CINDY IS PREDICTABLY LATE, so there’s plenty of time, the next day, to study the south entrance to St. Vincent’s Hospital, which has become a kind of wailing wall plastered with photos of the disappeared, the desaparecidos, ordinary home photos, nothing arty of the kind Franco Donati might have done, along with their descriptions and marcas corporales. Kevin Moore, lightly freckled, gold wedding band, mustache and goatee, broken nose. Janice Chun (pictured holding a toddler), ponytail in tortoise-shell barrette, navy-blue blazer, white skirt, missing tip of right index finger. Tashiko Tayahashi, bald spot on back of head, rimless glasses, vertical chest scar from bypass surgery. If the televised images of suited pundits have been oppressive, these notices are an antidote, so much more eloquent than the public words: hunt them in their caves, the full resources of our law-enforcement agencies, all necessary security precautions, a monumental struggle. These words—mammogram scar, left eye turned in, feathery salt-and-pepper hair, shamrock tattoo on left buttock—sear the eyes. She moves from one to the other of the smiling faces—school photos, posed for a dive, proudly displaying a six-foot fish—imagining how they might have looked in their last moment, contorted by fear.
She’s not the only one reading the wall. Half a dozen people glide slowly past, stunned like sleepwalkers, but the one who draws her eye is a skinny, waif-like girl of seventeen or so in a sleeveless flowered shift, the flimsy kind that hawkers sell on the street, and pink rubber flip-flops. Seen in profile, her body, held very still as she edges along the wall, has a feline grace, like a dancer suspended between spins. Her hair is a brassy blonde, short and uneven, as if chopped carelessly with a kitchen knife. Its color is just short of garish, too blonde for her skin, which is olive, Mediterranean. The black roots show here and there. She wears small, thin gold hoops in her ears, the kind Renata got for Gianna when she was seven, much too young for earrings, but she begged to have pierced ears like the Dominican girls at school, and Renata gave in; Gianna sat bravely biting her lip as the girl in the jewelry shop sprayed her ear-lobes numb and aimed the needle. The olive skin, the earrings, the lithe body and that elegant Botticelli profile are so eerily familiar that Renata shudders, the way they say you shudder when someone walks over your grave, still empty.
There’s something else odd. She doesn’t carry any purse or backpack, nothing at all. She must be homeless, a street kid, yes, with that look of no place to go, all the time in the world to do nothing. When their paths cross, her glance falls on Renata and becomes a bland stare. She looks like she’s about to speak but she doesn’t. Renata acknowledges her with the tiny nod she’s given the others at the wall, the sign of communal sorrow. The girl stares longer than she should and Renata wonders if she ought to give her some money. She almost expects a hand to be extended, the pale lips to murmur some plea, but that doesn’t happen. When the girl reaches the end of the row of photos she starts drifting back in the other direction. As she does so, Renata feels she’s watching her through the wavy glass of Jack’s window; the molecules that make up the girl shiver and reassemble, again and again, so that she never quite keeps her firm shape. She’s about the age Gianna would be now, and come to think of it—but truly, the thought has been there from the first instant—its uncanny how much she resembles Claudia at that age (and me, too, Renata thinks), especially in the first months of pregnancy, a stricken, vulnerable look. Only this girl is more still, doe-like, as if her own movements might startle her.
She’s made uneasy by the girl’s stare. Last night Jack called her irrational for wanting to keep Julio, but this notion, absurd and powerful, is even worse. It challenges common sense. Renata wheels abruptly, blinks to clear her vision, and turns the corner to find Cindy.
There’s nothing puzzling or shapeless here. She would have known Cindy anywhere. After so many years, there’s more of everything, especially honey-colored hair. Cindy is chubbier, blowsier, more flying apart. Her cheeks are pinker, her eyes blearier. She wears a loose print shirt over white capri pants and sandals. They hug, and Renata remembers the pillowy embrace. Cindy brushes away a tear.
“Sweetie! You look beautiful! You’re all grown up.”
“Well, what did you expect? Where’ve you been all these years? I looked for you a few times, when I was a kid, but I didn’t really know how.”
“I know I should have kept in touch,” Cindy says. “I’m sorry.” She wipes her forehead with a fist. It’s a hot day. “I went back to San Diego for a while, then Mexico. But I’ve been here in the city for years. I like it. And now there’s this shit. Who would’ve thought...? Anyway, how’s your mom?”
