Coronado - Dennis Lehane [23]
There is a basic human concern in hospitals, a unity. And he begins to suspect he is addicted to it.
HE IS NOT there when Isabella takes Manuelo home after three weeks, but he hears the prognosis is good. But he is there when Michael gets the news that his mother has passed on, and he sits with him on the heating grate of a windowsill overlooking the city. Michael speaks softly of the flower beds she placed in boxes outside her apartment windows, speaks of her need to bake in times of grief, her inclination to purse her lips and go silent in times of joy. He tells Daniel she learned only the most rudimentary English, enough to get her green card, and then never spoke it again except to order meat from the deli.
“She would say, she would say, ‘Russia is my home. I did not choose the men who ruined it, who made me leave it. So I do not choose to face that I am not there.’” He claps Daniel’s knee. “Ah, she was a rough old woman. Farm stock, you see? Thick ankles, thick head.”
Daniel goes down in the elevator with him and they walk outside. It’s late, the streets silent and smooth with rain. Michael gives him his card. He is an instructor in martial arts.
“Karate?”
He shakes his head. “Soviet military techniques. No pretty philosophy, just attack.”
“You were in the military?”
Michael smiles and lights a cigarette. “I was KGB, my young friend.”
Before Daniel can think how to respond, Michael says, “It’s so nice to be able to say, yes? I was KGB. Just like that. I say it. It is said.” He raises his hands to the air. “And no one stops me. This country…”
Daniel says, “I’m not sure you’d get the same result if you said you were CIA.”
Michael keeps his smile and nods. He blows smoke into the air and follows it with his chin. “You have no father here.”
Daniel says, “I do.”
Michael chuckles and shakes his head at his cigarette.
Daniel says, “I don’t. Okay.”
“You are hiding. Yes?”
Daniel nods.
Michael says, “You will run out of space.”
Daniel looks around at the sprawl of buildings. “Eventually.”
“But by then—yes?—they could have stopped looking.”
A thought infiltrates Daniel before he can stop it: What would I do then?
He says, “They stop looking sometimes, do they?”
Michael nods. “It depends on the level of the offense. But, yes, oftentimes, they just go away.”
“To where?”
“Other things. Other files. You wake up one day and there is no one watching anymore.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Daniel says, but his throat fills with throbs at the prospect.
“And you are free again, yes?”
“Yes.”
Michael touches his arm, squeezes it to the bone. “I promised my mother I would take her home.”
“To Russia.”
He nods, still holding Daniel’s arm.
“But this,” Michael says, “this is home, I think.”
Daniel nods, though he’s not sure he understands, and Michael lets go of his arm.
Michael strips the coal off his cigarette with a slide of his finger and thumb, tosses the remains into a trash can. He sniffs the air.
He looks at Daniel. He says, “You have been my friend.”
“You’ve been mine.”
Michael shrugs.
“You have.”
Another shrug, smaller.
Michael says, “Eventually…”
“Yes.”
“One way or the other.”
“Yes.”
Michael smiles that soft smile of his. He takes both of Daniel’s shoulders in his hands. He squeezes them and his jaw is clenched below his smile and he looks into Daniel’s eyes and nods.
“Good night, my friend.”
“Good night.”
Daniel stands on the sidewalk. He can smell the rain in the night, though it has long since stopped falling, and he feels the hospital complex breathing around him.
If they really did stop looking…
If they really have lost interest altogether…
Michael reaches the corner and looks back, gives him a final wave, and Daniel waves back. An ambulance bleats. Lights come on in windows. Out on the main avenue, cars turn right, turn left, beep their horns. Two nurses pass him, one of them laughing