CHAPTER 11 #3
He leaves Elena off. He leaves mia off. The one statement is all he offers. He waits two seconds at the door — the wait is not for my answer; the wait is the one thing he taught himself in four years and the one thing he gives me freely.
I say, "Yes. " The word is the only word for what he has handed me. "Thank you, Gabriel."
He nods, once. "Good night, Elena. " He turns. He walks the corridor. I watch him go for nine seconds. The red LED on the inside of my doorframe bleeds against the seal, slow, one-second, one-second, one-second. He turns the corner at the dehumidifier. He is gone.
I close the door.
I sit at the writing desk. I open the book. The first cosmicomic. La distanza della Luna — the distance of the Moon. I read.
I read the Italian slowly and the rhythm slower than the words.
He has been doing this — he wrote me last week with no signature in pencil on a Sicilian poetry book's flyleaf, Patience is a method.
He has been writing me with books since the corridor on Day 3.
He is writing me now. He is asking me to be patient.
He is asking me to be patient with him; he is asking me to be patient with me.
I read three of the cosmicomics. The first about the Moon I do not understand at speed and understand at four-count.
The second about the dinosaurs is about being the last of a thing.
The third about the spiral I have read before in English; I read it now in Italian and it is a different shape.
I close the book at 21:24. I will finish it.
He will ask me next week. I will have an answer.
The intercom by the suite door beeps once.
I look at it. The intercom is the small black hard-plastic unit set into the wall beside the door — paging only, not voice. It beeps once, twice, three times in a short pattern that means a page is incoming. The small LCD displays a single line of text in green characters:
ROSSI — CHIEF'S OFFICE — 21:30 — N. R.
I look at it for four seconds.
I have known since the chief's office at 10:00 that this page was coming tonight.
The door he opened was an open door, and an open door is an invitation.
I have known since 14:30 in the cath-lab annex that Stefan would be there; the brush of knuckles at the cabinet door was the question and my answer was yes.
I have known since I walked the forty-six steps from the elevator to the suite door this evening that I was going to walk them back.
I touch the medallion at my sternum — three times today, against the rule of two; I am keeping count of myself; the third is permitted because the chapter of the day has earned it. I am here, Saint Raphael. I am going to be the one in the next one.
I put my feet in the soft heather flats by the door. The T-shirt stays on. The drawstring linen pants stay on. I have decided what kind of woman walks into the chief's office at 21:28; she is not in scrubs and she is not in a cocktail dress; she is in what she sleeps in. I am going as I am.
I tuck the Calvino into the writing-desk drawer above the drawer where the pediatric pin rests now. The pin is in the drawer. The book is in the drawer above it. The room is rearranging itself around what I am choosing.
I open the door. The corridor LED bleeds red against the seal, then green twice as my badge passes the reader, then red. I step into the corridor. The door swings shut behind me. The suite locks itself from outside.
I walk. Forty-six steps to the freight elevator. I mark them. One, two, three — past the dehumidifier — twenty, twenty-one — past the unnumbered door I do not look at — forty-five, forty-six. The cab rises to Floor 10.
I walk the chief's corridor. Forty-two steps. The number lands clean on the threshold.
I stand at the chief's office door at 21:28.
The walnut. The brass strike-plate. The small brass handle.
The door is ajar by an inch as it was this morning.
From inside I can hear the kettle on the credenza — the low hiss-tick of a small electric heating its second cycle; the cobalt-blue Earl Grey tin is open on the credenza; the bergamot is one breath from the air.
I set my right palm to the door for four beats. I touch the medallion at my sternum with my left — the fourth time today; I have lost the count of my own counting and I do not mind; the chapter of the day has earned the fourth — and I push the door open.
Stefan is on the oxblood leather couch.
He is in dark jeans and the long-sleeved Henley; the cord is on his left wrist; his shirt is unbuttoned at the throat one button and his eyes find me at the door before any other thing in the room does and he does not stand. He does not need to. The couch is the place he is supposed to be.
Nikolai is at the desk. Pale gray oxford, navy attending-coat over the back of the chair, the navy-strapped Patek at his left wrist, his thumb not yet on the crown.
He looks up. He does not stand either. The chief stands when a thing has just begun; the chief is sitting because the thing has been going on since 10:00.
He says nothing. He waits.
Stefan says nothing. He waits.
I step into the room. I close the door behind me.
The walnut clicks home in the strike-plate.
I am here.