Renata tells her, the short version.
“So she never got over it,” says Cindy mournfully. “I guess there’s nothing like losing a child. And the way it happened.”
“She was managing until my Dad...He was,...he died in an auto accident about a year later. He started drinking a lot after Claudia...We were never sure exactly how it happened. Anyway, after that she just gave up.”
“The poor thing. Well, listen, we have a lot to catch up on. My life hasn’t been a bed of roses either. But I’m in better shape now. I’m in AA. That’s where I met Hal. We were doing great together. It was really working. Then the other day, when he didn’t come home, I crashed. I didn’t want to call anyone in the group, the shape I was in, so I got the idea of calling you. I didn’t know what else to do. Later maybe we can sit down and have a cup of coffee. But meanwhile, you said on the phone your boyfriend knows how I can find Hal?”
“He said to go around to the hospitals, and to start here.”
“Oh God, if he’s gone I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t face it. You do the talking, okay?” Cindy’s eyes are streaming.
“Okay. Tell me his name and where he worked. But you might have to describe him.”
Their task proves surprisingly easy. Renata had foreseen a day of traipsing up the island from hospital to hospital, but here is Harold Brody, age fifty-two, on a list at the front desk. He’s in the burn unit. His condition is serious, not critical. Yes, they can see him.
“Oh my God. So he’s alive?”
“Yes,” the clerk answers. “At least on this morning’s list he is.”
“But why didn’t anyone call or anything?”
“It’s been very hectic around here.”
“But—”
“Let’s just go on up,” Renata says.
As soon as they step off the elevator, at Cindy’s insistence—she’s sure the clerk said seven—it’s clear this is the wrong floor, not the burn unit but the children’s section. Small chairs, kids’ drawings on the walls. A shelf with picture books, Dr. Seuss. A small boy, six or seven, is darting up and down the hall with a pull toy on a cord, a horse that makes a clickety-clack noise, and at first he looks perfectly healthy, it’s hard to imagine why he’s in a hospital, but as they stare, disoriented, they realize simultaneously that the boy’s right leg is plastic, perfect leg color, perfect, that is, for his fair skin, and he moves very agilely on it; he doesn’t evoke pity but admiration. A triumph over disability. What makes Renata’s heart flip is not the leg at all but the sock, a horizontally striped blue and white sock, which lies absolutely smooth on the plastic leg, not wrinkled up or askew like the sock on the other, the real, leg. The sock almost undoes her. She quickly turns away.
“I told you she said ten,” she snaps at Cindy.
“Sorry, sorry. God, these kids. Makes me glad I never had any.”
When they get to the right floor, it’s obvious why Hal hasn’t called himself. He’s in a room with three other men and no private phones. He looks heavily sedated, either asleep or in some deeper state; one arm is in a cast, and both legs are swathed in bandages. There’s a bandage over one eye, as well as tubes in his nose and his good arm. Harold is a black man with graying hair, a broad face and strong cheekbones, a thick mustache and full lips, dried and cracked and slightly parted. He breathes noisily. Cindy starts to rush over, then stops. “Shit. And I was blotto all the time he suffered like this. Hal? Baby? Can you hear me?”
The one good eye opens, bloodshot, and stares. He wets his lips with his tongue. “Where you been all this time? You okay?”
“Oh God.” She’s about to collapse on his chest but Renata holds her back.
“Careful. You could hurt him.”
“It’s okay. That side is the good side,” he says. His voice is phlegmy and forced, like it’s pushing past obstacles. “It’s not so bad as it looks.”
Cindy leans down on the good side and strokes his face and sobs.
Renata gazes out the big picture window. From up on the tenth floor, she has a superb view of downtown. There’s empty space where the towers should be, framed by the window. Down below is the panorama already familiar from the TV screen, only at this height it resembles a scene from a movie about interplanetary travel. Amid the acres of jumbled metal and concrete, the yellow machines move slowly, like enormous, menacing bugs, and helmeted people, tiny as dolls, tiny as the figures from Farmer Blue’s farm, inch along carrying equipment. Strands of smoke rise wistfully into the air. It’s like a wrecked village, a mining town where they mine for bodies.
“I’ll wait down the hall,” she says.
