“I think so.”
“You may want to leave him a note. He’s on a job. It’s a round robin. He’s taking a fare to New York International.” Hortense handed Calla a pad. She wrote down her information and handed it back.
“Borelli. I wonder if there’s any Italians left in Italy. Do you think they all came to America?”
“I don’t know. Lots of us did. I haven’t been to Italy.”
“It’s an interesting question, though, isn’t it?”
“It is.” Calla felt scrutinized under Hortense’s intense stare. “Is there something wrong? I feel like my slip is hanging or something.”
“No, Miss Borelli, your slip is fine. I’m just looking at you. I do that with folks.”
“It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Mooney.” Calla forced an awkward smile and backed out of the office.
Hortense went to the window and watched Calla as she went down the steps and out of the garage.
*
Nicky drove through Ambler, a quiet suburb of Philadelphia, its winding streets paved with fresh macadam and lined with sycamore trees. The green lawns that hemmed the stone houses were more carpet than grass. He let out a low whistle, imagining the price tag of a home in this neighborhood.
He slowed down as he counted the house numbers until he found 17 Mackinaw Street, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Gary Allison. Hortense assigned the airport runs into New York International to Nicky, knowing that the tips were generous and he needed the extra money to save up for his honeymoon. She had done the same for his cousins when they were engaged to be married. Hortense was considerate that way.
Nicky confirmed the Allisons’ address when he saw three tan suitcases lined up on the walkway of a Georgian home whose front door gaped open.
Nicky jumped out of the cab and was loading the luggage into the trunk when a petite blond woman waved urgently at him from the porch.
“Hurry!” she shouted.
Nicky ran up the front walk and into the house.
“There’s something wrong with my husband,” Mrs. Allison exclaimed. Around forty, she wore a navy blue suit and held her hat, a small cloche with a bold white band, in her hand. Her husband sat in a chair, holding his head in his hands.
“Sir?”
The man looked up at Nicky. His eyes were clouded and unfocused.
“We’ll be late for the airplane,” his wife said nervously.
“Your husband needs to go to the hospital.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“We should go right away.”
Nicky helped the man to his feet, assisted him down the walk, and eased him into the backseat of the cab. His wife ran around to the passenger door and jumped in next to her husband.
Nicky put on the emergency lights and peeled through the streets of Ambler as Mrs. Allison shouted directions to the hospital.
Nicky could hear Mrs. Allison gently coaching her husband. “Gary, hold on, we’re almost there,” she said between commands.
Nicky checked his passenger in the rearview mirror. He was slumped over in his wife’s arms.
“Please hurry,” she pleaded.
Nicky pulled out of the line of cars at the red light and sped on the shoulder past them. He was making the turn for the hospital when the wife cried out.
Nicky pulled up to the entrance of the emergency room, jumped out of the car, and ran inside to find a doctor. He came back outside, ran to Mr. Allison’s side of the car, and opened the door.
“Help is on the way,” Nicky said to Mr. Allison, whose wife was crying and patting her husband’s face and hands, trying to rouse him.
“We’re losing him. Gary, wake up,” she said desperately.
Nicky checked the man’s pulse, as he had been trained to do when he was in the army. He touched the man’s neck, one side and then the other, and with the other hand, his wrist. There was barely a flutter.
“Did you find a pulse?” his wife asked.
Nicky closed his eyes to concentrate, to try to feel a faint tap against his fingers.
“Out of the way,” the medic barked. Nicky stepped away from the car as a flurry of hospital staff, including a nurse overseeing the maneuver, transferred the man from the cab to a gurney.
The wife jumped out of the cab, now frantic. She shouted at the medic, as though this turn of events was somehow his fault, asking if he knew what he was doing, as if his skill alone could change the outcome.
A nurse lifted a sheet folded into a triangle from the foot of the gurney. The wind kicked up as she unfurled the sheet in the air. It billowed like immaculate white angel wings against the blue sky.
Nicky heard the flapping of wings over the shouting of the medic, the creaky wheels of the gurney, the desperate pleas of the wife, and the firm orders of the nurse. The attempt to save the dying man seemed to be happening under glass. Nicky looked up, searching the sky for the origin of the sound of the wings, but there was nothing but blue.
The wife ran alongside the gurney as the staff pushed it through the doors of Abington Hospital.
Nicky stood in the spot where he had moved to get out of the way of the medic. He did not move until an ambulance arrived and needed the space. He closed the doors of the cab and parked in a spot near the entrance. He removed the Allisons’ luggage from the trunk and carried the suitcases into the hospital. Once inside the hospital, he sat in a chair with a clear view of the doors to the examining rooms and waited. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, as he hadn’t checked his watch.
All sorts of wounded people came into the hospital as he sat. A woman ran in with her hand wrapped in a bloody dishtowel. A boy around seven, holding an ice pack to his mouth where a baseball had split open his lip, was cradled in his father’s arms. The boy’s mother rushed alongside them, having remembered to put the tooth that was knocked out in a glass of milk, preserving the root. Later still, a woman arrived whose face had drooped with palsy. Her gray skin looked like it was made of wet clay, as though an artist had pinched her face into its odd shape on his way to sculpting something of symmetry and beauty.
The day shift changed to night at the admittance desk before Nicky’s fare, Mrs. Allison, the woman who had not put on her hat, who had not made it to New York International Airport with her husband and suitcases, eventually emerged through the doors. She looked tiny, like a delicate bird made of blown glass, the kind that dangles from a chandelier, so fragile that light might go through it.
Nicky stood, holding his cap.
She went to him. “You waited for me?”
“To see if there was anything I could do.”
“He’s gone.”
Nicky nodded. “I’m sorry. I wish I would have called an ambulance.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered.”