The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [83]
I suddenly felt that I had to call Gabriel. Of all the people I knew here, he was the one I trusted most. I’ll do whatever he says, whatever he thinks is right, I thought.
I was at home now. It was late, midnight. I called Gabriel, but there was no answer. The idea of calling Leonarda frightened me, as if it would bring me closer to the very thing I feared, as if, if I spoke to her, the worst would be confirmed.
I called Gabriel again. No answer.
I spent a horrific night. Wide awake, imagining things. When I did sleep, for forty-five minutes or so, I dreamed again of my childhood backyard.
In the morning, Gabriel called me back. I asked him to come over right away.
“What is it?”
“Please just come. I can’t tell you on the phone.”
It took a while, but I was happy to have something precise to wait for. Rather than something horrific but imprecise, looming. Finally, he arrived.
“What happened?” he asked as soon as I opened the door.
I brought him inside. I was speaking rapidly, at first in a very soft voice, so no one could hear. Even though the building, as both he and I knew, had some of the thickest walls in the world.
“Wait, I can’t hear you,” he said. “Speak up.”
I told him the whole story. Halfway through, I started to cry.
When I’d finished, Gabriel’s face looked crushed. “I never trusted that girl,” he said.
This made me start crying harder.
“But wait, wait,” he said, pulling himself together. “I’m not saying I believe the guy’s dead. Take it easy.” He stood up.
“But the smell—”
“Maybe the smell’s from something else. If he’s dead, it would’ve been in the news.”
“But they haven’t found him yet,” I said. “That’s why there’s the smell.”
“Just take it easy. Have you checked the news?”
I hadn’t.
“Let me do that now.”
He went to my computer. There was no Wi-Fi set up in the apartment, but sometimes if you went near the window you could pick up a signal.
I was sitting down on the floor, huddled into a ball.
“I can’t get a signal,” he said, after a few minutes of holding my computer up near the windows. “Have you spoken to Leonarda?”
I shook my head.
“Why don’t you call her? Maybe she knows something. Maybe she’s even seen him since.”
I got up and found my phone. Instinctively, I’d wanted to keep my distance from Leonarda. But I was determined to do what Gabriel told me. I called.
The phone rang and rang. No answer.
“No answer,” I said, putting it down.
In the meantime, Gabriel had received a call. “Okay, okay, I’m leaving in a minute,” he said, exasperated, to whomever it was.
“Listen,” he now said to me. “I have to do a delivery, out to the suburbs. Then I’ll come back. It should take me a few hours, no more than that. Just try to relax. Anything could’ve happened. Maybe he went out of town. The guy travels a lot. He left some food rotting. Or the sewer system’s out.”
Once he was gone, I tried Leonarda again. I called and called her. This had never happened, that I’d called this much and she hadn’t answered. I interpreted it as a terrible sign. She’d been caught. Or worse, and more likely, she’d disappeared, was leaving me to shoulder all the blame.
I checked my watch. Only a half an hour had passed since Gabriel had left. There was no way in hell I could wait here for hours.
I decided to go over to Miguel’s again. Action, I had to take action.
I took a taxi. Again, I pictured police cars crowded together outside The Palace of Pigeons. Again, they weren’t there. I didn’t recognize the doorman on duty. He was young, must’ve been new. I said I was going to see Miguel. The indoor pillars, the polished floor. Again, I rang the bell.
There was silence for a moment, then a sound. A moment later, Miguel opened the door.
“Oh!” I said. I flushed. I was stammering. I could never have predicted being so happy to see him. He was wearing shorts, socks. “Please excuse me,” he said. I knew he didn’t like to be seen in shorts and socks. While this had struck me as ridiculous before, now it seemed touching. He returned a moment