“He used to be a wrestler back in Barbados, and then a cop for a while. He’s a strong guy. So he thought he could, you know, help?” Sitting across from Renata, Cindy sips iced coffee, black, through a straw, in a coffee shop on Sixth Avenue. Out the window, soldiers in camouflage patrol the streets, their guns at the ready, faces sealed, so there is the feel of being in a foreign country. Not this country. “He wasn’t real clear about it, he’s still foggy, he doesn’t even know what day it is. He saw the whole thing from outside the deli, it’s like half a block away—he and his partner were pulling people inside, out of the smoke. He saw people running and tripping and a bunch of them fell in a heap, with the concrete flying, so he ran to get them and this ball of fire got him in the legs and he fell himself, that’s how he must’ve broke his arm, and the next thing he knew someone was dragging him and stomping on his legs to put out the fire and that’s all he knows. He must’ve passed out and they brought him to the hospital.” She drains the glass and hides her face in her hands.
“Its okay.” Renata reaches out to pat her awkwardly. “It’s okay. Did you speak to a doctor?”
“A nurse. She was nice. She thinks he’ll be okay. They did two skin grafts and may have to do more but it’s only the bottom part of his legs. He’ll be able to walk. There’s two men in there in really bad shape, worse burns. And the fourth, a construction guy, just happened to be in a small fire where he works. You sort of forget there’s ordinary life going on in the middle of all this. It’s a miracle that we found him alive. Thanks, Renata. You really saved my life.” She wipes her eyes, orders another iced coffee, and settles back in the booth.
Now, Renata senses, they are about to “catch up.” She braces herself. She is having an attack of iranima, the vague letdown on the realization of an almost futile wish. For so long she’d tried to find Cindy, and now that she’s here, it feels too casual. There was more texture in anticipation.
“So,” Cindy says after a pause, “I guess you had a rough time, I mean with the little girl and all.”
It’s as if a weight has plummeted from her throat to her groin and knocked the breath out of her. A minute or so passes before she can speak. “You know about that?”
“Yeah,” Cindy nods. “I do.”
“I don’t get it. Maybe you could fill me in. I could use another coffee too,” and she waves to the waitress.
Now that Cindy has relaxed, she slips into using the rising inflection, every sentence a question, which gives her voice the careless, light, uncertain tone of a teenager. “He used to call me every few months? Peter, I mean? He would never say where he was. It was creepy. Just out there somewhere? He always knew where I was, though?”
The rising inflection hurts Renata’s ear. She has to keep herself from giving an encouraging nod with each statement.
“How?”
“I told you, people like that, they know everything? They have connections? Your father must have known what he was. Or if he was too dumb to see—sorry, I mean blinded by brotherly love or something—your mother certainly could see. Peter was involved in all kinds of things.”
“You mean like drugs?”
“Drugs, other stuff. How do you think he knew those people he gave the baby to? They weren’t such bad types, basically, and they really did want a baby, but they were in it too. You know, selling on the side? That was partly why I left. I didn’t like being around all that. That was why I drank so much? Well, no, I can’t blame anyone for the drinking, I know that now. That’s my responsibility. Anyhow...He didn’t like it when I joined AA five years ago. He’d rather have me drinking? He even sent me money. Not that I asked. I’m not into blackmail. I did take it, though, I have to admit.”
“I’m totally confused. I can’t put all this together. Why would he want you to drink, first of all?”
“Well...” Cindy looks at Renata as if she’s a little slow, a little stupid, exactly as Renata and Claudia used to look at her when they were teenagers, so certain of being smarter than silly Cindy. “He didn’t want me talking about any of it. What happened. If I sobered up, I might say things....That’s why he kept in touch and sent money. It wasn’t because he cared about me or anything like that.”
Renata can’t speak. She will have to let it all spool out, then sort it through later.
“Look, I’m really sorry, Renata. I acted like a shit. No one knows it better than me. I should have helped you out when you had to take care of her all on your own. What was her name again?”
“Gianna,” she whispers.
“Gianna. That’s it. For your grandma, right? Yeah, I knew it was some odd Italian name, I just couldn’t remember. Peter told me they left her with you? The Jordans, I mean.”
Renata winces when she hears the name. The people her parents handed the baby to like a package in the parking lot, who returned her three years later like a package.
“They had to get out of town,” Cindy goes on. “They were in trouble. They didn’t want to leave her, but what could they do? If they got caught, where would she be then? Like maybe in foster care or worse? They figured it was better to give her to someone who would at least take good care of her.”
