmed.
He extended his arm slowly. Marcel looked at it, looked at Ethan, and with the casual trust of a creature who had decided this was fine, climbed on.
Ethan stood up carefully. Marcel sat on his forearm and looked out at the rooftop with the expression of someone who had had a very satisfying afternoon and was ready to go home.
"Got him," Chandler said, with the exhale of a man releasing a significant amount of tension.
"Got him," Ethan said.
They came back down to find Rachel in the hallway outside Monica's apartment, wearing the expression of someone who had been waiting for news and had been dreading both possible versions of it.
She saw Marcel on Ethan's arm.
Something collapsed in her face — relief, mostly, but also the aftermath of the last hour, which had been its own particular kind of awful.
"He was on the roof," Ethan said. "He found a bottle cap. He was fine."
Rachel looked at Marcel, who looked back at her with the unconcerned expression of a creature who had been on an adventure and didn't fully understand why everyone seemed stressed about it.
"He's fine," Ethan said again, more gently.
Rachel nodded. Then she reached out and Marcel, apparently deciding this was acceptable, allowed her to take him.
She held him carefully, with the specific care of someone handling something that had nearly been lost and was now found, and Marcel sat in her arms with the bottle cap still in his hand and seemed, for the first time, entirely comfortable with Rachel.
Monica came out of the apartment, saw the situation, and closed her eyes briefly. Then she opened them and said: "Ross gets home in twenty minutes."
"Everything's fine," Ethan said.
"If he finds out about the shoe," Monica said.
"He won't find out about the shoe," Rachel said, with the voice of someone who had already handled the shoe situation and was confident in the handling.
"What happened to the shoe?" Chandler said.
"It's been addressed," Rachel said.
"How addressed?" Chandler said.
"Thoroughly addressed," Monica said, in the tone that communicated the subject was closed.
Chandler looked at Ethan. Ethan looked at Chandler.
"Shoe," Chandler said quietly.
"Don't ask," Ethan said.
They went inside. Marcel went back to his designated area with the bottle cap, which he placed carefully on the shelf in the way of someone filing an important document. The apartment settled back into its Sunday afternoon quality, slightly rattled but fundamentally intact.
Ethan sat down, picked up his coffee from where he'd left it — cold now, which was fine — and looked at the room.
Rachel on the couch with Marcel settled beside her, both of them apparently having come to some kind of arrangement over the course of the last twenty minutes. Monica back in the kitchen, the shoe situation resolved, the afternoon continuing. Chandler texting someone, or trying to write something, or both.
Five days to the defense.
He drank his cold coffee.
Good enough.
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