She smiled at him. It was a genuine smile. Genuinely felt by her, it seemed, and genuinely meant for him. At first he couldn’t imagine why she would do such a thing. Strangers didn’t generally smile at each other on the street. Not around here at least. Then her eyes flickered to a spot between Raymond and Mrs. G. Her gaze seemed to land on the place where their arms linked together.
Raymond understood then. She was smiling at him because he was helping a blind woman walk down the street. He might as well have been wearing a badge of good-boy-ness for everybody to see.
He smiled back, but it felt a little strained. Not natural. Maybe because he wasn’t used to doing it.
Then she had passed. The moment was over. He could only hope it was a good enough smile. That it had come out the way he’d meant it to.
“So will you still talk to Andre?” Mrs. G asked, bumping him out of his thoughts.
“I’m not sure. He said he would Skype. But he hasn’t yet.”
“What is this Skype? I feel as though I’ve heard of that, but I don’t know what it is.”
“It’s a computer application. You can talk to somebody on your computer. Sort of like you would talk to them on the phone. But no toll charges no matter where you are. And it’s a way to make a video call.”
“Meaning you can see each other?”
“Right.”
“Then I do know about this, yes. Luis told me about it. How he would talk to his brother in Minneapolis, and the kids—his nieces and nephews—would come up one by one so Luis could see how much taller they had grown. And I was so astonished. When I was a girl, this was what we had for . . . oh, what’s the word for what I mean to say? Like science fiction. This is how the maker of a movie or a television show would predict the future. You would call someone on the phone, and you would see them, and they would see you. And it was so hard for us even to imagine such a thing. Of course, they also told us we’d be driving flying cars, hovering all over the place, and they were wrong about that.”
“Maybe just as well,” Raymond said.
He watched the traffic and imagined it gaining and losing altitude. Having fender-bender accidents with the upper floors of apartment buildings, or with other flying cars, raining tires and bumpers and headlight glass onto the pedestrians below.
“I agree with you on that, my young friend.”
“Curb coming up,” he said.
They navigated the difficult crossing without any more extraneous conversation. They had to concentrate.
“So if that really was your only friend,” she said as they stepped onto safe sidewalk again, “I am very sorry that he is gone. Is it really so difficult for you to make friends with boys your own age? It’s just hard for me to imagine, based on the way you are with me.”
“Yeah, it is. They just . . . I don’t know. I’m just so different from them.” He almost elaborated, but stopped himself. Or, more accurately, the words stopped in spite of him. Came up into his throat and stuck. He hadn’t known her that long, after all. “The cat is my friend, though. And . . . I don’t know. Would it be weird if I said it feels like I’m friends with you now?”
“Not at all, Raymond, not at all. I am honored to be your friend if you want me to be.”
“I do,” he said.
They walked the rest of the way to the market in silence.
Raymond was exhausted. Not physically, but on the inside. Drained from the intensity of his day. And besides, nothing more seemed to need saying.
He barely made it home in time for dinner. And, in his house, that mattered. If you didn’t get back in time, you might not eat.
“You’re awfully late,” his mother said, eyeing him suspiciously.
“I was just out doing a favor for a friend.”
“New friend?”
“Yeah. New friend.”
“Well, I like seeing you have new friends, baby. But don’t cut it so close on dinner.”
“Okay,” he said. “Sorry.”
There it was again. The “sorry.” But maybe this one didn’t count. Because on the inside of the thing, he really wasn’t sorry at all.
Chapter Five
* * *
What Would You Think of a Boy Like That?
Raymond stood staring up at the apartment building. It made him feel intimidated, but not for the same reason the last building had. In fact, for exactly the opposite reason.
It was Saturday morning, and he had taken the subway to Midtown. He was only about six blocks from where his father lived. If his father and his new wife hadn’t been out of town for the weekend, Raymond could have walked. It was his weekend to be with his father, if his father had been home. They were going away more often on Raymond’s weekends, and Raymond blamed the new wife for it. He had a creeping sensation that she was doing it on purpose.
This time he felt as though the building were rejecting him. Judging him not good enough. As though the whole neighborhood were clutching its figurative purse more tightly under its arm and wondering who this interloper was and what he was doing here. And when he would give up and go away, so everything could breathe again.
To make matters worse, when he looked down he saw a uniformed doorman watching him. The man had not been at his post when Raymond had first walked up.
Raymond shoved the Spanish dictionary into his nearly empty backpack and moved closer to the man, who narrowed his eyes slightly. Almost imperceptibly.
“I’m looking for a Luis Velez,” Raymond said. “I need to talk to him for just a minute.”
“I can call up to him,” the doorman said, sounding skeptical, “but it’s up to the residents who I let up and who I don’t.”
“Thanks,” Raymond said.
He shoved his hands deep into his jeans pockets, as if preparing for a very long wait.
“Who shall I say is here to see him?”
“Raymond Jaffe. But he doesn’t know me. But just tell him I’m a friend of Millie G. If he’s the right Luis Velez, he’ll know exactly what I mean.”
The doorman stepped behind a podium-like desk, a bellman’s desk, and made his call, purposely turning his face away so Raymond couldn’t read his lips or hear what was said. A few seconds later he hung up the receiver and stepped out again. But he didn’t move closer to Raymond. He walked to the glass main doors of the building, which opened into the lobby. He swung one open and just held it that way. It took Raymond a moment to realize it was an invitation.