It was late afternoon, nearly five. Almost sundown. The air felt cold and autumnal, real seasons to experience. Raymond could feel the breeze hit him in the face as he led her out the door, and he knew she could feel it, too. He wondered if it meant more to her, since her other senses had grown stronger. And since she had been deprived of that fresh air for a time.
“That was Andre,” he said. “Step down. Good. He moved away. Step down. Okay. One more step. Good. Now we’re on the street.”
They set off toward the market together. Slowly.
“Already he has moved away? That was only a small handful of days ago.”
“That was his last day.”
“Oh. I’m very sorry. And he was your only friend?”
“Pretty much. Yeah.”
“I can’t imagine why that would be, Raymond. You’re such a kind boy. Oh, wait. Never mind. Forget I said anything. I just remembered what it felt like to be a child in school. Kindness is not always valued. Children are experimenting with different ways to be in the world, safer and more guarded ways, and they are quick to judge.”
“You can say that again.”
They walked in silence for most of the block. There was a woman walking in their direction, and she reminded Raymond of the woman on the subway. The one who’d given him advice on the Spanish language. So he looked up into her face, which normally he was careful not to do. With anybody.
She smiled at him. It was a genuine smile. Genuinely felt by her, it seemed, and genuinely meant for him. At first he couldn’t imagine why she would do such a thing. Strangers didn’t generally smile at each other on the street. Not around here at least. Then her eyes flickered to a spot between Raymond and Mrs. G. Her gaze seemed to land on the place where their arms linked together.
Raymond understood then. She was smiling at him because he was helping a blind woman walk down the street. He might as well have been wearing a badge of good-boy-ness for everybody to see.
He smiled back, but it felt a little strained. Not natural. Maybe because he wasn’t used to doing it.
Then she had passed. The moment was over. He could only hope it was a good enough smile. That it had come out the way he’d meant it to.
“So will you still talk to Andre?” Mrs. G asked, bumping him out of his thoughts.
“I’m not sure. He said he would Skype. But he hasn’t yet.”
“What is this Skype? I feel as though I’ve heard of that, but I don’t know what it is.”
“It’s a computer application. You can talk to somebody on your computer. Sort of like you would talk to them on the phone. But no toll charges no matter where you are. And it’s a way to make a video call.”
“Meaning you can see each other?”
“Right.”
“Then I do know about this, yes. Luis told me about it. How he would talk to his brother in Minneapolis, and the kids—his nieces and nephews—would come up one by one so Luis could see how much taller they had grown. And I was so astonished. When I was a girl, this was what we had for . . . oh, what’s the word for what I mean to say? Like science fiction. This is how the maker of a movie or a television show would predict the future. You would call someone on the phone, and you would see them, and they would see you. And it was so hard for us even to imagine such a thing. Of course, they also told us we’d be driving flying cars, hovering all over the place, and they were wrong about that.”
“Maybe just as well,” Raymond said.
He watched the traffic and imagined it gaining and losing altitude. Having fender-bender accidents with the upper floors of apartment buildings, or with other flying cars, raining tires and bumpers and headlight glass onto the pedestrians below.
“I agree with you on that, my young friend.”
“Curb coming up,” he said.
They navigated the difficult crossing without any more extraneous conversation. They had to concentrate.
“So if that really was your only friend,” she said as they stepped onto safe sidewalk again, “I am very sorry that he is gone. Is it really so difficult for you to make friends with boys your own age? It’s just hard for me to imagine, based on the way you are with me.”
“Yeah, it is. They just . . . I don’t know. I’m just so different from them.” He almost elaborated, but stopped himself. Or, more accurately, the words stopped in spite of him. Came up into his throat and stuck. He hadn’t known her that long, after all. “The cat is my friend, though. And . . . I don’t know. Would it be weird if I said it feels like I’m friends with you now?”