The microfilm machines were in a dim room in the back, big gray boxes with screens like televisions and cranks on the side. Miss Feeney showed him how to thread the film and turn the crank and focus, and then she went and got the index, a fat green book, and ran her finger down a column. "Calloway," she said. "Like the store? Calloway's, on Fifth? There's a lot here. What are you looking for?"
"Leland Calloway."
She raised her eyebrows but didn't ask. She wrote dates on a slip of paper and brought him three boxes of film.
He sat there for two hours. Outside the high window, the sky went from gray to dark. He learned that Calloway's department store had been started by Leland Calloway's grandfather in 1889, that it had eleven floors and the first escalator in western Pennsylvania and a Christmas window that people lined up around the block to see, that Leland Calloway had become its president in 1961 at the age of thirty-four. He found a photograph of him from 1965, cutting a ribbon on a new branch in Monroeville, and stared at it a long time: a tall, sharp-faced man with dark hair and a grin, squinting into the sun, his eyes very much looking at the camera. Next to him a woman in a pillbox hat was laughing. Mr. and Mrs. Leland Calloway, the caption said.
He found a small item from August 1972, on a business page: Calloway's President to Take Leave for Medical Treatment. It didn't say what for.
And then he found the one from January.
It was on page three of the Post-Gazette, Tuesday, January 16, 1973, at the bottom of the page, two short paragraphs, as if somebody had wanted it in the paper and somebody else had wanted it as small as possible:
STORE EXECUTIVE RETURNS HOME. Leland R. Calloway, 45, president of Calloway's department stores, returned to his Sewickley Heights home early Monday after being reported missing by his family Sunday afternoon. Police said Mr. Calloway, who is said to be suffering from a degenerative eye condition, had spent the night in the downtown area and was unharmed. A family spokesman declined further comment and asked that the family's privacy be respected.
Cal read it four times. He did the math, moving his lips, not caring who saw. January 1973. He'd been born in March.
He found one more thing before Miss Feeney came to tell him they were closing. It was from 1979. It was an obituary, with a photograph of the woman in the pillbox hat, older now, her hair gone silver. Margaret Ann Calloway, 51, of Sewickley Heights, beloved wife of Leland. Mrs. Calloway was active in the Pittsburgh Blind Association, where she served on the board from 1974 until her illness. There were no children listed. Just beloved wife of Leland, and a sister in Erie, and the name of a church.
"Find what you needed?" Miss Feeney asked, rewinding the film.
"I don't know," Cal said, and he didn't.
* * *
He went back on Saturday. He told his mother he was going to the library, which was true, because he went there first, for ten minutes, and stood in the lobby feeling like a liar anyway. Then he walked down Forbes and caught the bus to Liberty Avenue.