last words Joe had said to me and also of what had not been said. The sounds beneath the words. What had I heard? The in-out of a woman’s breath. A creak of floor beneath a slender, bare foot. A door closed, a door opened. Had Luna Hernandez been there with Joe?
I traveled deep into Crown Heights, arms flapping at my sides to keep myself warm. Down unfamiliar streets, past parks where children played unfamiliar games, past shops selling goods that seemed unusual and oddly specific: pet toys and carrier cases; dog food, cat food, birdseed; rabbit hutches, rabbit runs. Celeste?
I stopped. Joe? I asked, scanning the signage atop storefronts for something, anything.
Joe?
Joseph?
Joe—
Blam—a man ran flat into me and dropped what he was carrying. He spun around and looked at me, and despite my shock and pain—he quite literally knocked the wind out of me—our eyes held for a moment, and I saw that his were black, bottomless, containing an empty wildness.
“Fuckin’ A, lady!” he said. His hair hung lank and greasy around his pale face, purple shadows beneath his eyes. A stench of unwash and urine.
“You dropped—” I said, and when I bent to pick up the package, I saw it was a woman’s purse, brown and large and battered.
The man looked at the purse, looked behind me, and began again to run. There were distant shouts drawing closer, and at last I understood what was happening. The man turned the corner and disappeared. From the opposite direction came two figures: one man, one woman, both coming quickly but neither seeming of an age or condition to run. I held the purse with both hands and looked up to the sky, where there was no suggestion of Joe, only sparse clouds, wan sun, and a blue, brittle sky.
“You . . . you got it!” the woman called from half a block away. “You’ve got my bag!”
I held up the purse. “I’ve got it!” I called back.
The woman smiled at the man, both of them seventy, or perhaps eighty years old. Old in the way that for me back then was difficult to gauge specifically. When hair and bodies have fallen, when every step trembles.
“Thank you,” the woman wheezed as she reached me. “I can’t thank you enough for stopping that man.”
I handed her the purse. “He just kind of ran into me,” I said. “I didn’t really do anything.”
“Oh, but you did,” she replied. “You were right here. Standing right here. Thank you.”
“You okay now, Mrs. Diaz?” the man asked the woman. She closed her eyes briefly and breathed yes. He clasped her hands, gave me a curt nod, and then headed back the way he had come.
The woman bent to the purse and went through it quickly, with sharp eyes, taking stock of its contents. She sighed, satisfied. “Now let me give you something, dear,” she said. Her breath came in plumes of frost as she removed from the purse a long wallet with a tarnished bronze clasp.
“That’s okay,” I said. “Really, you don’t have to do that.”
“But I want to. That young man was high on something. Did you see his eyes? What a waste. What a godawful waste of a life.”
“I don’t want anything. Really.” I put up my hands. “Thank you anyhow. I’m glad you got your purse back.”
I turned away from the woman and retreated quickly, not wanting any further gratitude. My left side hurt where the man had crashed into me, and my right hip, which had struck a mailbox as I spun, now throbbed. I forced myself to keep a steady pace. There were no other people on the cold sidewalk. The only sounds were the dull thumps of my sodden boots striking the pavement and the slushy splash of a car passing on the road. When I had walked two full blocks, I allowed myself to pause and look behind me, but the woman was gone. She must be on her way home by now, I thought. Rattled but okay. This would be a story she’d tell her husband, her friends and neighbors, a cautionary tale to watch out for hollow-eyed young men with fleet feet, to hope for dazed young women who do not look where they are headed, who search the skies and rooftops for signs of dead brothers, lost worlds.
I continued walking. I remembered then a hardware store somewhere in Brooklyn. Where? A hardware store where Joe had purchased for me a beautiful hammer with a solid red