The Immortalists(78)

‘I have a gun,’ says Daniel. ‘Get dressed.’ Already, he’s disgusted by her. Her foot is bare, the heel rough and cracked. ‘We’re going to talk.’

He brings her into the living area and tells her to sit on the couch. She carries the navy comforter from the bedroom and keeps it wrapped around her shoulders. Daniel removes the black shades from the windows, so that he can see her better in the moonlight.

She’s still heavy, though perhaps she looks larger this way, swaddled in the comforter. Her hair is white and unkempt and hangs down to her breasts; her face is covered with delicate, capillary wrinkles, so precise they could be drawn by pencil. The flesh beneath her eyes is a sallow pink.

‘I know you.’ Her voice is rusty. ‘I remember you. You came to see me in New York. You had your siblings, they were there. Two girls and a little boy.’

‘They’re dead. The boy, and one of the girls.’

The woman’s mouth is pursed. She shifts beneath the comforter.

‘I know your name,’ Daniel says. ‘It’s Bruna Costello. I know your family, and what they’ve done. But I want to know about you. I want to know why you do what you do, and why you did what you did to us.’

The woman’s mouth is set. ‘I don’t got nothing to say to you.’

Daniel takes the gun out from inside his jacket and fires two bullets into the aluminum floor. The woman shrieks and covers her ears; the comforter falls to one side. There’s a scar, white and shiny like dried glue, beneath her collarbone.

‘That’s my home,’ she says. ‘You got no right to do that.’

‘I’ll do worse.’ He points the gun at her face, its barrel level with her nose. ‘So let’s start with the basics. You come from criminals.’

‘I don’t talk about my family.’

He points upward, fires again. The bullet explodes through the roof and whistles in the air outside. Bruna screams. With one hand, she pulls the comforter up over her shoulders again; she holds the other out straight, her palm facing Daniel like a stop sign.

‘Drabarimos, it’s a gift from God. My family wasn’t using it right. They’re backward, they’re dishonest, they hit and run. I don’t do nothing like that. I talk about life, and God’s blessings.’

‘You know they’re locked up, don’t you? You know they’ve been caught?’

‘I heard. But I don’t talk to them. I got nothing to do with it.’

‘Bullshit. You stick together, you people, like rats.’

‘Not me,’ says Bruna. ‘Not me.’

When Daniel lowers his gun, she drops her hand. In her eyes, Daniel sees a gloss of tears. Perhaps she’s telling the truth. Perhaps her family feels as remote to her as Klara and Simon and Saul do to Daniel – like part of another lifetime.

But he can’t become soft. ‘Is that why you left home?’

‘That’s part.’

‘Why else?’

‘ ’Cause I was a girl. ’Cause I didn’t wanna be nobody’s wife, nobody’s mother. Starting seven years old, you’re cleaning the house. Eleven, twelve, you’re working; fourteen, married. Me, I wanted to go to school, be a nurse, but I didn’t have no education. All it was was “Shai drabarel, shai drabarel?” Can she tell fortunes. So I ran. I did what I knew, I gave readings. But I says to myself, I’ll be different. No charge if I don’t have to. No witchcrap. There was a client I had for years, I didn’t ask her once to pay me. I says to her, “Teach me. Teach me how to read.” She’s laughing: “Palms?” “No,” I tell her. “The newspaper.” ’

Bruna’s mouth quivers. ‘I’m fifteen,’ she says, ‘living in a motel. I can’t write an advertisement. I can’t read a contract. I’m learning, but I look at what you got to do to be a nurse, college and like that, and here’s me leaving school at seven. I know I can’t do it; I know it’s too late. So I says to myself, Okay, I have the gift – I still have that. Maybe it’s all how I use it.’

At the end of this monologue, she deflates. He can tell how miserable she is, forced to share it with him.

‘Keep going,’ he says.

Bruna inhales with a wheeze. ‘I wanted to do something good. So I think, Okay: What do nurses do? They help people, people who suffer. Why do they suffer? ’Cause they don’t know what’s gonna happen to them. So what if I can take that away? If they have answers, they’ll be free, is what I thought. If they know when they’ll die, they can live.’

‘What do you want from the people who come to you? Not money – so what?’

‘Nothing.’ Her eyes bulge.

‘Bullshit. You wanted power. We were kids, and you had us eating out of the palm of your hand.’

‘I didn’t make you come.’

‘You advertised your services.’

‘I did not. You found me.’

Her face is animated and indignant. Daniel tries to remember if this is true. How did he hear of her? Two boys in a deli. But how did they hear of her? The trail must lead back to Bruna.

‘Even if that were true, you should have turned us away. We were children, and you told us things no child should hear.’

‘Kids, they all think about death. Everyone thinks about it! And the ones that make their way to me – they got their reasons, every one of ’em, so I give ’em what they came for. Children are pure in their wishes – they got courage; they want knowledge, they’re not afraid of it. You were a bold little boy, I remember you. But you didn’t like what you heard. So don’t believe me, then – don’t believe me! Live like you don’t believe me.’