Above the roof, I heard a crunching noise, and the car came to an abrupt halt. The number 14 had been lit for a moment, perhaps more than a minute. I wanted to believe that someone on floor 14 had called the elevator, but I knew that wasn’t true. By my estimation, I was in between floors 14 and 15, and I wasn’t going to be getting any farther for a while.
“Perfect,” I said.
When I finally arrived on the 26th floor, I saw Cicero immediately, sitting in the open door of his apartment, talking with a young black woman who stood outside the closed door of the apartment across the hall. She was about 21 or 22, striking in a two-piece outfit of bronze and gold, a sleeveless shirt and wide-legged pants over low-heeled boots. She held her keys in one hand and a take-out bag in the other, seemingly home late from an office job. As I approached, she looked at me, expectant.
Cicero made the introduction. “Sarah, this is Soleil, my neighbor,” he said. “Soleil, this is Sarah.”
“Hey,” I said.
“Good to meet you,” Soleil said. “I better be going,” she told Cicero, and unlocked her door.
Cicero put his hands on the wheels of his chair and backed up through his doorway, but he was slow enough doing it that I heard an odd sound behind me as Soleil went into her apartment. It sounded like claws ticking speedily across linoleum. I turned to see that in fact a big, fireplug-bodied black-and-tan dog had rushed to greet Soleil, and she’d gone down to sit on her heels, where he licked her face in the kind of reunion ecstasy that only dogs can feel. “That’s my bwoy,” she said, giving the last word a Caribbean twist.
Cicero closed his door, shutting out the spectacle.
“That was a dog,” I said.
“Yes, it was.”
“Not just any dog,” I said. “That was a Rottweiler.”
“Indeed it was. Fidelio, by name.” Cicero rolled closer to the center of his living room.
“Dogs are allowed in this building?” I asked.
“No,” Cicero said. “You disapprove?”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “I like dogs. I’m just surprised she’s getting away with it. It’s hard to hide a dog that size. He must need to be walked and everything.”
Cicero nodded. “And eventually she’ll get caught. But not because of me or anyone on this floor. Fidelio’s well behaved, and this is a live-and-let-live place,” Cicero said. “The only thing I had to tell her is, he can’t come in here.”
“Why not?”
“Sanitary reasons. No dogs in the exam room.”
“Of course,” I said, and then we fell into a moment of silence. I took out my billfold. “So,” I said, “how much for tonight’s visit?”
“Forty,” Cicero said. “I’ll be right with you.”
He rolled over to his kitchen sink. I took out two twenties and laid them on the shelf, stood awkwardly in Cicero ’s living room, wishing he kept more personal items out on display so I could pretend to study them. Anything to sandbag against the memory of intimacy that threatened like a silent wall of water. Cicero was doing an excellent job of not showing any sign that he remembered that we’d slept together two nights ago. I was having a little more difficulty with that. Maybe what Shiloh didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, but that was a facile, easy excuse and it gave me no comfort.
I drew a deep, steadying breath. Cicero, washing up at his kitchen sink, misinterpreted it.
“Don’t be nervous,” he said, over the sound of running water. “I expect this to be painless.”
“That’s what doctors always say,” I told him.
“No, we say, ‘This won’t hurt a bit,’ ” he corrected me.
I laughed. “Sorry I’m late, by the way. I got stuck in your elevator.”
I’d intended to entertain him with the story of how the emergency phone hadn’t worked and I’d been rescued by a pair of teenage residents with a pry bar, who’d forced open a gap about the size of a doghouse door, and how I’d lowered myself awkwardly down to the fourteenth-floor hallway. But Cicero turned so sharply, the words died on my lips.
“You did?” he said.
“What’s wrong?” I said. “It was just an inconvenience.”
Cicero shook his head and rolled back into the living room. “That elevator’s a goddamned menace,” he said vehemently. “You’re the third person I’ve heard about that’s been trapped.” He rummaged in his supply chest, shook down a thermometer. “Okay, put this under your tongue.”
“I don’t have a temperature.”
“Sarah, quit doing my job for me.” There was a bit of iron in his voice now. Meekly, I complied.
Cicero took his time inspecting my ear. Then he took the thermometer from my mouth. He read it silently. When he spoke it was to ask me questions about symptoms I’d had in the past two days: dizziness, pain, difficulty or anomalies in my hearing? I told him no to all those inquiries, and that yes, I’d been taking my antibiotics.
He put the thermometer and the otoscope away.
“Well, your temperature is 98.6, your ear looks very nice, and you sound like you’re doing quite well,” he said. “You heal fast.” He took out his legal pad and wrote again.
“What are you writing?” I asked.
“Just notes,” he said. “Even though you’re reportedly ‘never sick,’ you may need to come see me again someday, given your aversion to traditional doctors.”
“I hope not to,” I said. “No offense.”
“Still, do you mind if I ask a few questions, like a medical history, in case I see you again?”
Something about the idea made me nervous; Cicero saw it. “They’re just for my private use,” he said. “No one else will see them.”
What the hell, all he would ask about was my health history, which was extremely uneventful. And he was right: I might need to see him again someday. “All right,” I said.
The first questions were easy.
“Last name?”
“Pribek.” I spelled it for him.
“Age?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Known allergies?”
“None,” I said.
“Are your parents living?”
I shook my head again.
“What were the causes of death?” he asked me.
“My father had a heart attack a few years ago. My mother-” I swallowed. “My mother died of ovarian cancer.”
“Were you a child?”
“At one time, sure, we all were,” I said, trying to make a joke of it.
“I mean, when your mother died, were you a child?” He wouldn’t let me evade it.
“I was nine.” My throat felt stiff, and I wasn’t sure why. I’d told this to other people before.
“Siblings?” Cicero asked quietly.
“One brother, he’s dead,” I said, and quickly added, “An accident, not related to any health concerns.” Buddy had died in a helicopter crash in the Army, and I didn’t want to answer any more questions about him.
“What about your husband, how long has he been in prison?”
“Five months,” I said. Quickly I lowered my head. “Sorry, I think I’ve got something in my eye,” I said, rubbing wetness away.
“Are you in contact with him at all?”
“No,” I said.
My head was in my hands now. We were both still trying to pretend: Cicero was pretending to take a medical history, and I was pretending I wasn’t crying.
“But you’ve got plenty of friends in the Cities you can talk to?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Oh,” Cicero said.
“You do an interesting medical history,” I said, my voice wet.
It’s hard for people in wheelchairs to enfold people, so Cicero reached across the space between us to rub between my bowed shoulder blades and stroke my hair. “Okay,” he said softly. “Okay.”