Wheeler offered to buy Apollo dinner, but Apollo suggested coffee instead. They crossed the street and walked toward Broadway—there was a Dunkin’ Donuts on 178th. As they moved, Alice looked up. Did she see him? She gave a faint wave, but maybe she was just stretching an arm. Julian stood beside her; they talked and looked around. Maybe they were wondering about him, where he’d gone. He’d write them later, on the Facebook page. For now he’d forge Father Hagen’s signature or Alice’s—he knew what hers looked like. Why hadn’t he thought of doing that right from the start? As long as he showed up with the signed paper, his PO would be fine. The man had a hundred other ex-cons to shepherd anyway. So Apollo went with William. For Apollo, getting back to business was the best way to survive.
Inside the Dunkin’ Donuts, most of the chairs were already occupied. Loners mostly. Almost all of them men. At night the place had the aura of a holding cell. Much less crowded than the ones on Rikers. They found the last empty table. Wheeler sat down and scanned the room like a CCTV camera. The workers behind the counter—all Bengalis—chatted with one another loudly, casually, but their puffy, glassy eyes betrayed their exhaustion. Finally Wheeler turned back to Apollo. “I’ve never been this far uptown in Manhattan.”
“Best roast chicken in New York is right on 175th,” Apollo said. “At Malecon.”
Wheeler nodded and grinned as one does when learning about something one will never try. He asked if Apollo wanted coffee, and before Apollo could answer, Wheeler had gone up to the counter to buy for both of them. He chatted with the cashier, who watched his lips move with great concentration as she translated and tried to make change.
“So I spent awhile on the phone with Patrice this morning,” Wheeler said when he returned with their coffees. “He served in Iraq, you know.”
“Yes,” Apollo said.
“Of course I thanked him for his service,” Wheeler said.
“He loves that,” Apollo said, trying not to laugh.
“Well, I certainly meant it,” Wheeler said earnestly, and Apollo’s laughter curdled. The man was sincere, and Apollo didn’t want to mock him for it.
“So you must really love Harper Lee,” Apollo said.
Wheeler nodded faintly, took two sips of his coffee, nodded again. “I’ll be totally honest with you,” he said. “To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the two books I’ve ever read for pleasure.” He leaned back in his chair. “That must sound pretty stupid to a man in your business.”
Apollo tapped the side of his coffee cup absently. “You’d be surprised how many book men aren’t readers. It’s not romantic to say this, but for a lot of the guys, the books are just things to sell. I’ve known some who go into fits talking about the condition of a book. What kind of endpapers it has. Whether it’s bound or just cased. Whether it has an insert or an inset. But if you ask what the book is actually about? Six out of ten have no idea and act like you’re stupid for thinking it matters.”
Wheeler brought his coffee cup to the side of his head and bumped it against his temple. “Boom,” he said. “You just blew my mind.”
They spoke like this for some time. Wheeler turned out to be a curious man. He found the book trade endlessly fascinating. And Apollo felt happy to talk about something, anything, that didn’t revolve around his grief. You could even say Apollo was having a good time with him.
“We had a drink with each other,” Wheeler said. “That’s a sign of trust.”
Apollo looked around the Dunkin’ Donuts. Wheeler had spoken so loudly, so lacking in any self-consciousness, that he seemed childlike. Apollo peeked at the lone men who still sat by the windows and caught two of them giving Wheeler a glance. Was Apollo being paranoid to think Wheeler had suddenly made himself seem like an easy victim? The kind of person they might follow outside and rob of his phone and wallet? Probably it was paranoia, and yet Apollo made sure that all of those men saw Apollo scoping them. Telling each, silently, He’s with me.
“Tell me where you found the book, would you?” Wheeler said, gulping down more coffee. “Tell me how it all came about.”
They’d been sitting for half an hour by now. Where else did Apollo have to be? He told him about the house in Riverdale.
“Imagine if you had given up after six boxes,” Wheeler said, sitting back in his chair and shaking his head in wonder.
“I wouldn’t have given up,” Apollo said. “Not with a child to feed.”
Here Apollo stopped speaking and reared up straight. Thirty minutes had passed without a direct thought about Brian. A new record. It had been a relief, he realized, but maybe also a betrayal. Why should he ever be without that pain? What gave him the right to enjoy anything?
Wheeler misread the moment, though. He grinned as he set his phone on the tabletop. “I have two daughters, so believe me, I understand.”
He opened his phone, found the gallery app. A limitless supply of photos of two no doubt lovely—and living—children was about to be revealed. Wheeler’s na?veté, his sweetness, were about to turn into tone deafness. Hadn’t the man heard Apollo talking in group therapy? Hadn’t he seen Apollo’s story all over the news?
In an instant Apollo tracked back over the way Wheeler had been speaking to him all this time. No sense of trepidation, no tone of grave concern or condolences. With a short sigh, Apollo realized this guy might not know who the hell he was. In group therapy he’d talked about the children’s book that Brian West used to read to him. Maybe Wheeler thought Apollo was just a guy with serious daddy issues. Which was also true. But this only made him like Wheeler more. He didn’t know a damn thing about Apollo’s story, or at least he didn’t care all that much. He only wanted to buy a rare book. Maybe this was what Patrice meant when he said he liked Apollo because he didn’t give a damn about his military service. Every human being is a series of stories; it’s nice when someone wants to hear a new one.
“I saw my daughter in the computer.” Wheeler shook his phone. “Oh damn it,” he said. He hadn’t brought up photos of his healthy children—instead he’d tapped the newest file in the gallery, a video. Made only an hour ago. “I turned on my laptop and there she was. My baby girl. A picture of her, out in the park with her grandparents.”
“I’m sorry!” Wheeler said, shaking his phone.
Wheeler moved to tap the screen, turn off the phone, but Apollo reached out and brushed his hand aside. He pulled the phone down so Wheeler had to lay it flat on the table. The image hardly registered, just blurs. Wheeler must’ve been making the video with the phone by his leg. Apollo had already forgotten nearly everything that woman had said. All but those last four words. It’s not a baby. Now he felt a morbid fascination growing as he waited to hear her say them again.
Another shift of the camera as Wheeler rose from his chair and moved back into a corner, and now the camera caught the scene: Father Hagen moving toward the woman. The other Survivors staring in shock. I once opened my Gmail account, he began.
“I don’t know why I taped this,” Wheeler said. “It’s a bad habit, I know. First thing I do when something strange happens is reach for my phone. I’m sorry. Let me delete it.”
Wheeler’s words drowned out Father Hagen’s Gmail anecdote.
“Wait,” Apollo said, and leaned closer to the phone. Wheeler did, too.