“Where’s your wife?” she asks, and he inclines his head toward the second story.
“You’re soaked. You must be freezing.” He cups her elbow in his palm, steers her toward his driveway. “I have some blankets in the van.”
In the stripped-down van, surrounded by neatly organized electrical tools and spools of wire, he wraps a quilted industrial blanket around her shoulders. She is shaking, fevered and nauseated. Her mind drifts back to the plastic stick and two little lines. It has to be wrong; pregnant doesn’t give you a fever. She’s just sick. When his hands hold her elbows, graze her forearms to grip her hot palms, she leans into him.
“You’re burning up.”
“I’m here to help you,” she says.
He whispers her name, and his lips bump her forehead, her cheek, and she tilts her face up before pulling away, her features perfect under the van’s dome light.
“No. I came for money. I can’t tell you the details—”
“But, how…” His face is heartbreaking to watch, a battle between shining optimism and guarded resolution.
“Please. I didn’t say you should be hopeful. I just need money, quickly, everything you can give me.”
He leaves her alone in the van and is back before the light times out with a navy Adidas bag.
“I knew you wouldn’t have a big enough bag,” he says, and they smile thinly at each other. She wraps her sweatshirt sleeves around the handles before she takes it from him, surprised at its weight. When she tries to count it all later, at red lights on the drive southeast, she won’t be able to.
“This isn’t easy for me,” he says, nodding at the bag, at her.
“I know.”
He moves toward the front of the van as she reaches for the door handle. They look at each other under the dome light.
“I have to go,” she says as he asks, “Where are we going?”
“No. I have to go alone.”
“I can’t in good conscience send you off into the night with—”
“Trust me?” She cuts him off.
“Yes.”
“Then just wait.” But she is afraid she is already too late.
She reaches for the van door again, but he grabs her wrist, spins her back to him, kisses her hard on the mouth.
“Please be careful,” he whispers, his breath hot against her ear. “I always knew it.”
“What?”
“That you were my angel.”
And you are everything I hope to have, she thinks, her footsteps echoing in the empty street.
49
Anonymous III
“I can’t stay long. You’ll have a few hours, six at the most.” The blinds are drawn, the small room chillingly quiet. It hurts to look at him in dim light, his face swollen and split, but she is afraid to look anywhere else. Despite the emptiness, the lack of personal belongings, the walls feel closer than the last time she was here. The stench, mold, and smoke are the same, and something else. Bleach; she sees the carton on the kitchen table. A faucet drips. Over one arm, she is carrying the navy bag; over the other, her small purse, jammed with a trial-size can of soy formula, the first thing she saw on the drugstore shelf, in case she was not too late, and a pair of yellow rubber kitchen gloves. Also, a plastic stick with two dark blue lines, because she cannot believe it, had to keep the proof with her.
She puts the gloves on now before handing them the navy bag, before touching anything. She will wear them as long as she is in the apartment.
“I can’t give you a ride. You understand.” They nod; they do.
He nods at the bleach, the empty apartment behind her. “We were never here.”
“No,” she agrees.
She pulls open the door to the outside, wincing as the brass flashing screams. None of them want to be seen. They all exhale—silence. She extends the heavy bag toward him, but the woman intercepts it.
“Thank you very much,” she says firmly.
Then the woman leaves first, hunched in her duffle coat, the navy bag slung over her shoulder, a hat covering her short hair in the bitter rain. She is hugging another bag, a garbage bag, concealed like a pregnancy, under her jacket. Then their eyes meet, but it is just a moment, and neither of them says anything.
He steps out after her, but then ducks back under the light fixture. Together, their eyes drift to the still bassinet in the corner. He clutches her elbow, above the yellow rubber glove, in his palm.