Page 8 of Graceless

"He left."

"He left."

"You almost die, some enormous stranger catches you out of the air, and he leaves." She wrapped my head in a towel with the tenderness she reserves for concussion victims and idiots. "What did he look like. And don't do the thing where you describe him like a police report, I want the real inventory."

I did the thing where I describe him like a police report. Height, build, coat. It's self-defense; the real inventory was not available for publication. The real inventory had kept me up until four in the morning and was, at that very moment, sitting behind my sternum like a swallowed coin — the jaw I could've drawn blind, the eyes that went blue when the light hit them, the hand at his side closing and opening, once, like a decision being made about me at a level of the world I didn't have clearance for.

Nina listened to the police report with her arms crossed. Then she delivered her verdict to the salon at large, over the hum of Connie's timer:

"A guy built like a bad decision catches you off Fifth Avenue, tells you you're fine, and walks away." She snapped a towel off the shelf. "Marry him."

"Nina."

"I'm serious. The ones who stay and want a thank-you? Garbage. The ones who leave?" She pointed the towel at me like Scripture. "That's a man with secrets. God, I miss secrets. You know what I have? A husband who tells me everything. Every thought, Cat. It's like being married to a podcast."

"He was rude."

"Rude how."

"'Watch where you're going' rude."

"After he saved your life?" She considered this. "Okay, that's — no, see, that's not rude, that's material. Rude is Donnie asking if you 'need company' through the door. This is banter with a delayed fuse." She spun the chair so I had to face myself in the mirror — wet-headed, hollow-eyed, alive. Her voice dropped out of theater and into the register that was just for us, the one from the year Nonna was dying, when she came by every single Tuesday with lasagna and never once asked how I was doing in a way I'd have to answer. "You're okay?"

"I'm okay."

"You swear on the saints."

"I don't believe in the saints."

"They believe in you, heretic. Swear anyway."

I swore anyway. She blew out my hair like she was mad at it, which meant it looked incredible, and she took two sfogliatelle for the road, and when I left she stood in the doorway of the shop with her arms crossed watching me walk down 86th like the bus might come back for seconds.

The whole way home I did not think about him. I was extremely thorough about it. I did not think about him past the fruit stand, and I did not think about him under the el, and by the time I hit my corner I had not thought about him so completely that I'd walked past my stoop and had to double back, and Donnie was on it.

"Caterina." Cat-a-REE-na. He was picking at the vestibule paint like it owed him something. "You got a boyfriend now or what?"

"Eleven hundred a month, Donnie."

"I'm asking because some guy was out here half the night." He said it lightly, but his eyes flickered — a little sideways flick toward the street — and I didn't like it. "Across from the alley. Big guy. Just — standing there. I seen him when I got up to use the john at like three, and I look out, and he's there, and I look again at four, and he's there."

The hair on my arm stirred.

"Probably waiting on a ride," I said.

"For a hour?"

"You watched him for an hour, Donnie?"

That moved the conversation along. Donnie developed an urgent relationship with his mail and I let myself in, and I stood in Nonna's hallway with my back against the door for a second, between the eleven saints, thinking: a big guy, standing across from the alley, half the night.

It should have scared me. I want to be honest about what order things happened in, because I've had time to think about it and the order matters: fear did arrive. It just arrived second.

I was still standing there deciding what to do about the thing that arrived first when the truck pulled up.

Not a truck — a van, the kind of van that has never carried a mattress or a regret: matte gray, unlettered, riding low and slow like it was carrying a pope. Two men got out in gloves. Actual white gloves. On Bay 50th, where the last delivery that got carried to my door with two hands was a tray of baked ziti for Nonna's funeral.

"Fontana?" the older one said, reading off a tablet. "Caterina?"