“Well, that is a problem,” she said, “yes. Ideally the parents get the ball rolling, so then the child recognizes this emotion and knows how to give love in a real way, so it can be felt. But a lot of parents don’t know such things themselves, and they can’t very well teach you what they don’t know, now can they? I’m sorry you are having trouble being happy right now, Raymond. We all take turns, I think. Yesterday I was very unhappy, but today I feel well. And do you know why? I’m sure you do.”
“Because you have food.”
“Yes. Because I have food. And because I see now that food was something I had grown to take for granted. And now I know better than to take it for granted again. Or at least, it’s my job to remember. We’ll see how I do. But also I’m happy because I met you. And not only because you walked me to the store. Someone else might have walked me to the store, and so I would be happy to meet them, but maybe only for that reason. Depending on who it was. You I am happy to meet for a number of reasons.”
Raymond felt blood rush to his face, tingly and hot.
“Every time I say a nice thing about you, you get very quiet,” she said.
“I’m not used to it.”
“That’s a shame.”
With that, they seemed to run out of things to say. Or things they were willing to say. In that conversational direction, anyway.
A minute or two later he asked, “What would you have done? You know. If I hadn’t come by?”
“I guess sooner or later I would have called the police, and said to them, ‘I don’t know who it is who can help a person like me, but I need them now.’ Almost anyone can help, I suppose. It’s more a matter of who will. But I would have called the emergency number. The 9-1-1. Because you can’t just sit in your apartment and starve to death. If you have no food, you will die, and that is an emergency. But I wanted so much not to do that. I kept thinking if I could hold on a couple days more, maybe Luis would come. I didn’t want to wake up in the morning and admit to myself and others that I had given up on that. I wanted the subject still to be open.”
The apartment fell quiet again at the mention of his name. A deep, resonating silence, like that surrounding a eulogy or a prayer.
“I should get back,” Raymond said, swallowing the last bite of his last cookie. “I didn’t tell anybody where I was going. But I’ll come back and check on you.”
“That’s good of you. Thank you, Raymond. Who knows? Maybe Luis will come back. Maybe he will show up at my door. I have dreams about that. Both when I’m awake and when I’m asleep. He tells me different stories of why he couldn’t come sooner. But it’s no matter in the dream, because he is back.”
She stopped talking. Abruptly, he thought. As if she’d meant to say more, but the more had gotten stuck.
Raymond watched her wring her hands the way she had done that first day in front of her apartment door. It had only been the previous day, but it seemed like a far more ancient history.
“I’m just worried sick about him.”
“I know,” he said. “I know you are.”
Raymond didn’t say out loud that he would pitch in and attempt to locate this Luis Velez. If indeed Luis were a person possible to locate. But that was the moment when he knew he would.
On his way up the stairs to the fourth floor, he heard it. He hadn’t even remembered to listen for it. It was just suddenly there.
On every step with his left shoe, Raymond could hear a light but consistent squeak.
Chapter Three
* * *
Out of Here
Raymond dropped through the missing basement window of the abandoned building at the end of the block. It was early the following morning. Sunday. Light, but only barely.
He took a few steps across the basement floor, opened his mouth to call the cat . . . and nearly ran into a living, breathing person.
Raymond heard a little shriek escape him. He stood still, trying to calm his heart, but it hammered in his chest.
“You scream like a girl,” the person said. “I thought you were a girl.”
It was a young white man not much older than Raymond. Maybe a year older. Not as tall, but bigger on balance. Heavier. Far more dangerous. Then again, who wasn’t? He wore a letter jacket, wool with leather sleeves, the kind all the high school athletes wore. Also, Raymond knew him. Vaguely. Because they went to the same school. But he didn’t know the boy’s name. Or maybe he was a man. Maybe he was eighteen. Raymond knew only that he feared him.