“Well, yes and no,” she said, still smirking. “Regardless, you’re supposed to be where you’re supposed to be.”
He stood a minute, silently, waiting to see if she really meant he had to leave. She made no moves toward ejecting him.
“I was wondering if there was an English-Spanish dictionary I could check out,” he said. “Or even a phrasebook.”
“You’re learning Spanish?”
“I’d like to, yeah.”
“Are you taking Spanish?”
“No. I’m taking Latin. But I have less and less idea why every day. Because nobody speaks Latin.”
“But it’s the root of all the other languages.”
“That’s what my Latin teacher keeps telling me.”
“I agree that Spanish is very useful. And we have three dictionaries. But they’re reference only. I can’t check them out to you.”
“Oh,” Raymond said, and dropped his head, telegraphing his disappointment.
“But . . . I don’t know. How long do you need it?”
“Just three or four days. Till I get my allowance. Then I’ll buy my own.”
“Promise you won’t let me down on this? You’ll bring it back in good condition and buy a replacement if anything happens to it?”
“Yes, ma’am. I promise.”
“It’s so rare for guys your age to come in here and show an interest in language, and tell me they’re wanting to learn something when they’re not even being graded on it. It’s inspiring for someone like me. So I’m going to quietly hand you one. But the arrangement is strictly between you and me. And it’s going to be back in less than a week with no problems. Right?”
“Yes, ma’am. I promise. I won’t let you down. Thank you.”
Raymond practiced on the subway ride. Out loud, but under his breath.
“Me llamo Raymond Jaffe. Luis Velez, está él aquí?”
A Latina woman sitting next to him, bouncing a baby on her knee, glanced over at him and smiled.
“Está aquí,” she said. Or, at least, that’s what it sounded like she said. Like all one word, really. “Estaquí.”
“That’s how you say it?” he asked her.
“Pretty much. Otherwise it sounds like you’re talking out of a dictionary.”
“Well . . . I am.”
She smiled again.
“Okay, thanks,” he said. “I mean . . . muchas gracias.”
“De nada. Or you can be a little more formal and say ‘No hay de qué.’”
“But then I might sound like I’m talking out of a dictionary.”
“I think you run that risk either way,” she said. But her smile told him not to take it as an insult.
Even her baby smiled at him. She was a beautiful little girl, maybe a year old, with curly hair and gold studs in her ears. Raymond smiled back.
The subway train squealed to a halt.
“Oh, this is my stop,” he said, and jumped to his feet.
“Buena suerte,” she said.
“I don’t know that one.”
“Good luck.”
“Oh. Thank you. I mean, gracias.”
He sprinted off the train car before the doors could close again.
As he vaulted up the stairs to the street, two at a time, he wondered how the woman knew he needed luck. She had no idea what Raymond was about to do. Did he really look that scared?
Probably, he figured.
He came up onto the street and looked around.
He was in a part of town he’d never seen before. At least, not as far as he could remember. He wasn’t comforted by what he saw. Even compared to his own neighborhood, it did not feel good. A young man stood on a street corner, glancing around nervously. Possibly selling. Raymond, who had never dared to try drugs, wasn’t sure he knew the sale of them when he saw it. One in every three or four buildings had its windows boarded up. Kids played in a vacant corner lot overflowing with old cars, couches . . . seas of garbage. Elderly men and women leaned out of open second-and third-floor windows, yelling at the kids in the street, or just watching the world from a safe vantage point.
Raymond almost turned around and headed back down into the subway. But he wasn’t sure how he would live with himself if he didn’t even try. If he didn’t even go to the first address.
Heart hammering—fearful of people under the most familiar of circumstances—he walked along the sidewalk. He kept his head down, his eyes averted. From what, he wasn’t sure. Everybody and everything. He tried to convey that he meant no trouble to anyone, and wanted no trouble. He did his best to disappear.
He compulsively glanced again and again at his list until he found the building that matched the first address—as though he could not be trusted to hold four numbers in his head for a few seconds.
He climbed the ten concrete stairs to the front door of the apartment building. Of course, it was locked.
He scanned the directory for 3A. It said “Luis A. Velez.” Just like it was supposed to say.
Raymond breathed a sigh of relief and pressed the buzzer.
“Hola,” a voice said. It was the same woman he had spoken to on the phone, in what he still hoped was a local call. Raymond would never hear the end of his stepfather’s annoyance if it was not.
“Luis Velez, estaquí?” he asked, running the words together the way the woman on the train had.
“Sí,” she said.
She buzzed him in.
Raymond stepped into the dim, grimy hallway and smelled something that made his head throb. That made him feel a little dizzy. He started up the stairs slowly, his heart battering around in his chest, and climbed to the third floor.
He stood in front of the door at 3A, poised to knock.
Then, as he had done at the top of the subway stairs, he almost turned and ran away again. But an image of the old woman flooded in behind his eyes. Mrs. G, he had taken to calling her in his head, because he could never be sure he was remembering her last name correctly. In his mind, he saw her wring her hands the way she always did when she was thinking of Luis. When she was wondering what had happened to him.
Which would be worse? Raymond wondered. If something terrible really had happened to Luis? Or if it turned out Mrs. G wasn’t as important to Luis as she thought she was?
He knocked on the door.