Not a slam , not the anger version, not the dramatic version, not the version that saidI want you to know how much this cost.Just the quiet click of a latch catching, a door settling into its frame, the ordinary sound of a thing closing.
I stood in his hallway.
The door was closed.
On the other side of it: Felix, in his apartment, in the morning light, with his coffee on the counter and the crack in the ceiling and the system that wasn't working and the word he couldn't say.
I stood there for three seconds.
Then I walked down the hallway.
I took the elevator. I crossed the lobby. I walked out into the flat grey morning and I stood on the pavement outside Felix's building and I breathed the cold air and I thought:
I did everything I could.
Not performance. Not managing. Not the load,bearing fine. Just the plain, quiet, flat fact of it.
I did everything I could.
I walked to my car.
I drove home.
I did not cry until I was inside my apartment with the door closed, and then I sat on the floor with my back against the couch , not on the couch, on the floor, because the couch was where he sat and the floor was mine , and I let it be what it was.
The throw blanket was still on the floor.
I pulled it over my knees.
Outside, the city did what it always did.
I sat with it for a long time.
Chapter Fourteen
Charlie
Henry told me at nine,fifteen.
He didn't say much. He came into the kitchen where I was making coffee and he set his phone face,down on the counter and he said: "Go to Shay's," in the tone he used when he had assessed a situation completely and arrived at a conclusion that wasn't up for discussion.
I looked at him.
"Felix called," he said. Not elaborating. Just , the fact of it, delivered with the particular economy of a man who had understood everything he needed to from a phone call and was now redirecting resources accordingly.
I thought about asking what Felix had said.
I didn't ask.
I knew what Felix had said, more or less, in the same way I had known for months what was happening and what it was costing and where it was going. I had watched it the way you watched something approach from a distance , visible, inevitable, coming at its own speed regardless of what anyone did.
"Is he okay?" I asked.
Henry looked at me with the expression that meantdefine okay.
I got my coat.
Shay's building took nine minutes. I stopped at the place on the corner that did the good dumplings , not because dumplings were what the situation required specifically, but because showing up with food was the correct move and the place on the corner was what was available and Shay had never once in four years of friendship turned down dumplings at any hour for any reason, which was a consistency I was choosing to rely on.
