“Here,” Hector said, peeling off some bills. He didn’t want to deal anymore with this, with him. Nicholas quickly counted it: the equivalent of four hundred dollars.
“Can you spare another two or three? I’ll come tomorrow, I will. I want to see her. I have to. It’s the right thing to do.”
Although he had enough, Hector didn’t give him any more money, telling him he should ask for it himself. His expression must have hardened, for without further plea or argument Nick nodded, even extending his hand to Hector before peeling away in a puff of blue scooter smoke. Hector had taken it, but grudgingly, the truth already clear to him as he walked back to the hotel with Bruno: he would never have any feeling for the kid. No feeling at all. Hector thanked Bruno for his help, paying him for his time, and asked for his telephone number in case he needed him again. Bruno gave it to him but said he was rarely at home, promising to come by the hotel several times before the next day was up. He had not said a word while they were walking, but when he got behind the wheel of his taxi he stated plainly, “Forgive me, signore. But I must say this to you. That is a fright of a man. I would stay far away from him.”
Hector lightly rapped the top of the taxi and sent him off. Nick was not just a liar and a cheat, a world-class shit; he was a warning embodied, this alarm-in-the-flesh, a herald of no good that made even Hector’s own worn-down heart gallop and shudder. He should tell June he hadn’t found him, that there was no sign or further clue, and just take her straightaway to Solferino, where she could wait out her fast-dwindling time in peace. The boy would only bring her unhappiness. What struck him was how Nick didn’t in the least try to hide the fact from him, as if he believed that they were somehow allied in regard to his mother, that Hector, too, was angling for something. Had Nicholas picked up on their connection, some whiff of their relation? Or was it something equally evident in Hector, his tumbled, blunted self, ludicrously wrapped in a brand-new creased shirt and cuffed trousers, this fellow masquerading as someone who could help fulfill a dying woman’s hopes?
He passed the residenza office and the woman inside called after him as he ascended the stairs; she spoke only Italian and he assumed she was telling him about the laundry, for she gestured upstairs and then down. He thanked her and she kept talking as he went up. But when he reached the second-floor landing he realized that the laundry couldn’t possibly have been both washed and dried already, for he’d been gone just over an hour. And then he saw what she must have been talking about: the heavy door of their room was ajar. He could see light from inside casting a weak beam on the carpeting of the darkened corridor. He pushed inside.
The draperies of one of the tall, grand windows directly opposite the door had been drawn back a few inches. Their mostly emptied bags were as he’d left them in the sitting area, set between the sofa and armchair, but he noticed her purse was not on the coffee table where he had last seen it. He was holding most of the cash, but she had all the traveler’s checks. Across the lengthy space of the suite he could dimly make her out on the bed, lying on her side with her back to him. When he approached her he saw the purse on the night table. It was open, and though her wallet was still there, the envelope containing the traveler’s checks was gone.
“Are you back already?” she murmured, turning to him, her eyes heavy with sleep and with the drug. Her words were blunted and slurred, running together. “Did you get one for yourself, too?”
“Get what?” Hector said.
“Oh,” she said, staring at him as if she had forgotten his name, even his face.
“It’s Hector,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” she said, though she still didn’t seem to register him. “Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Nicholas. He said you sent him right over. He’s gone to get me a treat. It seemed like a dream but I’m sure it was real. Do you think it was a dream?”
“No,” he said, his anger at himself burning inside his chest. Nicholas must have ridden right over on the scooter while he and Bruno had walked back.
“He didn’t have any money for the gelato,” she said. “I gave him a traveler’s check. I signed it for him.”
“More than one?”
“Yes, I guess so. I don’t know. Do you think they’ll let him use them?”
“They might.”
“I hope so. God, I’m so tired,” she groaned. “I want to wait for him but I have to sleep. I’d love some gelato. Will you make sure to let him back in? Please wake me up when he comes. Will you? I’m so hungry.”
“Okay.”
She closed her eyes. She shivered a little, and so he folded the quilted bedspread from one side of the bed over her. Then he closed the draperies and sat near her in the dark for a long while, thinking about what he would do. He’d search out the nightclubs, as Bruno suggested. He would find him, and not to retrieve any money. Let him have the money. It was by all rights his, anyway. There was no lesson to be offered; Nicholas was certainly beyond any instruction, or shaming. Still, when it came time, he wondered whether he would lose control and try to beat some decency into him. He’d never raised his fists for something as righteous as that. And he kept hearing again his father’s high, rye-soaked voice chirping into his ear while he shouldered him home. You think you’re going to get away with it, boy? You think it doesn’t apply to you? Hector had never bothered asking what exactly his father meant by it, but now, seeing June’s utter frailness, the sad, blunted topography of her beneath the bedspread, her desperate need to believe, he thought he understood at last what his old man had been talking about: life.
Life, still undefeated. Not just for June but for him, too. He had never gotten away with anything, could point to most every instance in his days as evidence of such. His odd father had madly suspected he was some kind of immortal, if a lowly one, but maybe his peers (in the army, at Smitty’s) had like notions after certain miraculous escapes, the almost instantly healing wounds; maybe some unlucky women had caught an aura gracing him, this gleam of persistence. But any persistence, he knew, wasn’t his own doing. He’d never asked for such endurance. All concerned would have been better off had he perished during the war, or in the orphanage fire, or under the bumper of Clines’s car, instead of innocent Dora. And so now, at this sojourn’s end, eyeing June’s demise, he was ready to cast off whatever mantle had been mysteriously bestowed on him. He would disappear along with her. To hide wouldn’t be enough. Another good person would happen across his dooming path, start the cycle again. While driving them here he had circled around the way it would happen, but now he was settling on the idea. His was juvenile imagining but he knew it would have to be catastrophic: accelerate before a tight hill turn and burst through the railing. Wind heavy chains around his ankles to bury himself at sea. Drape his head over the steel train track and listen for the clang. He had tried in earnest, in fact, soon after Sylvie died, looping a rope over a tree limb far away from the orphanage (so no kids would have to see him), cinching the noose, but when he kicked away the stool he’d brought with him the cords of his neck sprang up in protest and jacketed his windpipe and after a while he had to cut himself down, his skin abraded in a mocking necklace of futility, his heart sodden with the full deadweight of defeat. For what was worse than dying, if not being able to die?
But there would be no more enduring for him now.
June stirred, moaning terribly. He could already tell the kind of cry; the morphine was wearing off.
“Nicholas?” she gasped. “Are you here?”