At least. I did better than “at least,” Renata thinks. Up to the day I didn’t. Maybe Gianna would have been better off with them, with the Jordans, in the long run. Better off with parents hiding out than whisked from a carousel in broad daylight. They loved her. They must have suffered, leaving her behind. But she cannot work up any interest in the Jordans’ suffering. There is enough to think about without that.
“You know, in AA, one of the twelve steps is when you make amends to all the people you harmed? I was going to do that. I had you down on my list to call and make amends, but when I told Peter, he got mad and threatened me. First I paid no attention, but then I came home one day and my apartment was trashed? That was scary. So I’m saying it now. I don’t know how I can make amends, but I am sorry.”
“Sorry you didn’t help me with Gianna?”
“Well, that too. But sorry I didn’t...I knew about when your father died. He knew. And about Claudia. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all I knew.”
Cindy is sorry. Renata sits like a stone. But maybe she’s being too severe. At least Cindy is apologizing on her own. She’s not resorting to second-hand intermediaries as one can do now in Tianjin, in China, a nation that, according to a recent news article, is “apologetically challenged.” The Chinese dread the loss of face that apologies provoke, and so they avoid them. To help out, the Tianjin Apology and Gift Center will, on behalf of remorseful clients, write letters of apology and send gifts at the reasonable rate of two dollars and fifty cents per apology. If that doesn’t do the trick, the Apology Center offers personal visits, made by their soberly dressed and scrupulously trained representatives. (Related services, designed to relieve stress, include “whacking a large blonde female mannequin with a stick,” one dollar and twenty-five cents for five minutes.) For Cindy, suddenly brave, loss of face is not an issue.
“I mean, not knew like I saw it with my own eyes,” she goes on, “but still—”
That is bad enough but it can wait. The dead can wait. One thing at a time. “Do you know where she is?”
“Gianna?”
“Yes.” Who else? There’s no doubt where Claudia is.
Cindy sips through her straw and shakes her head, no. She has both hands around the tall glass. Renata notices that most of her fingernails are bitten and ragged except for, inexplicably, one thumb and both pinkies.
“So he took her from the merry-go-round. I always thought so.” Would Peter want her back, though? What for? Far more likely that the Jordans took her, with or without Peter’s help. Or neither. Strangers. All these conjectures have been hurtling around in Renata’s head for years, bumping and bouncing like balls in a pinball machine. An infernal clanging. She can hear it right now.
“Oh, was it a merry-go-round? I never knew. I only knew she was missing. That’s all he knew, too. Really. He knew you didn’t have her anymore and you were in touch with the cops. He swears he had nothing to do with it.”
“And you believe him?”
“I think so? Because, like, why? I mean, sure, there’s a lot of traffic in kiddy porn and stuff like that, everyone knows that. But I don’t think he would. He’s a sleaze, all right, but there are limits.”
“Limits? What kind of limits does he have?”
“It happens a lot, Renata. Kids disappear. He felt bad about it.”
“You said he has so many connections. So did he try to find her?”
“I don’t know. But you tried, didn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“And nothing?”
“What do you think, Cindy? You think I’d be sitting here asking you these things if they’d found her?”
“Okay, okay, take it easy. Look, you said limits. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t, you know, do anything really gross because,...well, you do know, Renata, don’t you? That she was his kid? I mean, it’s not like I’m telling you anything you don’t already know, right?”
This has never been spoken aloud before. Only thought in the dead of night. Even now, Renata can only murmur about it. “Claudia said she was raped in the city but I never believed her.”
“Raped, give me a break. I’m sorry, I know rape is no joke, but really. I knew all along, but I never dreamed—”
“Hold on. You knew all along?”
“Well, I knew there was something going on, sure. He was out a lot, late at night. And then when Claudia got pregnant and wouldn’t say,...I put two and two together. Tell me something. Why in hell didn’t she have an abortion? Wouldn’t they let her?”
“She didn’t say anything till it was too late. I don’t know what she was thinking. She wasn’t thinking. It was like her brain switched off. You knew and you didn’t say?”
“I thought it would pass. Before she got pregnant, I mean. I tried so hard to get him away. I hated that town. I wanted to go back to California but he wouldn’t. How could I know it would end like ...? That day at the river, with the body,...after that, I freaked. ’Cause he was out that night. I remember he came home with a twisted ankle. He said he tripped in the driveway. Later he said if I said a word he’d—”
“But what did he tell you? What happened?”
