“Please, Hector,” she said, fearfully gripping at the weather-worn face of the granite. Though it was only slightly canted she was certain she was about to slide off. Her mind was racing, desperate not to focus on the horizon. “Please climb back up. We still have many miles to go to Solferino. I won’t talk about you and Nicholas anymore. I’ll shut up, I swear. Let’s go now, all right? Please, Hector? I don’t like it up here…”
She started to cry, the sudden flood of which took her by surprise, for there was no calculation or aim behind it, no stratagem, just the involuntary release of someone who was genuinely spent. Her cheek lay against the warmed rock, this giant headstone. A marker for them both. She was going to witness him disappear, fall away from existence. But then he stood up and without the least regard for his precipitous position or the poor footing he simply turned and hauled himself up onto the ledge.
“Okay, now,” he said, his hand heavy on her back, “take it easy.”
“I’m so sorry for what I’ve done.”
“You’ve done nothing to me.”
“I have!”
“I’ll handle it.”
“It’s not about Nicholas!” she gasped. She was going to say more, to tell him everything, but she was coughing hard, just as she had begun to over the past few days, the one store of energy left to her, hacking violently enough that some blood was starting to come up, and he gathered her in his arms and held her up so she wouldn’t buck herself against the rock.
“What is it, then?” he murmured, his eyes wide but lit inside by a flicker of dread. “Is it about her?”
But she could not talk, could hardly breathe, and he kept patting her gently on the back, caressing her, and it was in this instant that she decided not to speak another word, retracting herself into the ever-slackening coil of her body. This pile of frayed rope. She shut her eyes, trying to fill her lungs, fill them again. He hoisted her up and she could feel the strength of him as he piggybacked her up through the trees. She would not open her eyes, fearing she might be sick. He lowered her into the pillow-strewn backseat of the car. He started the motor and rolled onto the road, heading again in the same direction.
The ride was smooth, which calmed her. He said he could stop at the next town and look for a doctor but she shook her head. There was no more time to pause. She could recall very little of the past thirty-six hours, could not even remember if she had said farewell to Nicholas. But she knew this: she was being borne on this swift raft, the taste of blood like that of an old coin on her tongue. Would she be allowed to cross over? Would her family be awaiting her? The Tanners? Her parents had not practiced any faith, nor had she, but it seemed reasonable that there should be simple questions now about all that one did in one’s life, and whether those commissions were on balance decent, humane. Whether she would do them again, or else they were regrettable enough to disavow, to try once more to forget.
HECTOR GLANCED in the rearview mirror every twenty or so kilometers to see if June was awake, but all he saw was her mouth hung open or shut depending on the depth of her slumber, her head lolling back to one side or the other. He was skeptical of her regret for whatever she had “done” to him, figuring she was characteristically angling to get her way, contriving to move him forward, yet her outburst had seemed as genuine as her physical misery, which he knew from both wartime and peacetime (if the hours at Smitty’s could ever count as the latter) was as good a truth serum as anything else. Had she told Dora something hurtful about him? Taunted her with the fact of their brief union, and the existence of Nicholas? She was definitely capable of that. He wanted to be angry with her and a flush of heat rose up in his neck but it wouldn’t build to rage, or anything else. What was there, really, to be concerned about now? It was just the two of them from here on in, a pair of souls in a barrel floating down the last stretch of the river, twirling in one of the quieter eddies before being drawn into the chute toward the falls.
In truth, he ought to be asking for June’s pardon, for that final night. His selfishness and need for Sylvie’s love had caused him to neglect his nightly duty of checking the stoves in the orphanage, and one of them had erupted into flames. His lame mode of apology to June was their sorry marriage and even sorrier tryst, which he should have known then would only lead to further difficulties. It was easy for him to imagine how she would have had an entirely different existence, had he simply stayed clear: a chance at a full and relatively benign adolescence; a decent family and husband; and then an enduring bond with Sylvie herself, who would be nearly seventy years old by now, certainly a doting grandmother, or great-aunt, to June’s children, who, in that reality, would never have dreamed of running away. But in the present reality, in this dwindling timeline, June had ended (by her choice or not?) back with him, pitiably dependent on a person who in the span of a single breath could decide to step away from the perch he’d sought in pure desperation just moments before.
So he felt at least right, if not righteous, for bringing Nick again to her for a final time. Back in Siena, he had met up with Bruno in the piazza. He told him how after talking to him in the café Nick had doubled back to the hotel to get there before him and had June sign over the traveler’s checks. Bruno nodded, not even asking what Hector wanted to do, and said he had an idea where they might find him: there were some clubs that were popular hangouts for students and younger revelers. In the hotel, June had risen and slept and risen again, Hector getting her another gelato before putting her down for the rest of the night with another heavy dose. He had begun drinking in the room, a four-pack of beer to fill his empty belly, but he wasn’t yet sated in the way he needed, which was the feeling of being completely sodden, like some corpse long suspended in the water. He was drinking because he wanted to be sure that he wouldn’t hesitate when he saw the young man again, so that he wouldn’t decide to let him go without leaning on him, maybe like any disappointed father; he wanted to eye the boy once more, too, offer a last word, but here his impulse was not to reform but rather to be the bearer of ill tidings, a malediction from the world.
The first club they tried was mostly empty and quiet, as it was still early, only eleven p.m. By midnight Bruno said they ought to try the other club, which was nearby. When they got there it was more crowded and smokier than the last, the dance floor spilling over with people, which kept him and Bruno from moving too far inside. They stood in one of the vaulted nooks near the entrance of the underground club. They got drinks and stood where those entering had to pass by to get to the bar. But after another hour Bruno shouted over the music that they should try another place and Hector agreed. He was finishing the last of his drink when Bruno tapped him.
It was Nicholas, striding in with Laura, the young woman from the gallery. Bruno stepped forward but Hector cuffed him and had them stand back in the shadows. Something made him want to observe the boy for just a few beats longer. Was there a certain smug gleam in his face? A wholly remorseless light? The couple looked contented, even happy, as though they had no great worries; or at least Nicholas did. He seemed taller, more upright than earlier, as if he were rigged inside with new girding-the prop of fresh funds. Hector could tell that Laura didn’t know a thing about it from the way she brightened when he kissed her, perhaps more deeply than he would have on another night, and as Nicholas ordered drinks for them and made a toast, Hector could figure this was the eclipse of her as far as Nicholas was concerned. He would be leaving her, along with everyone else.