“Which is when I met you,” she concluded.
Throughout much of this account, Humphrey had listened, his eyelids clenched shut, squeezing from his synapses the weak pulses of recall. But, by the end, he had faded.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she told him. “It’s you and me again. But I’m finding a place out here in Sheepshead now. Don’t have tons of money, so I’m hoping there’s something in this building. Wouldn’t it be nice if I was on the same floor? Or maybe I could get a room on the floor below you, so I can hear when you’re walking around!”
He mumbled a few words — the spasms of a spent brain. Without further warning, he was asleep, deeply so, forehead still furrowed from the preceding effort.
By nightfall, she helped him onto his mattress and cleared a patch of space for herself on the floor, lying parallel to his bed. She gazed up, able to make out his shape under the covers, hearing his slow breaths, and she reached her hand over his wrist, which quivered at each heartbeat. When people have children, she thought, they don’t think of them as adults, don’t think of them as old or lonely. They think of having a baby, not having an old man. Tooly was glad that Mac had met Humphrey. Maybe someday the boy would be the last person in the world to remember him.
After sixteen hours of impenetrable sleep, Humphrey was slow to wake the following morning. She smiled, informing him of the remarkable duration of his slumber. Tooly expected to encounter the man who had exerted himself the day before, but such a person had retracted. She sought to summon anew the details of his life, but he betrayed no interest.
Nevertheless, for the first time since her arrival Humphrey was peaceful. He could not see or hear properly, and remained doubtful about the time of day. But he knew who she was, and was uncommonly affectionate, holding her hand as she sat beside him. He kept saying this was the perfect life.
“What do you want to eat this weekend?” she asked. “I want us to have a blowout. Something we can’t afford. The shops will be shut when the storm arrives, so I have to pick up stuff beforehand.” She emptied out her wallet: less than forty dollars. “Champagne? Actually, probably can’t afford that. But a bottle of wine? Or vodka? You used to like vodka tonic. I can make you cocktails, Humph, and we can make toasts about things. What do you think?”
He loved the idea of a celebration, but wanted no alcohol — didn’t want to dull anything now. Tooly abstained in solidarity, stepping into the liquor store, then out again with nothing. She prepared him a smashed-potato sandwich, not because it was the lunch hour but because it gave him pleasure. And who cared about time? That was mere conformism!
“Is it all right?” she asked, watching him take a bite.
“Oh, God.”
“What?”
“Oh, my God!”
“Is it terrible?”
“It’s delicious!” he shouted, turning wide-eyed to face her, though unable to orient to her.
“I’m so happy to hear that, Humph.”
“I love smashed-potato sandwiches!” he cried. “How did you know?”
“Because I know you.”
“But how did you know?” He looked blindly beyond her. “How did you know?” Without waiting for an answer, he took another bite. “Delicious!”
After only one further mouthful, he fell asleep again, sandwich still gripped. He grunted when she tried to ease it from him.
Hurricane Irene was supposed to devastate New York City but had diminished into gales and heavy rain by the time it hit that Sunday morning. She went out to witness the wild weather, which always stirred her. Despite the evacuation order, the neighborhood wasn’t empty. There was even a café open. Two young Russian women served, conversing in their language with four male customers, all brazenly nonchalant in their defiance of public-safety warnings.
Tooly asked what damage there had been around here. They spoke of a few fallen trees and toppled power lines, and said the bay had overflowed. But nothing too serious. She bought a black tea and sat at the window, gazing at the empty intersection. A grocery store across the way was boarded up. The barbershop had its shutters down. A traffic light swung in the wind, changing colors without any vehicles to respond. Seemed almost unreaclass="underline" the pelting rain, the chattering Russians behind her, Humphrey just around the corner, Duncan in Connecticut perhaps peering out the window at the storm, Venn in Ireland with wife and baby. Maybe Fogg was at World’s End, listening to the radio, dusting the stock. All these places at once.
With nearly her last dollar, she bought a croissant for Humphrey. When she returned, saying his name softly in case he slept, he remained still, because his heart had stopped.
1988: The End
HUMPHREY BECKONED HER to follow him out of the house. She reached for his hand, but it rose, resting on her head. “Your hair is wet from rain,” he said, as they walked down the alley. “Warm now, also.”
“Because of the sun,” Tooly explained, touching the hot crown of her head, sandwiching his fingers there and holding them for the entire walk to the main road.
The traffic — buses and tuk-tuks and motorcycles, fumes tickling her nose — overloaded her senses after weeks inside that house. He hailed a taxi and helped her into the backseat, flopping in after her and giving her address. Odd to hear him say “Gupta Mansions,” as if a character from this version of Tooly had wandered into the previous version. She watched him looking out the car window, his old eyes following each vehicle they passed, focus dragged along with it, then the next.
The taxi stopped at her street. “Very soon,” Humphrey said, opening the door on her side, speaking differently than he had, more seriously, “very soon you will grow up. Being small is hard bit of life. But you are nearly done with it. When you are grown, Tooly, you can be boss till the end. You are someone who must be boss of your life, not pushed around. So be careful.”
“I’ll be careful of trivial beings,” she suggested, to please him.
He smiled sadly. “Yes. Of trivial beings.”
“And the Moron Problem.”
“This also.”
She stepped from the taxi, watching him, unsure what was happening. “Are you going?”
“Good luck for your life,” he answered through the window.
The driver turned the cab around. Humphrey’s head was visible in the rear window as the taxi drove away.
She stood beside a pothole, looking into it, then stepped over and continued down the soi, past the fruit stall, past the tailor pumping his foot-pedal sewing machine, past the construction workers in bandannas.
It was Shelly who answered the door. She backed away to let Tooly in, bowed, hastened to her quarters. Paul was still away at work. Tooly found her bedroom tended and tidy, bed made, sheets tight. The apartment was air-conditioner cold, its thrumming units rippling the curtains. On the desk, her schoolbooks were lined up. She opened her book bag, looking for Nicholas Nickleby, but had left it behind. She took out her sketchbook of noses instead, yet couldn’t bring herself to draw more than a line, so left it on the desk. She jumped onto the bed, landing on her knees, mattress jiggling — her first proper bedding after weeks in the tent. She let herself fall flat on her face and lay still, her mouth dampening a patch of bedspread.
At the sound of Paul arriving home, she awoke with fright but did not move for several seconds. Finally, heart racing, she walked into the living room.