“So . . .” Raymond had so many questions. It was hard to single out just one. “。 . . how long has Luis been . . . missing?”
“Seventeen days.”
“So do you have any food left in there at all?”
“I have one-half of a can of condensed soup. Chicken and rice. I started it day before yesterday. It’s the last food I have, so I’ve been forcing myself to eat only one-fourth of it each day.”
“That’s all you’ve had to eat? For the past two days? A quarter of a can of soup a day?”
“I wasn’t sure how long it would have to last,” she said simply. “But now I feel so weak I’m not sure I can walk there. With help, even.”
“Well, get your white cane. And your purse. Here, I’ll give you my granola bar. And then if you feel up to it, we’ll go to the store.”
“First the bank, or I can buy nothing at the store.”
“Okay. First the bank.”
The old woman pressed the palms of her hands together. Brought them up in front of her face. She squeezed her cloudy eyes shut and turned her head up, as if gazing at the hall ceiling, but with her eyes closed. Then again, with her eyes, what difference did it make?
“Thank you for the answer to my prayers,” she said. Then she turned her face back down to the approximate location of Raymond’s. “And thank you for being the answer to my prayers, Raymond from the fourth floor. I will go get a few things, and we will be on our way.”
“Here’s something I don’t get,” Raymond said as they walked away from the bank.
He held his left elbow out. Exaggeratedly so.
With his right hand, Raymond dragged her little wheeled grocery cart.
“Ask away,” she said.
The morning air felt cool and crisp to Raymond. It smelled of car exhaust and sewer grates, but also some kind of curry cooking. The day had a new feel to it.
“You’re completely blind?”
“Almost completely. If you were to walk across my line of vision right now, right in front of me, I would know you had. I would see a general shape of you, like a shadow. But indistinct. But only because we are out in the bright light, so that I have the advantage of contrast.”
“So, when I came up the stairs yesterday . . . after school . . .”
“Yes. I remember.”
“You knew it was me.”
“I did indeed. Not all footfalls sound alike, you know. You can tell a lot from the way a person walks. Which is not to say that I might not confuse one person for another if their footsteps were much the same, and some are. But yours are very distinctive, and I’ll tell you why. You have a squeak in one of your shoes.”
“I do?”
“You do.”
They walked along in silence for a moment. Painfully slowly. Slower than Raymond and Andre had walked when they knew it was their last walk together. Raymond was trying to listen to his shoes, but the world would not be quiet. All he could hear was the roar of car engines, drowned out by the louder roar of bus engines, drowned out by honking horns.
Half a block later he gave up trying.
Three boys younger than himself flew by the corner at a dead sprint, followed by the sound of a police siren.
“We’ll stop here,” he said, tugging slightly at her elbow. “We have to wait for the light to change. And when it does, there’s a curb right in front of you.”
“You’re good at this,” she said.
“Am I? Doesn’t seem there’s much to it.”
“Oh, but there is. You have to be paying attention.”
The light changed. They moved forward.
“I’ll tell you when to step down,” he said. “Now.”
Then they were out in the street. Still moving very, very slowly. Raymond knew they would not make it to the other side before the light changed again. The drivers would simply have to deal with it. They would have to wait.
But before the light even changed, cars and cabs began to roll around the corner, anxious to proceed through the crosswalk. One swung around behind them, even though that put it well across the line into the oncoming traffic lane. A cab pulled up closer and closer to them, in jumpy little movements. Throttle. Brake. Throttle. Brake.
Raymond raised his right arm high, the grocery cart still attached, and threatened the cabdriver with it. Threatened to bring it down on the hood of his cab, which would damage the paint at the very least.
The cab held still, holding the cars behind it at bay.
“Step up . . . now,” he said.