“He still needs to get to dinner on time,” Ed said.
“No. Absolutely not, Ed. Do not do that. You will not put your arbitrary rules on him when he’s going through a thing like this. Don’t you remember what it felt like to be in love? For the first time, I mean,” she added, stumbling and clearly embarrassed by what she had accidentally implied.
“You can stop talking about me now,” Raymond said. “Please? Because I’m coming in.”
Silence.
Raymond walked into the dining room and sat at his place at the table. Looked down at his plate. It was spaghetti with plain marinara sauce and garlic bread. He sighed as quietly as possible. He never liked the way he felt after eating a meal that was almost all carbs and almost no protein. And he never slept as well.
He took a big bite, then looked up, spaghetti still hanging on to his chin, to see his sister Rhonda smiling at him. But not in a good way. Tauntingly.
A second later Raymond watched a piece of garlic bread bounce off Rhonda’s forehead and tumble to the carpet.
“Leave your brother alone,” Raymond’s mother said.
Raymond paced as he waited. And paced. And paced.
It was pitch-dark out on the street in front of his building, but two streetlights shone on the scene. Raymond could see his breath. He hadn’t bothered to grab a jacket, and he was cold. But not enough to drive him back inside where he might chance missing her.
Neighbors were coming home from work, walking from the subway. A few Raymond knew by sight, but most he did not. So he looked into the face of each youngish woman and wondered if that might be her.
Then, when it was, he didn’t wonder. He knew. And she knew it was him. He could tell. They locked eyes and knew. Somehow their special knowledge was half of a match that identified them to each other, like the jagged-cut playing cards two strangers piece back together when they meet in a spy film.
Her long, dark hair was pinned up in the back. She wore an oversize light-blue down jacket. It did not reveal that she was pregnant. Her dark eyes looked wet, as though she had been crying, or was about to.
They walked closer to each other and stood a stride apart, saying nothing for a time. It seemed almost as though they didn’t need to speak.
He glanced again at her belly without meaning to.
“I’m only two months pregnant,” she said.
“Oh. Sorry.”
Another long, awkward silence.
“She lives on the second floor,” he said at last.
“Let’s go, then.”
They walked into Raymond’s building in silence.
“I’m sorry about all the stairs,” he said to her as they climbed to the second floor. “Some nicer apartments have elevators. But ours is just a walk-up.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” she said. “My apartment is a walk-up, too, and so is my parents’. But even if we had elevators, you don’t have to be sorry. You didn’t design the building, and I’m guessing you weren’t even the one who rented here. You live here with your parents, right? You had no choice in the matter.”
“You sound just like Mrs. G,” he said as they reached the second-floor landing. “She’s always saying I need to stop being so sorry for everything. Actually . . . a lot of people have been telling me that lately.”
“Then that’s probably an important thing for you to think about.”
Raymond looked away from her face and saw they were standing in front of Mrs. G’s door. It surprised him. It felt as though he had led her there on some kind of human autopilot.
He raised a hand to knock. But for a long moment he did not knock.
“Oh, I hate this,” he said.
“Has to be done, though,” Isabel said.
He knocked. His special Morse code knock. Rap. Rap-rap-rap. Rap.
He could hear her immediately on the other side of the door. Hear her make her way quickly across the living room. He could hear the bell on the cat’s collar as Louise skittered out of her way. At least, he hoped out of her way.
“Oh, good! Raymond!” she called to him through the door. She spoke to him as she undid the locks. “I thought maybe you would not come today. But I’m so glad you did. I’ve grown so used to having you come by to see me. I missed that, thinking you might skip today.”
As she spoke, Raymond could feel a pressure growing in his chest. As though his heart were being compressed in a vise. Or crushed by one of those huge machines that turn junk cars into cubes of metal.
She was happy.
They were about to end all that.
She threw the door wide and looked up at him with a face that gleamed. Her smile reminded him of Luis’s smile in the photo, in that it took over everything. Dominated her face until it became the only possible focus.
“Oh,” she said. “You have somebody with you.”
“Yeah,” Raymond said. “I do. I brought somebody. For you to meet. This is Isabel Velez.”
For a few seconds, her smile grew even wider and more beaming. Which Raymond would have thought impossible.
“Isabel Velez? Is that really you? Why, Luis told me so much about you that I feel as though I know you already! I’m so—” Then she stopped. Stopped talking. Stopped smiling. Stopped beaming. “Oh,” she said. “Oh. Oh. I see now. He’s gone. He’s really gone, isn’t he?”
Isabel Velez burst into tears. As literally as Raymond could imagine a person doing. A sob simply burst out of her and then she did not stop sobbing.
Mrs. G did not sob. In fact, she never made a sound. But her eyes filled and then spilled over.
Raymond watched dry-eyed for a few seconds. Then he worked hard to hold back tears. Then he decided it was not a thing worth working for, so he let them have their way.
As he stood, watching the two women and letting himself cry for the first time in as long as he could remember, he noticed something about himself. His self-consciousness, his physical self-awareness—it was gone. It must have been gone for approximately as long as he’d known Mrs. G. She had pulled him out of himself and set him down in a place that was not all about him anymore.
Chapter Nine
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