Have You Seen Luis Velez?(40)

“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




* * *





The Brooklyn Bridge

“I could tell you a lot more,” he heard Isabel say. “If you wanted me to. A lot more detail. But maybe it’s better if I don’t.”

Raymond was in the kitchen fixing cookies and tea for the three of them. He had watched Mrs. G make tea enough times to know how it was done. And he had wanted to make himself scarce while Isabel told Mrs. G what had happened to Luis. Still, he could hear everything that was said in the next room, where the two women sat at the table.

“First I’d want to be sure you really care to hear more,” Isabel added. “The details are hard, I know. It’s all so hard for me to say, and I can only imagine how hard it must be for you to hear. But one thing I really need to say is that I would’ve come sooner if I could have. Luis’s phone was destroyed in the shooting, and he didn’t have his contacts backed up anywhere else. If I’d known where to find you, I would have come right away. Like I said to Raymond, Luis would roll over in his grave if he thought you were here alone, with no one to walk you to the store.”

“What I want you to tell me,” Mrs. G said, “is how all of this has been for you and your family. How are you getting by? Do you have someone to help look after the children? Are you all right day to day? Is there anything I can do?”

Raymond missed most of the answer because the teakettle boiled on the stove. It whistled when it was ready. Raymond turned off the gas flame and used an oven mitt to pick up the kettle to pour. The handle got hot.

Then he hung in the kitchen a moment too long. The tea was steeping. The cookies had been arranged on a plate. It was time to rejoin them. But he couldn’t bring himself to do so. He felt as though the women were enjoying a moment of privacy that he might inadvertently shatter.

“How did you find me now, then?” Mrs. G asked. Strangely belatedly.

“I didn’t. I didn’t find you at all. Raymond found me.”