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“With that boy?”
I’m startled. “What boy?”
“The one who came to our house. With the pretty eyes.” I’m stunned that she remembers him.
“Yes, that’s him.”
She sounds strangely confident. “Good. He was important.”
I turn around and look down the street. He’s standing in the middle of the road, sunglasses pushed up on his forehead and his head tipped back, staring at the twilight above the buildings. He looks thin and lonely, lost, like he could be wiped out in a second. I’m always looking for him now, unable to stand not knowing what he’s doing or who he’s with. “What do you mean?”
She speaks hesitantly, searching for words. “Everyone seems the same to me sometimes, a blur, like looking at the world without glasses on. It’s happening more and more. But I couldseehim. He felt real. Like you. Like he was always meant to be right there.”
My heart’s beating a little too hard. I thought I had a choice about what happens next, but maybe she’s right and it’s been here the whole time, waiting for me.
“I love you, Mom.”
When I hang up the phone, Victor’s standing nearby, hands in his pockets. I jerk my head toward the shop.
“Do we have to?”
“I’m going to teach you how to be a poor person.”
Victor
The paint on the walls is flaking and the lights flicker, but it’s not that bad inside. The old man at the register nods at us without a word. A tiny television behind the counter has on a football match which draws most of his attention.
Ethan picks up a basket from next to the door. “I’ve brought you to a mecca of pre-packaged food. You can eat every fucking thing in here.”
“I’m not an eight-year-old picking out snacks with his mommy.”
He just shrugs and wanders off, weaving into the shelves where he knows I can’t see him without moving from my spot by the door.
There really is a lot of stuff here, in colorful packages with pictures that make my mouth water. Finally, I pick up a cucumber-flavored sports drink, a microwave breakfast sandwich, and a small bag of salt and vinegar chips and place them in his basket, hoping he won’t notice. He doesn’t look at me, just keeps collecting one of every chocolate bar in the place.
As he scans our food, the cashier keeps giving me weirder and weirder looks. He says something complicated in Italian that I can’t follow, and Ethan shrugs. The man windmills his arms, like he’s paddling, then points at me. “Victor Lang,” he enunciates past his heavy accent.
I forgot I was someone to be recognized.
When I nod, his face lights up and he digs under the counter, pulling out an Italian sports magazine that has nothing to do with me. He taps the cover hopefully, offering me a pen. Ethan eyes me.
“Si,” I mumble, scrawling my name. I freeze when the man offers his hand and a blinding smile. No one has asked to shake my hand since my career went down in flames. But it doesn’t seem to bother him. When I take his hand, he squeezes it tightly. He pulls out his wallet and shows me a picture of a little boy in a swimming cap. “My son,” he says carefully. “We watch you swim.”
“Thank you,” I croak. “I mean,grazie.”
He holds up his phone and the counter digs into my hips as I lean across it to be in his selfie. I don’t have a smile in me, so I throw up two fingers instead.
I wish everything in my career had been simple, like him. Swimming and the people who love swimming. That’s all I ever wanted.
We carry two big plastic bags of junk food into the sunset-purple street. After today, I know every inch of Ethan’s back. The way his shirt rides his shoulder blades, the tan that’s deepest at the base of his neck, the cowlick on the back of his head. I study them again as we climb the hill to the hotel.
My nerves are buzzing as I walk in the shadow of his strong, easy gait. Many people have loved me, with many kinds of love, and that love has been all the worst days of my life, all the darkest nights. I’ve learned to shut myself off, to do everything that’s asked of me without feeling a thing, and I can’t stop because my body’s only purpose is to be used. But he’s not here to love me, and that promise has filled me with a dangerous hope.
