Nineteen
NINETEEN
“DID YOU SEE her?”
Irine at the kitchen table again, wreathed in cigarette smoke.
Amy shook her head. “It’s peaceful down there,” she said. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
UPSTAIRS: TIRED, COLD, heart still hammering.
She peeled off her jeans, looked at her phone to see what kind of flights were possible.
There was a twenty-three-hour doozy through Istanbul, another seventeen-hour one through Paris.
She would call the airline, see how much it would cost to change her flight.
She didn’t have that much money left in her account, but she probably had enough.
It was almost midnight again—it was always almost midnight here—but she knew herself well enough to know there’d be no sleeping. Still , s he closed her eyes and leaned back on her pillow.
She tried not to think about what might have happened had the cop wanted to punish her instead of taking her money.
Her phone buzzed.
“Ferry! I was just thinking about you,” she lied.
“So Dad is going to tell you that you need to come back, but I just want you to know you don’t have to.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Uno is going downhill,” Ferry said. “The, um—I guess the drugs stopped working. She might not make it. She took a sudden turn last night and now the doctors are telling us to prepare for the worst.”
“Ferry—”
“It’s okay,” he said. “For some reason, I feel okay about this right now. I don’t know if I’m just in shock but I feel like it’s going to be all right. Whatever happens.”
“Honey.” Her breath caught. Here she’d been playing like some kind of war hero while her real life was happening without her. “Oh honey. I don’t know what to say.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, “that’s because there’s nothing.”
Was he crying? It didn’t sound like he was crying. But he sounded older than he ever had, even older than the day before.
“Ferry, I can be there tomorrow.”
“No, please. Believe me. What I’m saying is that I want you to stay where you are. I want you to finish doing what you set out to do. I feel like—this is something I need to do for myself. I need to see her out, however this goes.”
“But I can be there for you.”
“I know you can,” he said. “And you will be when you get home. But right now, I just—I want you to finish doing this thing. You’ve always given up your life to take care of Uno. And of me.”
She hadn’t wanted him to know that; of course he knew that.
“You don’t have to do that this time,” he said. “No matter what Dad says.” He laughed. “Anyway he just wants you home because he misses you. Not because he thinks you can save her life again.”
“Ferry, honey,” she said. “I’m not going to let you face this alone.”
“I’m not alone,” he said. “And even if you were here I’d still have to face this. But it’s okay. I’m going to be okay. I’m trying not to be angry with her anymore. Just accept her for who she is. Who she was.”
“Ferry—”
“And it matters to me that you set out to do what you went there to do.”
“Sweetie, I came here to do something ridiculous.”
“Please, Mom.”
How easily he called both her and Uno Mom; he always had.
“I love you.”
“I love you too,” he said. “Thank you.”
She looked down at her body. Her filthy clothes. Well, she supposed, this was probably how it was always supposed to end. She clicked over to the airline and spent $1200 to change her flight home, leaving the next day.
SHE WENT TO the red-tiled bathroom to wash her face, brush her teeth.
In the mirror, she saw raw cheeks, red-rimmed eyes, white-ish stains on her chin from where the milk had dripped down.
She still smelled like smoke, too, alongside something chemical and strange.
If she hadn’t been so tired she would have showered; she could shower in the morning.
“Amy.”
She turned. She had managed to forget about him for almost three hours.
She was wearing her sweatshirt, no pants, no makeup, she was damp-faced and her palms were still sweating. But she turned to him anyway, stood there to face him, his beautiful face.
He looked at her too, almost frozen.
“Yes?” she said.
“I—”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
She took two steps toward him.
And in the next second: his stubbled cheeks, his perfect lips. He put his hands against the sides of her face and his mouth on hers and she opened her mouth, she raced to unbutton his shirt. She stopped thinking, this wasn’t something she wanted to think about. She only wanted to feel.
They found their way to her tiny bedroom, her jeans already on the floor.
She was surprised at how easy it was, how natural, even in this strange place, even still smelling like some sort of chemical bomb.
His body was strong and lean. He took over her body and she thought that she hadn’t submitted to a man like this in a very long time and she was happy to do it.
She didn’t worry about anything hurting, anything feeling stiff or strange like it did sometimes at home.
She didn’t worry at all; she was so happy to let him do whatever he wanted.
He kept his mouth on hers, then moved his mouth to her breast. She unbuttoned his jeans, threw them to the floor on top of hers.
She thought, ridiculously: I have never had sex before on a twin bed.
Soon, then, he was inside her, he moved inside her, they moved together, he kept his mouth on hers, and was it her imagination or did he say her name again and again, Amy, Amy ? She had her hands on his ass, pulling him in toward her.
Sometimes she came when she had sex with Judd and sometimes she didn’t, she’d tell him not to bother trying to make her come, it’s a freebie , she’d say.
But now her body was responding with something she hadn’t felt in decades, a kind of helpless pleasure, an inability to resist or to stop herself.
There was no work involved, there was nothing involved but letting her body do what it wanted to do.
She had forgotten it could be like this.
He was so sweaty and his sweat poured onto her face and her body.
She rolled over on top of him and pressed against him and it was not like making any decisions; she felt incapable of making decisions. She was just following the script her body was writing.
She came and when she did she bit his shoulder to keep from crying out, and then she came again and bit him again, harder.
He clasped her, he brought her closer, she felt him shudder.
She lay down next to him and he kissed the side of her face.
“Amy,” he said again, but that was all, and she was grateful.
She would not say anything to him, and she did not want him to say anything to her.
Anything he could say—about his life, her life, this strange place, his family, what they were doing, whatever was happening around them—she didn’t want to think about it.
She didn’t want to hear about it. Whether or not he had intended this to happen, whether or not he felt guilty about it, she didn’t care.
She wanted this and she wanted to hold on to it for as long as humanly possible.
He lay beside her, squished in next to her on the tiny bed. She knew that if she fell asleep, that when she woke up, he’d be gone. She tried to stay awake next to him for as long as she could; her eyes were closed but she would not let herself sleep.
What time was it? Two in the morning? Three?
She could stay awake all night next to him, surely. If she stayed awake next to him he would not dare to leave her alone.
She breathed in and out, matching the pattern of his breath. He was asleep. He was breathing deeply, clearly deeply asleep, pressed next to her. He did not snore, he did not twitch, but the way his chest moved in and out against her, he must have been sleeping. He still held her close.
Well then. Okay. If he was allowed to sleep, she too could sleep.
She felt her brain begin to send out strange thoughts and images, surreal spools of action, she was on a plane somewhere above the Atlantic, and she had Andrei with her, and she was going to bring him home to New York and explain it to Judd.
She loved him, she loved both of them, it was a different kind of love, surely he understood?
Hadn’t he felt this himself, over and over?
But when she turned to look at Andrei in the seat beside her he wasn’t on the plane anymore at all; instead it was the small Aussie shepherd from outside the restaurant, and she said to the dog, but you’re not Angel , and the shepherd just looked at her closely, forgivingly, as the plane started to shake.
The plane was shaking, trembling in the sky, like an in-cabin earthquake. All around her, passengers were screaming. She grabbed the shepherd and put it in her lap, stroked its fur, tried to stay calm. And when she looked at the dog again it was Angel. She’d found her after all. You! She said.
And then she looked again and it was Roxy, and the plane had stopped shaking, and she was home.
She opened her eyes. Sunlight flooded the room, and Andrei was gone.