It wasn’t forbidden for the sisters to look at their personal files, and yet Evangeline felt as if she were breaking a strict code of etiquette. Momentarily restraining her curiosity about the medical documents in her file, she turned to the papers relating to her novitiate, a series of run-of-the-mill admission forms that her father had completed upon bringing her to St. Rose. The sight of her father’s handwriting sent a wave of pain through her. It had been years since she’d seen him. She traced a finger over his handwriting, remembering the sound of his laughter, the smell of his office, his habit of reading himself to sleep each night. How odd, she thought, pulling the forms from the folder, that the marks he’d left behind had the power to bring him back to life, if only for a moment.
Reading the forms, she found a series of facts about her life. There was the address where they had lived in Brooklyn, their old telephone number, her place of birth, and her mother’s maiden name. Then, toward the bottom, written in as Evangeline’s designated emergency contact, she found what she was searching for: Gabriella Levi-Franche Valko’s New York City address and telephone number. The address matched the return address on the Christmas cards.
Before Evangeline had a chance to think over the repercussions of her actions, she lifted the phone and dialed Gabriella’s number, her anticipation clouding all other feelings. If anyone would know what to do, it would be her grandmother. The line rang once, twice, and then Evangeline heard it, the brusque and commanding voice of her grandmother. “Allo?”
Verlaine’s apartment, Greenwich Village, New York City
The twenty-four hours since he’d left his apartment felt to Verlaine like a lifetime ago. Only yesterday he’d collected his dossier, put on his favorite socks, and run down the five flights of stairs, his wing tips slipping on the wet rubber treads. Only yesterday he’d been preoccupied with avoiding Christmas parties and putting together his New Year’s plans. He couldn’t understand how the information he’d collected could have led to the sorry state he found himself in now.
He’d packed the original copies of Innocenta’s letters and the bulk of his notebooks into a bag, locked his office, and headed downtown. The morning sunlight had ascended over the city, the soft diffusion of yellow and orange breaking the stark winter sky in an elegant sweep. He walked for blocks and blocks through the cold. Somewhere in the mid-Eighties, he gave up and took the subway the rest of the way. By the time he unlocked the front door of his building, he had almost convinced himself that the previous night’s events were an illusion. Perhaps, he told himself, he had imagined it all.
Verlaine unlocked the door to his apartment, knocked it closed with the heel of his shoe, and dropped his messenger bag on the couch. He took off his ruined wing tips, pulled away his wet socks, and walked barefoot into his humble abode. He half expected to find the place in ruins, but everything appeared to be exactly as he’d left it the day before. A web of shadows fell over the exposed-brick walls, the I950s Formica-topped table stacked with books, the turquoise leather benches, the kidney-shaped resin coffee table-all of his Midcentury Modern pieces, shabby and mismatched, were waiting for him.
Verlaine’s art books filled an entire wall. There were oversize coffee-table Phaidon Press editions, squat paperbacks of art criticism, and glossy folios containing prints of his favorite modernists-Kandinsky, Sonia Delaunay, Picasso, Braque. He owned more books than actually fit into such a small apartment, and yet he refused to sell them. He’d come to the conclusion years ago that a studio apartment was not ideal for someone with a hoarding instinct.
Standing at his fifth-floor window, he removed the silk Hermès tie he’d been using as a bandage, slowly working the fabric away from the scabbing flesh. His tie was ruined. Folding it, he placed it on the sill. Outside, a slice of morning sky hovered in the distance, lifting above rows of buildings as if propped on stilts. The snow hung upon tree branches, slouched down the slopes of drainage pipes, and tapered into daggers of ice. Water towers on rooftops dotted the tableau. Although he didn’t own an inch of property, he felt that this view belonged to him. Looking intently at his corner of the city could absorb his entire attention. This morning, however, he simply wanted to clear his head and think about what he would do next.
Coffee, he realized, would be a good start. Walking to the galley kitchen, he turned on his espresso machine, packed fine-ground beans into the portafilter, and-after steaming some milk-made himself a cappuccino in an antique Fiestaware mug, one of the few he hadn’t broken. As Verlaine took a sip of coffee, the flash of his answering machine caught his eye-there were messages. He pressed a button and listened. People had been calling all night and hanging up. Verlaine counted ten instances of someone simply listening on the line, as if waiting for him to answer. Finally a message played in which the caller spoke. It was Evangeline’s voice. He recognized it in an instant.
“If you took the midnight train, you should have been back by now. I cannot help but wonder where you are and whether you are safe. Call me as soon as you can.”
Verlaine went to the closet, where he dug out an old leather duffel bag. He unzipped it and threw in a clean pair of Hugo Boss jeans, a pair of Calvin Klein boxers, a Brown University sweatshirt-his alma mater-and two pairs of socks. He dug a pair of Converse All-Stars from the bottom of the closet, put on a pair of clean socks, and put them on. There was no time for him to think about what else he might need. He would rent a car and drive back to Milton immediately, taking the same route he’d followed yesterday afternoon, driving over the Tappan Zee Bridge and navigating the small roads along the river. If he hurried, he could be there before lunch.
Suddenly the telephone rang, a noise so sharp and startling that he lost his grip on the coffee cup. It fell against the window ledge with a solid crack, a splatter of coffee and milk spilling over the floor. Eager to speak with Evangeline, he left the cup where it landed and grabbed the phone.
“Evangeline?” he said.
“Mr. Verlaine.” The voice was soft, feminine, and it addressed Verlaine with an unusual intimacy. The woman’s accent-Italian or French, he couldn’t tell exactly which-combined with a slight hoarseness, gave him the impression that she was middle-aged, perhaps older, although this was pure speculation.
“Yes, speaking,” he replied, disappointed. He glanced at the broken cup, aware that he had diminished his collection yet again. “What can I do for you?”
“Many things, I hope,” the woman said.
For a fraction of a second, Verlaine thought the caller might be a tele-marketer. But his number was unlisted, and he didn’t usually get unwanted calls. Besides, it was clear that this voice was not the kind to be selling magazine subscriptions.
“That’s a rather tall order,” Verlaine said, taking the caller’s strange phone manner in stride. “Why don’t you start by telling me who you are?”
“May I ask you a question first?” the woman said.
“You might as well.” Verlaine was beginning to get irritated with the calm, insistent, almost hypnotic sound of the woman’s voice, a voice quite different from Evangeline’s.
“Do you believe in angels?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you believe that angels exist among us?”
“Listen, if this is some kind of evangelical group,” Verlaine said, bending before the window and stacking the fragments of his cup one on top of the other. The white, granular powder from the unglazed center of the cup crumbled over his fingers. “You’ve got the wrong guy. I’m an overeducated, left-of-left, soy-latte-drinking, borderline-metrosexual liberal agnostic. I believe in angels as much as I believe in the Easter Bunny.”