The Swan Thieves

The Swan Thieves Page 13

At my stop, I hardly knew where I was, but the gallant stranger got me out of the train and up to the surface before I threw up again--this time into a rain drain at the curb. I realized feebly that my aim was getting better each time, my choices more appropriate. "This way?" he asked when I was done, and I gestured down the street toward my apartment building, which was blessedly close. I believe I would have pointed the way even if I'd really thought he was going to cut my throat when we got there, and it was the same with opening the front door with my brass key, which he took out of my trembling hand, and with the elevator. "I'm all right now," I whispered.

"Which floor? What number?" he said, and when we arrived in the long, smelly, carpeted hall, he found my other key on the ring and opened the door to my apartment. "Hello!" he shouted. "Nobody around, I guess." I said nothing--I didn't have the strength or inclination to tell him that I lived alone. He would have figured it out immediately anyway, because my apartment was one room, with a tiny kitchen area half screened by cupboards. My bed doubled as a sofa, some pathetic old pillows from my childhood piled up on the bedspread, and the top of my dresser held dishes I couldn't fit in the kitchen. There was a threadbare Oriental on the floor, from my aunt's house in Ohio, and my desk was scattered with bills and sketches, with a coffee cup on top as a paperweight. I glanced around at all this as if I'd never seen my room before, and I was struck by its shabbiness. Having my own place was very important to me. In order to get one, I'd settled for a seedy building and a seedy landlord. The pipes above the sink were exposed, peeling paint--they wept steady tears of cold water that I had to soak up with a towel tucked behind them.

The stranger helped me in and lowered me to the edge of my bed-sofa. "Would you like a drink of water?"

"No, thank you," I groaned, watching him carefully. It was surreal, to have someone cross my threshold from the streets of New York. The only person who'd been there so far was my landlord, who'd come by once for two minutes to see why the oven wouldn't light and had shown me how to rattle the front of it with my foot. I didn't even know this man's name, and he was standing in the middle of my room, gazing around as if for something that would stop me from vomiting again. I tried not to breathe too deeply. "Could I just have a bowl from the kitchen, please?"

He brought me one, and a wet paper towel to clean my face as well, and I leaned back a little on the sofa. He had his hands on his hips, and I saw his bright eyes travel over my gallery: a black-and-white photograph of my parents talking together on our front porch, which I'd taken in high school; several of my recent drawings of milk cartons; and a poster of a mural by Diego Rivera--three men moving a block of stone, their reddish bodies bulging with effort. He studied this for a moment. I felt a stab of uncertainty. Was he ignoring my sketches? Some people would have said, "Oh, did you do these?" But he only stood staring at Rivera's Mexican workers, their grimacing faces and huge Aztec bodies. Then he turned back to me. "Well, are you all set?"

"Yes," I almost whispered, but something about the way he was standing in the middle of my room, this stranger with his baggy pants and snaky brown hair, filled me with nausea again-- or maybe it wasn't him--and I flew off the bed and dove for the bathroom. This time I vomited in the toilet, with the seat neatly up. It gave me a sense of safety and homecoming. I was finally throwing up in just the right place.

He came to the bathroom door, or near it, and I could hear his movements even though I couldn't look at him. "Do you want me to call an ambulance? I mean, do you think this is really serious? Maybe you have food poisoning. Or we could go get a taxi and just go to a hospital."

"No insurance," I said.

"Me neither." I heard him shifting his heavy shoes outside the bathroom.

"My mother doesn't know that," I added, wanting for some reason to tell him at least one thing about myself.

He laughed, the first time I ever heard Robert laugh. "Do you think mine does?" Looking sideways, I saw him laugh--he bared his teeth completely so that the corners of his mouth squared, wide open. His face was dazzling.

"Would she be upset?" I found a washcloth and cleaned my face, then rinsed hastily with mouthwash.

"Probably." I could almost hear his shrug. When I turned around, he helped me back to the bed without a word, as if we'd been doing this invalid thing for years. "Do you want me to stay for a while?"

I assumed this meant he had other places to be. "Oh, no--I'm really fine now. I'm all right. I think that was the last round."

"I didn't keep count," he told me, "but you can't have much left to throw up."

"I hope I don't give you some contagious thing."

"I never get sick," he said, and I believed it. "Well, I'm going to get going, if you're all right, but here's my name and number." He wrote it on the edge of a paper on my desk without asking whether I needed that paper for something else, and I told him my own name, awkwardly. "You can call me and tell me how you are tomorrow. Then I'll know you're really okay."

I nodded, on the verge of tears. I was so, so far from home, and my home was one woman taking out the garbage alone, a $180 bus ticket from here.

"All right, then," he said. "See you. Be sure you drink something."

I nodded and he smiled and was gone. I was amazed by how little hesitation there seemed to be in this stranger--he came in to help, then left without a fuss. I stood up and leaned against the desk to study his number. The handwriting was like him, a little rough but bold and firmly pressed into the page.

By the next morning, I felt almost well, so I called him. I was calling, I told myself, just to say thank you.

Mon cher oncle:

I am not your equal in assiduous correspondence, but I hasten to thank you for the thoughtful note, which arrived this morning and which I've shared with Papa. He sends you the message that a brother must visit somewhat more often in order to be counted as a family member at the dinner table; that is your scolding for the day, although it is a truly gentle and admiring one, and I pass it on to you in the same spirit, with a plea that you heed it for my sake, too. We are a little dull here, in this rain. I enjoyed the sketch very much -- the child in the corner is delightful--you catch life so wonderfully that the rest of us can only hope to do as well.... I returned from my sister's family with several sketches of my own. My eldest niece is now seven years old, and you would find her a model of the most engaging grace, I'm certain.

Warm regards,

Beatrice de Clerval Vignot