State of Wonder - Ann Patchett [68]
By six o’clock she had dressed and left. The early morning city had the tick of action, children were on their blankets, the painted bowls and crude flutes and beaded bracelets they had to sell were all in even lines, the women were moving towards the market hall, not briskly but faster than they would move at any other point for the rest of the day. Dogs trailed along far to the sides of the streets, heads low and watchful, the shadow and light making valleys between every rib.
It seemed in all of Manaus only Nixon was still asleep. In the lobby of the Swenson-Bovender apartment building, his face was pressed sideways against the desk, his hands stretched out in front of him and open wide. Marina gave herself a moment to watch such a deep and dreamless sleep, feeling a fondness for him she couldn’t account for unless it was just the fact that there were so few people in this city she knew by name. She imagined he was a good man even though her only evidence was his fidelity to this post.
She sat down in the lobby to write the Bovenders a note, but after going to the trouble of locating paper and pen found she had no idea what to say. She couldn’t thank them. They were the grand jury after all, keeping her there in the holding cell of the Hotel Indira for two weeks while they decided if her case was fit for Dr. Swenson to hear. Or maybe she should thank them for managing to make their decision in two weeks. They had kept Anders for over a month, an entire wasted month of life while his boys rode their bicycles alone through the slush of spring. Marina was distracted by the sound of Nixon’s labored respiration. Then, on his desk, he stopped breathing. Twenty seconds, thirty seconds, she was just about to get up when at forty-five seconds he gasped, his back heaving, and then began to breathe again. Still asleep, he sighed and turned his face in the other direction. Apnea. There was nothing she could do about that.
She settled back into the winged chair in the lobby’s small conversational grouping of furniture where she sat by herself. If Marina couldn’t thank the Bovenders, she found she couldn’t blame them either. At twenty-three she would have gladly done their job. She might have stayed in the position until she was forty-three if certain events had played out differently. Without the Bovenders there to remind her, she might have forgotten what it was like to be enthralled, to fall hard in love for principles and a singularly remarkable mind. They were little more than pretty children, feather-light, proven capable of no end of lies, and yet there was something in their shiny nature that made them indestructible. She would have given anything to take them to the jungle with her. So in the end she put down the truth as she knew it at that exact minute. I will miss you. She wrote their name on the bag and added twenty dollars U.S. for the cost of cleaning the dress, knotted it all together and left it on the desk beside one of Nixon’s sleeping hands. Dr. Swenson tended to be early. If rounds began at seven she was on to the first case at six-thirty. It didn’t take long to figure out the clock. Marina didn’t want to meet her in the lobby for fear it might look like an ambush. She walked quickly to Rodrigo’s store. It was busy then, all the stores were busy. She fixed herself a cup of coffee from the pot on his counter and found a nylon duffel bag while he waited on customers. She picked up more sunscreen,