Isabel Velez burst into tears. As literally as Raymond could imagine a person doing. A sob simply burst out of her and then she did not stop sobbing.
Mrs. G did not sob. In fact, she never made a sound. But her eyes filled and then spilled over.
Raymond watched dry-eyed for a few seconds. Then he worked hard to hold back tears. Then he decided it was not a thing worth working for, so he let them have their way.
As he stood, watching the two women and letting himself cry for the first time in as long as he could remember, he noticed something about himself. His self-consciousness, his physical self-awareness—it was gone. It must have been gone for approximately as long as he’d known Mrs. G. She had pulled him out of himself and set him down in a place that was not all about him anymore.
Chapter Nine
* * *
The Brooklyn Bridge
“I could tell you a lot more,” he heard Isabel say. “If you wanted me to. A lot more detail. But maybe it’s better if I don’t.”
Raymond was in the kitchen fixing cookies and tea for the three of them. He had watched Mrs. G make tea enough times to know how it was done. And he had wanted to make himself scarce while Isabel told Mrs. G what had happened to Luis. Still, he could hear everything that was said in the next room, where the two women sat at the table.
“First I’d want to be sure you really care to hear more,” Isabel added. “The details are hard, I know. It’s all so hard for me to say, and I can only imagine how hard it must be for you to hear. But one thing I really need to say is that I would’ve come sooner if I could have. Luis’s phone was destroyed in the shooting, and he didn’t have his contacts backed up anywhere else. If I’d known where to find you, I would have come right away. Like I said to Raymond, Luis would roll over in his grave if he thought you were here alone, with no one to walk you to the store.”
“What I want you to tell me,” Mrs. G said, “is how all of this has been for you and your family. How are you getting by? Do you have someone to help look after the children? Are you all right day to day? Is there anything I can do?”
Raymond missed most of the answer because the teakettle boiled on the stove. It whistled when it was ready. Raymond turned off the gas flame and used an oven mitt to pick up the kettle to pour. The handle got hot.
Then he hung in the kitchen a moment too long. The tea was steeping. The cookies had been arranged on a plate. It was time to rejoin them. But he couldn’t bring himself to do so. He felt as though the women were enjoying a moment of privacy that he might inadvertently shatter.
“How did you find me now, then?” Mrs. G asked. Strangely belatedly.
“I didn’t. I didn’t find you at all. Raymond found me.”
Upon hearing his name, Raymond hurried out with the tea and cookies. As he did, he made a mental note to return Isabel’s chair to exactly the right spot at the table when this meeting was over.
Mrs. G turned her face up to Raymond.
“That’s right, isn’t it? You brought Isabel to my door.” Her voice was low and a little shaky, as if she might be right at the edge of tears again. “How did you do this, my young friend?”
“I just made a list of every Luis Velez in New York.”
“So did I. Not a written one, but I got the telephone listings. But I could never get my calls answered by the right one.”
“I didn’t call,” Raymond said, sitting down at the table with them. Picking up a cookie. He felt embarrassed for some reason. As if he wanted everyone to stop staring. But it was a foolish thought, because Isabel was gazing blankly through the curtained window, and Mrs. G couldn’t see him. “I went to each apartment in person.”
“To how many places?”
“I don’t remember exactly. If you only count the places where someone came to the door . . . I guess . . . six or seven.”
“By yourself you did this? You could have been robbed!”
Raymond laughed. “I have nothing for them to take.”
“Or hurt.”
An image filled his mind. Luis Velez with the buzzed-off hair and the soul patch. His face close to Raymond’s, the smell of onions on his breath. The desperate, helpless feeling of falling, and the thought that Luis might have been more meanly teasing Raymond than genuinely threatening him, and that Raymond’s fear might have been too extreme.
“I wasn’t, though,” he said.
The rest of the experience would stay with him and him only. Safe inside.
“I’m surprised that he found me,” Isabel interjected. “Because I took the kids and went to stay with my parents after Luis . . . after the shooting.”