“How come you stopped?” he murmured.
“I can’t run anymore.”
“Oh.” He was losing consciousness, the color draining from his face. “Will you come back for me?”
June nodded.
“You promise?”
She nodded again.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to.”
She let go his still-warm hand, kissed his still-warm face. She stayed with him as long as she could. But when the last car of the train passed her she rose to her feet and steadied herself. And then she ran for her life.
TWO
NewYork, 1986
HERE WAS THE CITY of her solitude, set afire by the first autumn light. Could a civilization ever be as peerlessly etched as this? The corner windows of her apartment faced north and west onto the stone-and-glass towers of Midtown, and through all the years she lived here she had never quite seen this depth of gleaming or coloration, the low sun sparking every niche of the building faces and lending shape to the sky by lamping the high-floating ribbons of sheerest vapor.
June’s work was all but done. How time had accelerated. The apartment was sold the very day it was put on the market, and here she was, a mere six weeks later, peeling off rubber cleaning gloves and tossing them into a black garbage bag. Earlier, the men she regularly employed to deliver items from her antiques shop had carried out the last chair and lamps from the apartment, and by now they were likely finished with their rounds. Rather than hiring an estate service, she had done the job herself, selling everything she owned in grouped lots to dealers she knew around the city. She had practically given the stuff away, strangely delighting in the knowledge that they would do very well with the pieces. One of them actually balked at paying the low price she proposed, insisting that there should be some honor, even among thieves. She told him he had better stop talking about honor or she’d reconsider, and soon enough he relented, to the point of inquiring, before he left, about a Late Federal desk he’d long admired. She undersold that one to him, too. The overwhelming balance, like the nonrare books and records, the kitchen- and cookware, the bath towels and bed linens, she bundled and gave free to a junk dealer friend on the Bowery.
For herself, she had set aside only two small suitcases packed with clothes and a zippered tote of toiletries. Just a few basic cosmetics. Vanity had never in the least ruled her. Mostly it was her nature, but there was also the fact that she had never needed to be concerned with her appearance. She had spent her life being not so beautiful as extraordinarily youthful, her wide, oval face ruddy and pure, her skin having an apricot smoothness, the lustrous sheets of her black hair shimmering and thick. To an undiscriminating eye, her sturdy figure might have appeared stocky, but her naturally bolt-straight posture, her shoulders set back like a dancer’s, made her look taller, more athletic, as though she were just about to spring. Only a few months earlier, on her forty-seventh birthday, her favorite waiter at the corner diner brought her a huge slice of carrot cake with candles in the shape of 25 stuck in the white sea of the icing, though of course he could guess her approximate age. He was perhaps slightly younger than she, but he always called her his “lass,” and like most men (and women) of every age who came into her shop or sat beside her on the subway, he was drawn to this freshness, this vitality, this odd but intractable sense that she was someone who might never grow old. Her late husband, David, who had passed unexpectedly two years ago, often said as much, jesting that her eternal youth would rub off on him, as though she were a charm against the dread pull of the years. He would say, “Come here and just lie on me.”
“That’s all you want?”
“That’s all I need.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well…”
How different things would be, if she had such powers…
She twist-tied the garbage bag and hauled it out to the two others already slumped outside her door. There was one other apartment across the short hall, but June had never exchanged more than a hello with the occupants, so she hadn’t bothered saying goodbye. They would have to learn of her departure from Habi, or from someone else in the building, or when the new owners moved in, and they likely wouldn’t pause or think more than a second about it, which was perfectly fine by June. The apartment had been David’s, but it suited her just as well; the building was on lower Madison Avenue and tended to attract those who didn’t care that the area lacked services and was deserted at night, who didn’t mind the traffic noise or lack of residential neighbors. They enjoyed the special brand of privacy that comes from living an exquisitely small, circumscribed existence, made exquisitely smaller and more private still when lived in the heart of the immense, bustling city.
The elevator bell rang and the door glided open; it was Habi, the young building superintendent. Earlier June had asked him to come up, and he assumed it was to help her with the garbage bags, and he grabbed two by the neck, but she waved him off.
