Page 56 of Antihero

“They have my keys,” she said, again.

“I can sleep in my car,” Evan said. “Where you can see me from the window. Cell phone on. Would that be helpful?”

She nodded several times. Her face was blank. She swayed on her feet.

“Can I get you something to eat or drink?”

She blinked slowly, refocusing on him. “What?”

“Something to eat or drink?”

“Tea,” she said.

He held his arm wide, cueing her to move to the kitchen. After a slight tape delay, she followed. She sat at the tiny table for two with its place setting for one, folded her hands on the cheap vinyl place mat, and stared at nothing.

He rummaged through the cabinets. Jars of pickled cauliflower, turnips, and red peppers proliferated. Stacked ceramic plates showed dazzling earth-tone patterns or crude images of fish and trees. He found a mug along with an infuser and box of loose tea labeled CEAI NEGRU. He boiled water, steeped the tea for three and a half minutes. Quarter teaspoon of honey from a jar on the counter, a sprig of mint from the refrigerator. He set the mug down before her along with a paper towel from the roll, just one skinny strip so as not to waste.

The Second Commandment, How you do anything is how you do everything.

“Would you like me to sit with you or leave you alone?”

“Sit.”

He sat.

She cupped her hands around the mug, lifted it to her face, closed her eyes, and breathed in the steam. Though the swelling around her eye had come down, the bruise was spreading unevenly along her temple, purple yielding to yellow.

A question had been eating at him. “You walked home,” he said. “All the way from Harlem.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“They took my wallet. I had no money for a cab, no subway card. No one would help.” Through the steam, her eyes held steady. “You saw what I looked like.”

She’d looked terrible. Homeless, mentally ill, drug ravaged. Human wreckage beyond salvation, another inconvenient face like those from war zones or Third World disasters. In her three-hour walk from Harlem to the Bronx, she’d passed thousands of people. No one had stepped forward. Not a single person.

His jaw had tightened. He noted her noting it. Despite coming in and out of a trauma daze, she was still attuned to those around her.

“I’m not going to hand my suffering over to you,” she said. “To a force of violence who answers to no one and nothing. Because where does that lead?”

“To less brutality.”

“You use brutality to eliminate brutality?”

“I’ve found strongly worded letters to be ineffective.”

She made a noise of exasperation. “You are trying to fix, what?”

“The bigger picture.”

“There is no bigger picture. This. This is everything. Right here, now. Heaven and hell. This is all there is. You think you see clearly, Evan of the Immaculate Perception, but you’re looking too high.” With her knuckles, she knocked the table and then her chest. “This? This is real.” She lifted the hem of her skirt, rubbed the frayed edge with her thumb. “This is real.” Her fingertips lifted to her bruised cheek. “This is real.” Her hands went back to the tea, mist spooling up around her face. “The retribution you seek is not yours to have. You will not kill them. Not on my behalf. Promise me. Promise me you will not kill anyone.”

Evan felt the hardness of the chair against his back, cold air on his face. He did not answer.

“Are you the one who was brutalized?” she asked.

“No.”