“Nothing. He was shocked, you could see that for yourself. He didn’t do anything, he said. It was an accident.”
“So why didn’t he go for help? What happened down there? You have to tell me!”
“Renata, if I knew I’d tell you, believe me. Don’t you think I wondered too? Why do you think I left? I’m surprised you look so shocked. I thought you must’ve figured it out, I mean, what was going on with them. If not back then, at least by now. You were a smart kid. Smarter than your parents.”
She’d figured it out, of course, but couldn’t frame the words that would make it real. You can know something and refuse the words for what you know. Words are dangerous. Once something is in words, it’s in the world, in the common language. It’s registered in history.
She was smart back then, but not smart enough to put two and two together, like Cindy. That moment in the garage was more than enough evidence for any smart girl, even if she was only fifteen. But she let it go. Too stunned by the feel of it to take the next step and imagine what it might mean. And even now, after all the men she’s known, the feeling is as searing as it was then, his fingers running down her spine, bare in the halter top. Her shuddering with fear and a shocking pleasure.
It happened on a Saturday afternoon in the fall, unusually warm. The weather, like Claudia’s news, had been oppressive, and on impulse, Renata had cut her hair short. She was crouched down in a corner of the garage fixing the kickstand on her bike and didn’t hear the footsteps. When a hand came down gently on her neck, she started with fear.
“I haven’t seen you in days,” he said softly. “Where’ve you been keeping yourself? What’d you do to your hair?”
It was a relief to recognize Peter’s voice, even though it sounded different. Lower. Not the usual flippant nonchalance. Her muscles relaxed, then she shivered in the stuffy garage. She didn’t turn around right away.
He stroked her shoulder. “What’s up? No hello?” And ran a finger horizontally across the back of her neck, which wasn’t yet used to being exposed, then down her spine. It made her shiver again, not with cold but with an unfamiliar warmth, a tingling pleasure that ran through her nerves like a flame on a fuse. She stood up to make it stop.
He was looking down at her with a wry smile that made him younger than his thirty-three years, almost boyish, but as she turned to him his face changed. She can still remember the peculiar shift in his expression: the arrangement of the muscles, the cast of the eyes, all transformed him. For an instant he’d been a stranger, and then with that reconfiguration behind the skin, he metamorphosed back into her familiar, useless, pain-in-the-ass uncle.
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you, Renata.” He looked sheepish. “I thought you heard me come in.”
“I didn’t.”
“Going for a ride?”
“What does it look like? You could have said something. You scared me to death.”
“Sorry. So what’s up?”
They weren’t supposed to tell anyone about Claudia’s pregnancy. “Nothing. Same as usual.”
“I dropped over to see your father. Is he inside?”
“Yes. Maybe you should knock first.”
He ambled off with his vague, undirected gait. His walk was like his life, apparently going nowhere, yet with something offensive in it; without any swagger, his walk managed to be an affront. She felt hot and feverish and her stomach pulsed. She rubbed the back of her neck to wipe away his touch. She could still feel the pleasure of it though not for a long time would she identify it as pleasure, only as a sensation that made her confused and unsettled. There was something very confident about the touch, but that was as far as she could go. She didn’t want to know more.
Cindy lifts an ice cube onto her spoon and sucks it. “You’d feel better if you confront what you know. It’s no good living in denial, Renata.”
“Oh, spare me the new-age jargon. How do you know what’s good for me? After all these years.”
“All right then, forget it.”
“Why are you telling me all this now, anyway? Aren’t you still afraid of him?”
“No, because he’s sick. Too sick to do anything.”
“I see. Well, good. I’m glad. Do you know where he is?”
“You really want to know?”
“I’m asking, aren’t I? I really want to know.”
“In a hospital in Houston. He’d never say before, but now he’s begging me to visit. He wants to see someone? Anyone. But I’m not about to go.”
“He can see me. I’ll go.”
“Are you serious?”
“Very. I’ll pay him a visit. As soon as the planes start flying.”
“Well...” Cindy shakes her head and pushes her hair back from her forehead. Her skin is quite smooth, remarkably unchanged. It’s her eyes that show wear and tear; tiny red lines, like meandering little rills, run through the whites. “I guess that’s your business. I don’t know what you hope to accomplish. I mean, you’re not thinking of, like going to court or anything? He won’t live long enough for that. Besides, you have nothing, no evidence.”
I have you, Renata thinks. “I don’t know what I want to accomplish. I’ll see when I get there. I should go home. I can’t talk anymore.”