“Please, Habi. Come inside. I want to show you something.”
He let go of the bags and followed her inside the apartment, which was completely empty and swept clean. He had been in her apartment a half-dozen times, yet each time he entered he behaved as though it were the first, or perhaps he felt he shouldn’t, and he lingered by the kitchen until she guided him to one of the back rooms.
Habi was from the Congo and she had come to know him best of anyone in the building, especially after David died. If he was around, he always helped carry her groceries upstairs (there was no doorman), and several times sat long enough to have a cup of tea with her. They didn’t say very much, for whatever reason; she simply enjoyed his presence, which was a kind of perfect temperature, like tropical waters. She admired that he was intelligent and soft-spoken and polite and did his menial and mostly thankless job well and carried himself with unstinting dignity. He was always very respectful. He had a very pleasing and placid face, but for a long, raised scar that ran from the corner of his eye to his jaw. June had noticed that he had a scar on his left palm, too, which aligned exactly with the one on his face whenever he raised up his hand. Once she asked him about it, and rather than answer directly, he simply said he was orphaned when he was young. “It was a very difficult period,” he said, in his heavy French accent. “A tribal conflict.” He had walked for several weeks on his own, hiding out during the days and moving at night, covering hundreds of kilometers on his bare feet. It was then that he asked June what had happened to her hands. His question took her aback, but then she surprised herself by turning them over and showing them to him. Her hands were delicate and petite and perfectly normal in appearance except when she revealed her palms, which was something she shied from doing. The palms and pads of her fingers looked like they were somehow unfinished, being putty-smooth and only faintly lined, like the hands of a mannequin. One of them was more scarred than the other. She told him they were burned in an accident. He’d nodded somberly, but without the cloying concern that others might proffer, and said nothing more. Yet she would have told him (as she would never tell others) that they gave her discomfort sometimes, despite the fact that they were almost completely numb.
“There are some things I want you to look at,” she said. They walked to the back bedroom, their footfalls echoing in the empty apartment, and for a moment June pictured them as a couple, shopping for their first home. “I’ve had this furniture for a while, and now that you are married I thought you might like to have it.”
The furniture was a child’s solid walnut desk and chair, as well as two matching chests of drawers and a bunk bed with rails and a ladder. All of it was in good condition, but June had spent a couple hours anyway filling and buffing the various scratches and dings, just as she might have in her shop. She then polished each piece until it looked brand new.
“But we do not have children,” Habi said.
“You will someday, won’t you? It’s high-quality furniture, the kind they don’t make anymore, at least not for children.” She pulled open the desk drawers, showing him the joints, the bottoms, even stepping up one rung on the ladder to give a tug at the bedrails. “I was about to sell it with everything else, but then I realized how stupid I was. I would have shown you last week, but I’ve been so busy.”
“I am certain I cannot pay you enough.”
“Pay me? You’ll pay me nothing. I’ll have my deliverymen bring it to you tomorrow.” Though she already knew it, she asked him to write down his address.
He nodded, offering, “Please, I can take it myself.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s their job, and you probably don’t even have a car.”
“I do have one,” he said. “But it is small. Two doors.”
“It’s a deal, then. But it has to be tomorrow, because that’s the closing. Will your wife be home?”
He said yes, this was possible. His wife did alterations for a dry cleaner, work she could bring home. June didn’t know much else about her, except that she was from Senegal, and that Habi had met her in a park in central Queens, where they lived. June wished that she could have met her so she could more easily imagine what their children might someday look like, but for now she simply pictured two skinny boys in their pajamas, climbing up and down the bunks, laughing together with wide, watchful eyes like Habi’s.
“My wife will be sorry she could not thank you,” he said, as if he had been able to read her thoughts.
“Tell her that she is most welcome.”
“I will.”
He gently pushed in the drawers to align them and said, “I did not know you and Mr. Singer had children.”
“Oh, well, yes,” she said, amazed at herself for not anticipating that Habi would of course wonder about who had used the furniture. Yet it was not at all disturbing to answer him. “But not Mr. Singer’s child. Just mine. And only one. A boy.”
