She laughed. “They’re fine. I promise. Come in. Luis is in a client meeting. I’ll have to leave a message for him. He might not get back to me until after the meeting’s over. You don’t want to stand out in the hall that whole time. Do you?”
“I guess not,” he said.
But it was sounding like a pretty good idea.
She turned and addressed the dogs. “Bed!” she barked.
The dogs’ ears flattened. First out to the sides, then back along their necks. They turned and slithered away, eyes full of the pain of rejection.
Against his better judgment, Raymond stepped in.
“I was just making breakfast,” she said as he followed her into the kitchen. It was huge, high-ceilinged. Painted a light lavender. It had an amazing view of Central Park. “Sit down. You want anything? Did you eat?”
While she spoke she rummaged around in her purse and came up with a cell phone.
“I had a granola bar,” he said. And sat.
“That’s not breakfast.”
“It’s what I usually have.”
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
“There’s nobody around to cook at that hour. And I don’t really cook. So I just grab one.”
“It’s not good enough,” she said. As though she could make the final pronouncement on such things, and her word was unassailable. She had the phone to her face now. “Yeah, hi, love. Me. So there’s this kid here. This nice young guy. He’s asking if you know a ninety-year-old woman over on the west side. Blind woman. Millie. I figure probably not, or you would’ve told me. But I never know with you. You have that anonymity thing going on. So I’m just going to feed this guy some breakfast. Apparently nobody feeds him. When you get out of your meeting, call me and let me know, okay? Because he came all the way over here. I figure the least we can do is get him an answer.”
She clicked off the call and leveled him with a direct gaze. Right into his eyes.
“You drink coffee?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Tea?”
“Sometimes I drink tea with milk and sugar.”
“Coming right up.”
Raymond stared out over the park as she cooked. Sipped his cambric tea and watched the world go by twenty-two floors below. The smells were making him hungry. The smells were making the dogs hungry, too. They slithered into the kitchen and lay prone at the woman’s feet, staring up at the stove. Wagging their tails.
Raymond was still terrified of them. But they had not so much as looked at him since he’d come inside, so it felt silly to be so afraid.
“So, where you live,” she said, “do you get what you need?”
Raymond swallowed a sip of tea through a sudden tightness in his throat. “I’m not really sure what you mean,” he said.
“I mean like breakfast. Do you have two parents?”
“Yes, ma’am. Three actually. My mom and stepdad. And then I see my father every other weekend.”
“Okay. So you have more than two parents. But none of them puts a good breakfast in your belly before you go out for the day? If I had a kid, I’d be covering all those bases. No offense to your folks. But really . . .”
“I think what they do is pretty normal,” Raymond said. Though, truthfully, he had no way to know. How do you gauge normal? To do so, you’d have to know how everybody else lives. “I grab a granola bar in the morning, then they make me a lunch to take to school.” Except on weekends, he thought, when he had to scrounge something up for himself. “And then they cook us a nice dinner every day. So, pretty normal, I think.” But when he was at his father’s he ate more. And better.
She was dishing breakfast up onto a china plate now. His breakfast or hers. He wasn’t sure.
“You know why I ask. Right?”
“Um. Not really.”
“You’re so skinny.”
“That’s just me. I could eat all day and never gain weight.”
“Then you should eat all day,” she said. “You’re a growing boy.”
She set the plate down in front of him. On it were two poached eggs, swimming in a golden sauce. Six spears of asparagus, also swimming. Both halves of a split and buttered English muffin.
“This looks great,” he said.
“Dig in. Don’t wait for me. Don’t let it get cold.”
He ate in silence while she dished up her own food. Stared down over the park and watched walkers and roller skaters and bikers glide up and down the paths. They looked like ants from this vantage point. The food was amazing. Rich and well seasoned. The eggs were cooked just right, with their whites completely solid, but with yolks that ran orangey, rich and liquid, when he stabbed them with his fork.
She sat down next to him and salted her food.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” he said. “It’s a lot of hospitality. Most people in the city, they don’t even let you in the front door. They figure, they don’t know you, and . . . well. You know.”
“I have the dogs,” she said, and left it at that.
Speaking of the dogs, they both sat at attention, staring. Shifting their gazes back and forth between Raymond and their owner as if watching a ball being lobbed back and forth over the net in a tennis match. Their tails wagged, making a swishing sound on the kitchen tiles.
“Bad boys,” the woman said. “No begging. Bed!” The dogs collapsed their ears and slunk away. “So, tell me about yourself, Raymond. That was your name, right? Raymond?”
“Yes, ma’am. But I’m not sure what there is to tell.”
“You’re in high school?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m a junior.”
“What do you go out for?”
“Go out for?”
“You know. What will it say in your yearbook? You went out for sports? Or you were in the chess club? Or on the debating team?”
“No, ma’am. Nothing like that. I’m afraid the yearbook people won’t have much to say about me.”
“So what do you do when you’re not in school?”
“Well. These days I help out this old woman.”