"Where are you going?" She asked, as he got up, the whiskey he'd helped himself to forgotten.
"You've got blood all over your face. You can't say stuff like that with blood on your face," he said, headed for the sink.
And you can't ask me to protect you when I can't protect my own men, he thought, and you can't keep me on the phone as you fall asleep, you can't pretend I am a guardian angel, although at times I see myself that way.
Sitting in her living room, holding her face and wiping at the blood on it with a kitchen towel, he noted that this was the first time he'd really touched someone since his wife left him for the final time. Beyond impersonal handshakes. The towel could not have been gentle on an open cut, but she didn't flinch.
He wondered, how long had it been since she had experienced physical affection? Since Xola, years ago? He couldn't picture her going out to get laid, consummately serious, that stern accent and stiff enunciation getting in the way of flirting over drinks with strangers.
She reached up and closed her hand over his, so he let her move his hand away from her face and dropped the towel on the coffee table, staring at her, trying to chart his next move, prepared to offer a sarcastic comment.
He hadn't ever expected to be disarmed. Her hands were so warm.
But she just leaned in toward him, closed her eyes, settled her head on his shoulder and relaxed. He felt her breathing, deeply but a little fast, as if she was making a concerted effort not to hyperventilate. It was a struggle to relax, he realized, but oh how she wanted to. He held her that way, one hand moving over her hair and another around her middle, as if she were made of eggshells, until he felt pins and needles in his leg.
At that point she was soundly asleep. It felt risky to pick her up and carry her into her room, but he did so anyway, and laid her down in her jacket and shoes on top of the covers, carefully lifting the blanket from the other side of the bed and folding it over her. As he took off his shoes and laid down next to her, on his side, facing the window, he put one hand on her hip. So when she woke up she would realize she wasn't alone.
He thought: I am blowing this case. I am making decisions that I know are wrong. I should be home right now. It would help if she weren't so beautiful, if her voice wasn't so measured and elegant, it would help if I wasn't so alone. He thought: I am compromising my objectivity here.
He thought: I could stay here and hold her all night and if she didn't wake up once I might feel healed.
***
But she did wake: gasping, screaming, covered in cold sweat, imagining herself having been stuck on that bus, another body for the inferno. She threw off the blanket and then jumped a foot when he called her name.
"Silvia--"
"What are you doing here?!" She almost shouted, still half asleep.
"Jesus, calm down, you fell asleep on top of me in the living room--I moved you here--are you alright?" He sat up. He reached across the space between them and put one warm palm on her back.
"I'm fine." She was shaking visibly. "Bad dream. Thank you for putting me in bed." She sat up and started to take off her shoes, her jacket, tossed them on the floor, got up and rearranged the bed, tossing the blanket to the foot of it and tugging the sheet loose, wrapping herself in it. "What time is it? I don't think I can go back to sleep." She lay down anyway and stared at the ceiling.
Tobinsquinted at his watch. "It's about four." He heard her groan in anticipation of the next day's exhaustion.
"Tobin, I'm truly sorry about the agent you lost. I had no idea what was going to happen. I just wanted to ask Kuman for help."
"Well, for what it's worth, we had no idea that was going to happen either. And Doug…he was just doing his job, sticking to his subject." Tobinreplied, his voice raspy. "What did you dream about?"
"The bus," she murmured. "Of course." For a long moment neither of them spoke. He thought about the terrified look in her eyes after the explosion, the look she wore at her kitchen table the night that intruder stole her mask. He imagined she looked that way now.
"Hey," he said, and moved toward her, hesitantly. "That's over now. You're okay."
They both fell silent, and she reached out from under the sheet for his hand.
"Don't tell Dot about this, that I stayed here tonight," he mumbled, gripping her hand, "if you see her. She'll never let me forget it. It'll get me thrown off the case."
"You can count on me." He thought he heard a smile in Silvia's voice, circumstances aside. "I can't let you get thrown off the case, can I? Without you, who would protect me?"
He smiled in the dark.
"You make a good point. Would you ever want to leave New York and go home?" He asked her, curious. "Or back to Europe. They told me you studied there. Music?"
"Yes. I studied music. I miss Africa but I don't know if I could go home, I might have to go somewhere altogether new after this…situation."
"If you could go anywhere?" He asked.
"Then everywhere it is," she said, sounding pleased all of a sudden "So many places I'd like to see."
"And if you could take anyone with you?"
"My brother. I'd give anything to see the world with Simon."
After that he stopped asking her questions, and sleep came and went in waves, until her alarm went off at seven. When they went to leave for work separate ways headed to the same building, he saw he had gotten a parking ticket, and didn't care.
***
"This is how it's done. This is how you put a gun down. You shoot him, he'll be dead, and then you'll be dead. And I don't know what I'll be."
The look she gave him said: What you will be is alone, and that will make two of us. But out of my way.
He appealed to her: "Put it down."
