Have You Seen Luis Velez?(39)

“Yes. Both. We go out every couple of days for groceries. And . . . I’ve been wondering about laundry. Should I be helping her do her laundry?”

“Don’t worry about laundry, because Luis talked her into using a service that picks it up and brings it back clean. Well, a thousand blessings on you, then, Raymond, because I worried so much about that. About her. I swear Luis would roll over in his grave if he thought that sweet old woman was home alone with no one to help. Maybe trying to cross the street by herself, which eventually she would have been desperate enough to do. So tell me something else, Raymond. I know you just now found out what happened. That’s what you said in your note. So have you told her yet?”

Raymond swallowed hard. Felt a frightened tingling sensation rise up through his belly. Into his throat.

“Not yet,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I swear I was going to. Right after dinner. In my family you have to show up in time for dinner if you expect to eat. I had like six or seven minutes to spare. I couldn’t go tell her and then just disappear. Leave her alone with all that. So instead I found the newspaper article. I thought I’d print it out so I could answer as many of her questions as possible. I was going to go right after dinner, I swear I was. I’m really sorry. I wasn’t trying to—”

“Raymond,” she said, her voice interrupting him, but gently. “Relax. I wasn’t criticizing. It’s just . . . I want to come meet her as soon as possible. So I was thinking, if you want, I’ll tell her. Or at least be there with you when you tell her.”

Raymond closed his eyes and breathed. Gasped air, really. He’d had no idea he’d been holding his breath.

“Yes, please,” he said.

“Okay. Give me your address. I’ll ask my mom to watch the kids. But I might have to run their baths first or get them started on their homework. I could be there in maybe an hour. I know it used to take Luis twenty minutes on the subway.”

While he recited his address by rote, his mind miles away, he imagined her coming to his door. Meeting his parents. Who thought he had a new girlfriend. And there she would be. In her thirties. And pregnant.

“I’ll meet you on the street out front,” he said.



As he moved toward the kitchen doorway to join his family in the dining room, he heard his mother and stepfather talking about him.

“Well, he’s obviously in love,” his mother said, clearly talking to Ed. It was not the tone she would take with her children. “When he came home today he was just ruined. Just destroyed. I’ve never seen him look so down. They must’ve had a fight. And then she calls on the phone . . .”

“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.”