You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [39]
She pours boiling water into the pot.
“The beds had wheels on. After the doctors’ rounds I’d roll the sicker ones up next to each other so they could talk. They were just glad someone else knew, I think.”
The kettle is rinsed and set back on the counter.
Once again, they ascend the stairs, Mrs. McLaggan carrying the tray. Albert is asleep, his red face turned to one side on the pillow. Mrs. McLaggan sets the tray down on the side table.
“I’ll leave you with him now,” she says, laying a hand on Paul’s shoulder.
When she has gone, he perches on the stool by the bed. Here, he can make out the boy’s features hidden beneath the rotting skin: the thin lips and pointed nose, the bony forehead of his Celtic ancestors, the corners of his skull showing at the temples. Paul lets the stench rise up into his nostrils, breathing it in freely.
It will not be long now, he thinks, for either of them.
The boy’s head moves slightly on the pillow and he wakes.
“Would you like to hear another story?” Paul asks.
Albert nods. It is not thanks Paul sees in his expression but forgiveness.
“Tell me about the kings.”
REUNION
WHEN IT FINALLY arrived, the minister’s letter came in a typed envelope bearing no return address. It was signed at the bottom in careful script. The request had been seen to, the arrangements made. The local council would require a check; an address was given. James read it on the stairs up to his flat. When he’d found his keys and got inside, he put the letter on the mantel to make sure he wouldn’t forget.
Simon, his manager at the estate agents, had initially thought it odd that James should want his holiday at such short notice, and all four weeks at once. But it was midsummer, nothing selling, the time as good as any. He’d said James could leave right away if all his work was in order, which it was—he had seen to that before making his request. He stood now in his living room, removing from his briefcase the bits and pieces he had collected from his desk, placing the framed picture of his father on the side table.
“How ’bout a drink before you head off?” his redheaded colleague, Patrick, had offered. He had been kind and helpful from the beginning, yet James was caught off guard by his suggestion, a first in their yearlong acquaintance. What would he have to say, sitting in a pub with this fellow he’d spent time thinking about? Over the partition, colleagues had looked on. “Perhaps another time,” was all James had managed to respond.
The groceries put away, he showered, and afterward stood before the mirror, wrapped in a towel. Three or four times he drew the razor over the taut flesh of his chin before he was satisfied the stubble was gone. Shaving made him look younger than twenty-five; with his hair cut the right way he could still pass for a university student. He examined the skin beneath his eyes, noticing a little flaking, the hint of a rash just below the surface. As he stepped back from the mirror, the latter disappeared, and he observed his smooth face with a modicum of contentment; not so bad, he thought.
In his bedroom, he found a clean T-shirt and pair of boxers, folded neatly in the bureau drawer. The room, as usual, was tidy: the bed made, the curtains fastened in place, laundry piled in the corner hamper. He returned his suit to its hanger, fitted his brogues with shoehorns, and put his tie on the rack fixed to the inside of the wardrobe door, wondering, all the while, how long this order would last.
ACROSS THE COMMON, kids scurried over the public courts, swatting at tennis balls that arced slowly in the damp air. Along the perimeter, people jogged on the asphalt path. James crossed the green, headed toward a line of trees whose branches swayed against a darkening sky. There was food in the refrigerator,