Salvation City - By Sigrid Nunez Page 0,76
tried to remember but found he could not.
Next to the computer on PW’s desk was a canister filled with pens and pencils. Addy dumped them out so that she could use the canister as an ashtray. At the same time, she noticed the screensaver: an image of the cross against an ocean sunrise, a changing selection of quotes from the New Testament written across the rosy sky. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved—you and your family (Acts 16:31). Cole watched her recoil again as she had at the rifles.
“Okay,” she said, lighting up. “This whole nightmare is finally over. Here’s the plan.”
The smell of the smoke made his heart race. Ages ago he had stood on the freezing porch of the house in Little Leap, high as a kite off a few puffs of a Marlboro. The memory was so distracting Cole didn’t hear what Addy said next. Then he caught the word passport.
“I’m not sure how long that will take. We’ll stay in Chicago with my friend Lara. You’ll like Lara. We met a few years ago at a translation conference. Lara Trachtman. She translates English and German into Russian.” Addy leaned toward him with an avid expression. “You’re going to love Berlin, Cole. Where, let me just say, what happened to you here would never have been allowed to happen. But compared to Germany, the U.S. might as well be in the Third World, especially if we’re talking about health care. Why did every other advanced country get through the pandemic better than the U.S.? Maybe you don’t feel it so much here in the sticks, but out there people are still really suffering. I guess you know what’s been going on in the big cities.”
He shook his head. No one in Salvation City ever talked about what was going on in the big cities.
“Oh. Well, maybe you don’t want to know. But trust me, it’s a horror show.”
Cole remembered his mother and Addy arguing about New York, Addy insisting New York was finished, his mother insisting it was still the greatest city in the world. He remembered something PW had said, the one time they’d ever talked about Addy. “Seems funny to me, a Jewish person deciding to go live in Germany.” But Addy herself used to say Germany was probably the safest place in the world today for a Jewish person to be.
“And it’s so weird to see everyone here still shaking hands,” she said. “That is so primitive!” Cole figured this meant everyone in Germany did the elbow bump, but it turned out they preferred the Hindu gesture of namaste.
His silence was making her nervous. She paused to look at the collection of framed photographs arranged on PW’s desk. “I’ll say this for him: he’s incredibly good-looking. Here” (pointing to a wedding photo) “he actually looks a lot like Brando.”
Cole wasn’t sure he knew who Brando was.
“And who’s the cute girl whose photos are all over the house?”
“Tracy’s niece.”
“And her name is—?”
He stammered when he said it, and Addy gave him an alert, knowing look. “Do I detect a smidgen of romantic interest, my blushing young man?”
He tried to shrug it off, but, to his confusion, what began as embarrassment flared into rage.
Addy saw her mistake and pretended to ask her next question idly. “What do you suppose those two are doing right now?”
He knew exactly what they were doing. They were praying. But he said nothing, and after a while Addy sighed and said, “Cole, I can see that you’re upset. I think—I guess I didn’t think about all the aspects of the situation. But I see now. You have a life here. These people are your friends.” And when he still did not respond, she snapped her fingers in his face as if to wake him out of hypnosis. “Oh, enough now, Cole. Please. Say something, damn you.”
“Can I have a cigarette?”
“What?”
“Hey, no worries. I was just asking.”
“Very funny. But no. Of course not.”
What a relief it was to laugh. But immediately they both fell somber again. Cole took a deep breath and said, “You don’t have to do this, Addy. Like, really. I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me and all, but you don’t have to take me in.”
“‘Take you in’? Don’t be absurd, Cole. I would’ve turned the world upside down to find you.”
“I know, but—”
“But what?”
“It’s just that, it’s not the right thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t feel right to me.”
“What doesn’t feel right?”
“Going