“Luis? Is that you?”
She was looking right up into Raymond’s face when she asked it.
“No, ma’am. I’m sorry. It’s just me. Raymond.”
“From the fourth floor.”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
But it was a silly thing to say, he realized. Because he clearly hadn’t wakened her. She was dressed in a blue-and-white striped housedress, and real shoes instead of slippers—those solid white shoes that nurses wore. Her hair looked freshly braided, the braid falling forward over one shoulder.
It struck Raymond as a surprisingly youthful gesture, if one could refer to the positioning of a braid as a gesture. The fact that it was pure white notwithstanding, it reminded Raymond that she had once been young.
“Oh my goodness, no,” she said. “Even the sun sleeps later than I do. What did you learn? Do your parents know anything?”
“No, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
He watched her face fall. His gut filled with a sickening sensation somewhere between guilt and self-loathing. Probably closer to the latter. He had said he would come by if he learned anything. If his parents knew anything about Luis Velez. If he knew nothing more—and he didn’t—he should have told her first thing. Maybe even before she opened the door.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“I think you are sorrier than you need to be,” she said. “Especially since you came and knocked on my door. Most people don’t. Most people hurry by, and the more I try to reach out, the faster they hurry. ‘Oh, no,’ they say, not with their lips but with their hurrying. They say, ‘You are not my family or my friend, you are not my little tribe. You are a them, you are not an us.’ And I know that the very fact that I would speak to them across those well-recognized dividing lines makes them feel they were right to be afraid of me all along. This is how people are these days, I’m afraid. You are welcome to come in, Raymond from the fourth floor. But I must ask that you not move anything. If you pull out a chair, later today I will fall over that chair. Everything must stay exactly where I expect it to be.”
They stood a moment, silent and still. Raymond did not go in. He was not quite ready to be in.
He looked past her, into her apartment. A hand-crocheted afghan lay carefully folded on the back of her faded sofa. There were lace doilies on the arms of it. And more doilies on the round antique wooden dining table.
“Here’s why I came by,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Tell me. You came because you are a good young man, but probably there is something more specific than that.”
“I got to thinking about something you said. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about it. You said Luis used to come help you and check on you.”
“He did,” she said. “For more than four years.”
“And now he’s gone.”
“I am sorry to say yes.”
“So now there’s no one to help you. Or check on you.”
“You are correct. And you are a very decent person, Raymond. Which I knew all along. I’m a very good judge of human nature, you know.”
Raymond shifted his weight back and forth from one foot to the other. It was his way of processing being ill at ease with her kind words. He liked them. But the very fact that they felt good as they settled inside him brought its own sense of unease.
“What did he help you do?”
A woman came down the stairs. Fortyish. Dark haired. Her forehead knitted into a careful frown, though Raymond couldn’t imagine over what. She looked up and saw him there, talking to the old woman. And saw the old woman there. She cut her eyes away and hurried faster down the stairs.
Wow, Raymond thought. I see what you mean.
“He walked me to the bank and to the market. I know it sounds silly to say.”
Raymond opened his mouth to speak. But she just kept talking.
“I have a white cane. And I know how to use it. Even though I haven’t been blind all my life, I’m good enough with the cane. It’s everybody else I’m worried about. Once upon a time people saw that white cane with the red on it, and they respected that. Everybody knew what it meant. The cars would stay far back. People would be careful not to get in front of me. Total strangers would stop what they were doing to help me cross the street. Now, either nobody knows or nobody cares. Or maybe they just don’t pay attention. They are too busy looking at their cellular phones. Last time I went out on the street alone it was more than four years ago. Someone cut right in front of me and tripped me, and I fell and broke my wrist. It was miserable. My right wrist. I couldn’t hold things or open jars. I could not sign my monthly checks. I could only just barely feed myself. That’s when the program sent Luis as a volunteer. Then the program ran out of funding and closed its doors and was no more, but Luis kept coming to help me. I haven’t been out on the street alone since then. I am afraid to go.”