“Me too. Thanks a million. I mean it. You really came through for me.”
“Are you okay, otherwise? Are you working?”
“Yeah, I have a job in a salon three days a week, and a few private customers. We manage. It was worse before I met Hal. I had some bad times, but I try not to think about them.”
“I would have helped you out if you’d asked.”
“I know you would. I appreciate it. I guess you got something from the sale of the house, right?”
“Yes, but it took a while.” Because she didn’t know how to deal with real-estate and insurance agents and lawyers when she was eighteen years old. Because it was all she could do, arranging her father’s funeral and coping with her mother’s collapse. She’s had some bad times too. In any case, the expected appeal for money is not forthcoming. She feels a grudging respect for silly Cindy. “I’ll call you to get the name of the hospital in Houston. And I want to know how Hal does. Now that we’re back in touch—”
“Yes,” Cindy says. “Let’s not wait so long. I think I’ll go back to the hospital and see him again.”
“My subway’s on the corner. I’ll walk over with you.”
So they part amicably, after all that. Again the pillowy hug, again a few tears. Their goodbye on the street, at the wall with the Missing notices, under the gaze of the young warriors in camouflage uniforms, seems strangely pacific to Renata, considering the brutalities they spoke of. It’s true that much of what Cindy told her was not news, but then again, much of what we call news is merely confirmation of what we already know. Or have envisioned between sleep and waking, then banished in daylight. For once the words are articulated, they press for thought. Even so, words do ease the burden. They bear part of the weight. The stone is definitely lighter now. Moreover, she’s going to do something about it.
Again she reads the notices, studies the faces and descriptions of the Missing. Cicatrix detras de la canilla, gold stud in navel, vaccination scar on right upper arm, cornrows, pockmarked face, blackened big toenail on right foot....Among the others edging up and back along the wall are several she can identify as tourists: they carry cameras, backpacks, wear pastels and polyester or speak foreign tongues. She wants to shoo them away, tell them they don’t belong, like crashers at a funeral. A few are actually snapping pictures; it’s Jack’s Reality Tourism come to life. As her fingers itch to seize the cameras and dash them to the pavement, she sees again the thin girl with the chopped blonde hair, who might have been drifting along the wall all this time. Waiting. She does look very much like Claudia at that age. Like Renata herself. The girl might be suffering from amnesia or shock, after the attack. She might have been orphaned. She might be related to one of the Missing she peruses so intently, or she might herself be one of the Missing. She might be anyone. A runaway girl from hundreds of miles away, lost in the city. A drifter, a prostitute, a junkie, a homeless girl, a mental patient who in the general confusion of that Tuesday wandered out while the doctors and nurses were busy preparing for the onslaught of the injured that never came. Or a foreign tourist who got separated from her family or her school group. (But why would a tourist be walking around in flip-flops?) She might be anything. And anything might be made of her.
She notices Renata and gives the merest glance of recognition. Not a smile, just a faint livening of the dark eyes. There’s something raw about her, not a girl who’s been tended or cosseted. Raw and lost, so lost that impulsively, Renata goes up to her and says, “Are you all right? Do you need any help?”
Her lips part in the beginning of a smile, as if she’s pleased to be addressed, but she says nothing, gives no sign in answer. Deaf? Dumb? Retarded?
“Do you have a place to go? Are you hungry?”
Nothing, only the half-smile lingers. An intelligent smile. Not retarded. Renata tries speaking to her in French, Spanish, German. “Are you lost? Where do you come from?” Nothing in response except a faint look of puzzlement. Not deaf. Not a tourist. Simply mute.
“Here. Please, take this.” She pulls out a twenty-dollar bill and holds it out. The girl looks confused, as if she doesn’t know what it is or why Renata is offering it. She doesn’t reach for it. Renata takes her hand and places the money there. Her hand is warm and soft, larger than expected, finely articulated. She has nowhere to put the money, no bag, no shoes, no bra. Renata doesn’t know what else to do.
“Can I help you get home? Call someone for you?”
Nothing. But her fingers curl around the bill.
“Tell me what I can do. I want to help you. What about...Can I get you a sandwich or something? Come on.”
Nothing. She won’t move.
“Okay, then. Good luck.”
She could be anyone at all. What was she before? What has she been turned into? She could be Gianna, turned up after all these years. Why not? Gianna must be somewhere. Why not right here?