“THERE YOU ARE,” June said softly when he finally returned to the room. Nearly two hours had passed. He could tell by her eyes that she had not quite expected to see him again. Somehow she had managed to move a stuffed chair to face the vista of the church on the hill, and she was sitting in it before the now opened window. Though it was nearing dusk the breeze was still quite warm, faintly fragrant with pine and earth. She repositioned herself now and sat up, as if to try to demonstrate that she still had a measure of control. But even this tiny exertion was too much for her and her head lolled over the chair back at an unnatural angle, her mouth hanging open. “Did you bring me something?”
He had: the proprietor had arranged a few cookies and bite-sized café pastries in a basket, as well as a pink plastic parfait cup with a scoop of lemon ice. Hector put the basket on her lap and she beheld it like a girl at Easter. She picked up the spoon and was about to take some ice when she paused and asked if he would like some. He shook his head. She dug out a dollop and placed it upside down on her tongue, holding the spoon there as she closed her eyes, her drawn cheeks clenching with the tartness, or the sweetness, or both. He couldn’t help but watch her swallow, the mechanism ponderous, wholly voluntary now, and he imagined the melting ice finding the besiegement of her insides, how utterly thronged she was with disease, that there was nowhere to go. She didn’t take another taste, just clutching the spoon at her belly as she sat for a moment with her eyes closed, as if she were counting the seconds before the first kind swells of a drug washed over her. He asked her if she wanted a shot and though her face had gone suddenly ragged and chalky she firmly said no.
“Do you remember when we first met?” she said, gazing again out the window. “On the road?”
He said he did.
“I was thinking about that day while you were gone. It was such a hot day.”
“It might have been a hundred degrees.”
“I was so thirsty. The days before I saw you, I was searching less for food than for water. It hadn’t rained for some time. The one well I found had gone dry.”
“Didn’t I give you some water?”
“You did, but your canteen was almost empty,” she said. “You had chewing gum. To this day, I think that was the most wonderful thing I’ve ever tasted. But mostly I was dying of thirst. I was truly close to death. There was only thick, stinking mud in the paddies, and I was so thirsty that I tried it. I scooped some with my fingers and put it in my mouth. It was terrible, but it was wet. So I ate it, two full handfuls.”
“You kept it down?”
“For a little while. In the middle of the night I woke up with a terrible stomachache and threw up about a dozen times, right up until morning. I thought I was going to die from that. But if I hadn’t eaten it, I doubt I would have lived to see you. You would have walked past my body on the road. Perhaps that would have been better for you.”
He didn’t answer her, though maybe less out of decency or compassion than to shield himself, such that he wouldn’t have to consider a timeline that featured him alone, in sole steer of a likely unaltered fate. Like everyone else, he was at the helm, whether he wished it or not. Very soon he would be on his own again, and he thought about what June had said earlier, that he was the only person in the world who knew anything about her, or at least anything significant, which made him realize, now quite obtusely, that in this case the opposite was true, too.
“I haven’t asked you,” she said to him, as if she were reading his thoughts, “what you’re going to do, afterward. Where you might go.”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. The car was broken down and he had no interest in or idea of how to be a tourist, and although she had already given him the rest of the money (enough to buy, she said, a couple around-the-world plane tickets), he had no thought of where else he might go. He had finally telephoned Smitty the other night to let him and the fellows know he was still breathing, and Smitty told him how broken up everyone was over what had happened to Dora. Scenes of the accident had been on the ten-o’clock news. They figured that’s why he’d been scarce, holed up someplace with his hurt. Hector didn’t bother to say where he was calling from, nor did Smitty ask. Smitty simply said, Well, stop in soon, we’ll be here, as though Hector were just across town, and Hector replied that at some point he would. They would go on in their inertial drag, more or less, hang around in the dimness until the time of the reckoning. Then have one last drink and shuffle into line. The question was again what he would do. Nobody in his right mind would want to be immortal, as he was in the mad dreams of his father. Still, Hector feared his own persistence. He flashed on her request of cremation and her suggestion that he do it himself; he could pull off on some rural road and find a clearing on which to build the pyre, and torch not just her body but douse the pile of brush and sticks with gasoline and, having filled his gut with fuel, climb atop the heap himself, before striking the match. He would make the hottest fire, burn up even their bones. Send them both far and nigh.
She said: “You could stay in this place for a while. You could live here for a long time with the money you have. Maybe you’d even find someone. Someone who would take care of you.”
“I wouldn’t want that.”
“Why not? Every person needs the love of a good woman. Don’t you think that’s true?”
Of course he didn’t dispute her. How could he? Think of a world in which we all had such succor. The problem was that succor bore the sentence of frailty, infirmity. It expired too soon. And then what were you? Lost. Bewildered. A sack of broken things. It was cruel, and he meant it to be, but he asked her, “I wonder if you would have taken care of me. If I was the one who was sick.”
She looked at him unwaveringly. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’ve never taken care of anyone.”
She took another spoonful of ice, but that was all. In the warmth of the breeze, the rest quickly melted in the bowl. The clouds were tinting amber and red with the falling light. This long day would soon be at its end. She rested the basket on the arm of the chair and tried to get up. He helped her to her feet. He asked if she wanted to change now into the special clothes.
“I want to bathe first. All of a sudden I feel very cold. Would you fill the tub for me? I tried to do it myself while you were out but it was too hard to bend down. And the hot tap seemed stuck. Do you mind?”
“No.”
“Don’t be afraid to make it hot, all right?”
He drew the bath for her, as hot as he thought she could bear. As the tub filled, he wondered if once she got in she would come out again-alive, that is. All this ferocious will and effort and now she might not make it up the hill. What did she think she was going to encounter? What does the pilgrim hope for at journey’s end? Her beliefs confirmed? Revelation? Or does she secretly wish that the destination never quite materializes, that it keeps receding, ever shrouded in the distance, all the more to feed an inextinguishable devotion.
June came into the bathroom and without shame took off her clothes. It was as if he weren’t there. She had trouble twisting her arm out of her blouse, and so he helped her with that. Her belly was distended but it appeared full and vital compared to the rest of her, her drawn shoulders and limbs, the blades of her hips. He turned off the water and dipped his hand in the tub but before he could warn her she had already put one foot in. She sharply inhaled, wincing, but she gripped the side of the tub and eased herself down into the water. He rose to leave but she grabbed his hand and wouldn’t let go as she rested back against the tiled wall. She wasn’t going to take a last chance. Her eyes were shut and they didn’t speak for a long while and when her hand relaxed he was afraid she was gone. But the bathwater welled and sloshed over the edge and she was suddenly on her feet, wrapping herself in one of the towels from the rack. The hot water had pulled up a color in her legs. Yet her expression was sallow; she was only cheekbones and eyes, as though the flesh had melted away into the bathwater, and she said, “Please, Hector. Let’s be quick now.”