“I see,” Habi said softly. He was clearly hesitant to inquire further.
“Would you like to know his name?”
He nodded.
“It’s Nicholas.”
“Nicholas,” he said, the sound of it mysterious and dashing in his accent. “That is a fine name.”
“Yes,” June said. “I’ve always thought so.”
After she locked the apartment door she handed the keys to Habi. He was to let in the deliverymen the next morning, and once the new owners or their renters arrived he would give them the keys. She decided she wouldn’t bring up again how her attorney would someday-and perhaps quite soon-contact him in regard to the bequest she had arranged. In the scheme of her finances, ten thousand dollars was not a huge gift, and was just enough, she figured, for him to put toward a down payment on a house, or to open a store, perhaps a dress shop his wife could run. Though it was unlikely that she would ever see him again she didn’t want him to feel beholden to her because of some inordinate sum; she didn’t want him to have to think of her always in gratitude, which turns, too often, to resentment. In fact, he might refuse the gift, when the day did come. He could never care about something like money in the same way she could never care about it; she knew they were alike that way, but she wanted to do something for him, to show him a kindness, and as there was no time left for a deepening friendship, there was little else for her to give him but the furniture, and this.
He placed the garbage bags into the elevator and rode down with her to the lobby. When they stepped out, three tenants were waiting for the car. On seeing Habi, they immediately peppered him with requests, June caught in the line of fire as they asked how soon he could unplug a drain, fix a dishwasher, call in the exterminator. While Habi patiently triaged their requests, June sidestepped through them, thinking that it would be best if she simply left right now, adieus never being easy for her. She was about to let herself out through the framed glass door when Habi called out somewhat sharply, “Mrs. Singer!” So she waited. When the tenants were satisfied they would be attended to and settled into the elevator, Habi turned to her and extended his hand. She shook it and let it go.
“It is possible that I may not see you here again, Mrs. Singer?”
“That’s right.”
“You will be going to where, Mrs. Singer? Another city?”
“Yes. But I’ll be traveling. To Europe. To Italy.”
“I have not been to that country,” Habi said. “They say it is a beautiful place.”
“I believe it is.”
“You have not been there?”
“Not yet.”
“You will be there for a long time?”
“I think so. Who knows. Maybe a very long time.”
He nodded, with an uneasy smile, for she was smiling at him, but he wasn’t looking at her as he always did with his clear-eyed directness. He clutched the ring of keys at his side. And all at once June felt that his interest in her plans masked a grave disappointment.
He said, “I am sorry that I could not help you more.”
“You’ve always helped me plenty.”
“I mean to say, during this difficult time.”
“You shouldn’t feel that way,” she said. “And let’s be honest, not everything can be helped.”
He assented with a low hum in his throat. She felt a similar thrum in her chest and couldn’t help but say: “I only wish you would let me help you. You must know how pleased I would be if you would accept something.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Singer,” he said. “I am doing fine on my own.”
“I know you are. But it wouldn’t hurt anyone. Especially me. You should remember that. I have more than I will ever need.”
“I am fine, Mrs. Singer, thank you.”
“All right. Goodbye, then, Habi. Good luck to you.”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Singer.”
They shook somewhat formally again until she surprised them both by pulling him in and hugging him. Habi momentarily stiffened but then he embraced her, too, his arms wiry and strong. He smelled faintly of machine oil and something spicy, like cinnamon, and though she breathed in deeply her heart suddenly sagged, as if the air was of great weight. She didn’t want to cry. A loud knock on the heavy glass door separated them. A man stood outside with a white plastic bag in each hand, raising the bags up for them to see. Habi opened the door and a warm autumn draft rushed in along with the sweet, garlicky scent of Chinese food, and while the man kept repeating “10-B, 10-B,” and Habi was buzzing the apartment, June slipped out the door and walked as fast as she could to the street to catch a stopped taxi, Habi’s voice trailing her, his call of
Bon voyage
like a somber, gentle siren.