When we got back to her place I cut off her hair—it was important to me that I should be the one to do that. And then I put her to bed, looking at her body, which was under attack but still strong. For how long, I wondered.
Without taking off my habit, I remained seated beside her. Up until that moment, she’d never looked so little to me. Her hands were tired, barely able to squeeze mine. Only her eyes appeared larger, deeper. They seemed to have seen everything already.
She asked me to read something to her. I couldn’t find anything that inspired me, and so I made up a story. My father, it seems, used to do the same thing.
I told her about the time when I worked on the construction of the world’s tallest skyscrapers. Man always defies heaven, I said. I tried to make her feel our excitement as we saw those towers grow, and our enthusiasm when we outstripped the Empire State Building. I told her about the party we organized and threw that night—in secret, because we would all have been arrested. About the girls who came to celebrate and dance, and about the oath we all swore together: We would return to those skyscrapers fifty years later, in 2020, and celebrate there, at the highest point man has ever reached, the magic of that night. We would bring along our children, maybe our grandchildren, and we’d give thanks to life for having given us such a moment. And I told her the names of all the songs we’d sung that night, waiting for the sun to emerge from behind the ocean. Inexorable as life, which always wins.
Lisa smiled, because she liked those songs too: “Scarborough Fair,” “April Come She Will,” “The Only Living Boy in New York.”
I told her about Angelica, a Colombian girl who mangled the English language. Her accent was so sexy that we were all in love with her.
Lisa had never heard me tell such stories—she knew I was making up some of them—but when I talked about that girl, she frowned reproachfully, as if she were jealous. Lisa liked to play.
Then I told her about some of the men who had worked on the towers with me. There was one, a Lakota Indian, who enjoyed walking on steel beams 1,300 feet above the earth. His name was Shappa, which means “Red Thunder,” and he had a hooked nose and sunbaked skin. He defied the void unhesitatingly because life is a dream, an illusion, or so he said. And he boasted of being the grandson of the man who had scalped General Custer.
“George Armstrong Custer,” he’d repeat, forcefully clenching his fist, as if the scalp were still in his hand: Let no one think he had been subdued by the whites; one day he too would have his revenge.
I don’t know why I chose that particular story, and I changed it immediately when Lisa informed me with a smile that she didn’t much feel like listening to talk about hair. I smiled too, because you mustn’t ever lose your sense of humor, and then I told her about Shappa’s friend Luis, a Spaniard, who had lost the love of his life. Or rather, he had lost his life, which was how he put it. That part was true, but at that moment I wanted anything but the truth, and so I told her about the time when Shappa, to win a bet, walked backward on a beam, fearlessly. It was a very windy day, Lisa, and I shut my eyes, I couldn’t look at him. At one point he flung out his arms—he looked like an eagle—and kept walking backward, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. One step after another, suspended in midair, 1,300 feet up.
When he put both feet on the rough concrete of the 110th floor, he turned to us defiantly and shouted out his name first in Lakota and then in English, for those of us whose lineage was not so glorious.
“Red Thunder!” he bellowed, and then, louder, “Red Thunder!” And finally, even louder, “Red Thunder!”
His arms were still outspread, and he was looking us in the eyes, us men of good sense and little faith.
That was where I ended the story. I had no idea what significance it might have, but Lisa, with an effort, raised herself from the pillow and gave me a kiss on the lips. Then she slipped under the covers and pulled the Amish quilt I’d bought over her because she was cold.
I felt a desire to pray. Then I felt a need to pray, but I didn’t have the courage.