“Don’t take it personal, hon.” She cupped his face with her cold hands. “It’s all running together for him at the end. He don’t know who’s here anymore and who isn’t.”
Kevin was still too choked up to reply, so she just patted him and said, “You try to sleep, and we’ll come fetch you when it’s time.”
But then they didn’t. Aunt Mary, God bless her, had too much on her mind, and no one else knew that he’d arrived. Ever since that night Kevin has lacerated himself for not being present when his grandfather died, for sleeping through it. He could have stayed awake, he could have offered to sit up with his grandfather, but instead he’d let himself be stashed out of sight like one of those mildewed old boxes, so that when Kyle, who was awake at the time, said, “He’s going,” and a dozen Quinns all over the house rose from their beds or sofas or recliners like vampires from their coffins to troop into the bedroom and witness Grandfather Quinn’s last, stertorous breaths, Kevin was fitfully asleep on the stiff old cot upstairs, still humiliated by his grandfather’s undisguised disappointment. For years afterward Kevin was angry at himself, because out of all the nights he’d stayed up for no good reason — to finish a paper in college, to party until dawn, to fuck, to restlessly channel surf because he couldn’t sleep even if he wanted to — this was the one night when he should’ve made the effort to stay awake and he didn’t, and the old man died without his witness. And the worst of it was, he’d known that night, as he let Aunt Mary steer him upstairs and onto the cot, that it was his responsibility and nobody else’s to keep himself awake. In the end his body betrayed him, clouded his consciousness, dragged his eyelids down, lied to him like a seducer by saying, “Just rest your eyes for a minute, you’ll feel better afterward,” so that when Aunt Mary finally remembered and shook him awake in the leaden dawn of Christmas morning, Kevin woke up angry at himself, at her, at the world.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” he’d whined as he thundered down the stairs in his stocking feet, and Aunt Mary had said, “I’m so sorry, hon, I forgot all about you upstairs, I’m so sorry,” leaving Kevin to face a houseful of cousins, glum and smug in equal measure, while Kathleen lifted her eyebrows at him, saying only “Hello.” But the voice he’s hearing now is louder, practically shouting, and the touch is rougher than his Aunt Mary’s, fingernails digging into his arm. “Hello!”
“What?” He opens his eyes and clenches his stinging fists. A woman is squatting next to him, not his Aunt Mary, not Kathleen, but someone else. Disheveled brown hair, watery blue eyes, cracked lipstick.
“Are you hurt?” says the woman, gripping his shoulder. Her skirt is a little too tight for her to be squatting, and her touch is as much to steady herself on the toes of her pumps as it is to reassure Kevin.
“No,” he says. Then, wincing and opening his fingers, “Yes, a little. I picked up some glass.”
She lightly cups one of his hands with one of hers, and her warm touch thrills Kevin like a lover’s. He’s seen her somewhere before, but where? He doesn’t know anyone in Austin. The woman says nothing, but looks away through the ruin of the outside wall and into the hazy glare. She tightens her grip on his hand and says, “Where did you come from?”
“Ann Arbor, Michigan.”
The woman winces. “No. I mean, where did you come from in this building?”
“Oh.” Kevin doesn’t want to disappoint her. He doesn’t want her to let go of his hand. “Nowhere. I mean, I was right here, on this floor, with…”
“With whom?” Ever the copy editor, even now Kevin notes the correct use of the objective pronoun. Then the full horror of what just happened jolts him again, an electric shock to his heart. “There was a girl,” he says. “A young woman, I mean.”
The woman glances around, still cupping his bleeding hand, still steadying herself on his shoulder. “Is she going for help? Did she find a way down?”
She did, thinks Kevin, but not what you have in mind. “No.” He wishes he hadn’t mentioned her. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?”
Kevin lifts his chin toward the gap, over the edge. “I didn’t know her name.”
The woman closes her eyes and sighs, twisting slowly down on the toes of her pumps as if she’s deflating, ending up next to Kevin against the wall. There’s soot on her face and her brown hair is tousled. She’s his age, maybe a little younger, though it’s hard to tell — she’s a little too made-up for him to be able to see the woman underneath clearly — and now he remembers where he’s seen her before. She’s the woman from Starbucks, the woman with the laptop and the little suitcase on wheels, the woman who asked his opinion about letting some guy down gently. The woman with the fancy coffee who’d never heard of Damon Runyon. The Yellow Rose.
Kevin starts to speak, but his throat tightens up. She turns her wide, cornflower blue eyes to him, not seeing him, her gaze entirely inward. He notices that one of her false eyelashes lies like a caterpillar just under her eye. “Where did you come from?” he says.
She gazes at him unblinking, He nudges her and says again, “Where did you come from?”
Her gaze snaps into focus. “Below. One floor down. I think.”
Kevin notices her nostrils flaring, a little Bewitched twitch of the nose. She’s sniffing the air like a mouse.
“I peed myself,” he says.
“What?”
“I pissed myself.” Kevin gestures feebly at his damp, stinging lap. “That’s what you’re smelling.”
Involuntarily the Yellow Rose glances at the dark stain, then meets his gaze. “Hon, if that’s the worst thing that happens to you today, you’ll be a lucky man.”
“Yeah.”
Now she’s tucking her heels under her again, balancing on the toes of her shoes and steadying herself against the wall. She combs the tangles out of her hair with her fingers, scowls at the soot on her palm. “I’m not exactly feeling fresh at the moment, either.”
“Why are you here?” Kevin says.
She’s got that directionless gaze again, the thousand-yard stare. Perhaps she misunderstood the question, the way he misunderstood the one about where he’d come from. Perhaps she thinks he’s asking her an existential question. Aw hon, she’ll say, why are any of us here?
“Why’d you come up,” he says, “instead of down?”
She narrows her eyes at him. “How bad are you hurt? Can you stand?”
“I’m fine. It’s just my hands.”
“Come on.” She hooks her fingers under his elbow and tugs, helping him slide up the wall to his feet. His knees are a little wobbly; she senses it and tightens her grip, but when she tries to pull his arm around her shoulders so that she can support him, he shakes her. I can do it, Mom. Still, she clutches his sleeve, and Kevin almost apologizes.