She was frozen. He could have been talking to himself.
Tobin watched Silvia's face as Zuwanie read the foreword of his book. She looked as if she was on the verge of tears—of anger—and of disappointment, what he had called "a lover's word." He considered the beautiful but distant woman he'd met a few weeks ago, and realized that she was in fact a kind of warrior under all that delicate blonde. His initial uneasy sensation had perhaps been intimidation.
Zuwanie was on the last sentence, and she was shaking. Tobin realized he trusted her to back down now. The emotional indecision of the moment had peaked and now they were defeated. The risk of escalation was gone, and so he wanted to help; she was in pain.
He held out his hand.
***
After everything, after lying to the investigatory commission for her, after the news of her brother and after Zuwanie stood at her mercy, she was leaving him. Tomorrow.
Tomorrow. He had less than 24 hours.
"You never know who you'll meet," he'd said. He only knew that after his somewhat sleepless night with her, he could go home and change the message on his answering machine and sleep in his own bed, and something that felt like peace had come over him from time to time.
In the park alongside the river he sat on a railing and looked her in the eyes. She stood close to him. He resisted the urge to learn forward and rest his head on her shoulder.
"You'll let me know how you are?"
"You'll always know," she'd replied, with that mysterious smile.
So he wanted to make that as easy as possible.
"Come with me," he said, and hooked his arm in hers, "I have something I want to give you." He took her to his car. In the glove compartment, he had a bundle of phone cards, a global SIM card, and a cheap GSM phone, because he didn't know which she would end up with, landline or cell. Or even where she would go. He had another business card with his home address and home phone and cell number written on the back of it, along with a personal email address. All of this was in a manila envelope with a goodbye note, which he'd handwritten on the back of a takeout menu on a whim earlier in the day. He handed her this envelope.
"I always want to know where you are, and how you are doing. And I'll always reply."
"Okay. But, what's this?" She asked, smiling again, and looked inside the envelope.
"No excuses. I gave you everything you'd need so we won't lose touch," he replied, when she saw the contents. He was surprised when she reached for him and put her arms around his neck.
"Thank you, Tobin," she said in his ear, as they stood next to the car, not moving for a long moment. Her mouth was centimeters from his neck. "I have to go, I have an early flight to Dakar. But I'll be in touch. I promise." She kissed his neck, for a warm moment, and was gone. He was still standing in shock, next to his car, when he realized that he had been left a gift as well, laid there on the hood when he wasn't looking.
An envelope with a set of keys to her apartment, and a note:
Keep an eye on my place. It's yours while I'm gone. I have a feeling you'll take good care of it. You can think of this as my deposit, insurance that someday I will come back. When I can.
He had a feeling in his stomach a little like the night he thought she had been slaughtered in the shower by the assassin, but with less fear and a little anticipation. It was ironic that for all the Matoban refugees she wanted to see return home, her own home was now expelling her to Matobo, someplace which had only been able to offer pain. The right of return was only for a few. His testimony hadn't slowed down the deportation one bit.
So, tomorrow he would lose her: but she would be his.
***
They wrote letters, a torrent of them, and even more emails. They left voicemails. Spent an hour on the phone talking about nothing. He called her, one of those weeks, during every one of his lunch breaks. When he knew she was somewhere without news, he'd note a few headlines in his message, tell her the weather, remind her she was missed.
She sent him postcards: Dakar. Accra. Bamako. Timbuktu. Then Nairobi, Addis Ababa, and a small town in the Rift Valley. He had photos of Matobo freshly taken taped to his refrigerator, and a piece of green kente cloth she'd sent tossed haphazardly on the sofa. At work, he kept a note written in Ku taped to the screen of his monitor, a proverb, her scrawled translation on the reverse where the idle eye of a coworker could not see it. It was a proverb about love. He caught Dot staring. Made a comment about maybe cleaning his office, but Dot rolled her eyes.
At first those card and letters and notes from her were signed with "till later", until, sometime in the following winter, months gone, the word love appeared.
One photo from the Rift Valley: "After dusk falls here, we only have a few minutes of light. Sometimes not even enough for a photo. I miss you. Be well. Love- Silvia."
From Africa Silvia flew to Brazil, and attempted to bridge the gap to Portuguese with her elegant Spanish. She devoured South America: Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Lima, Santiago, Cali in Colombia, the Galapagos. Cuzco. La Paz. He kept getting mail. But her forwarding address changed constantly, so to reply he could only send more emails and voicemails and digital pictures.
One night: "I saw twenty birds in the tree by your old place's window this morning. I hired someone to come clean a little, and set up timers on the lights so it looks like you're home. I've been staying here some nights myself. That way it really looks like you're home." That was one of the rambling messages. What was unwritten: the way he missed her a little less, surrounded by her things.
He wondered who observed the two of them, who read the physical mail, heard the phone conversations, who intercepted their emails, and attempted to read all the unintentional codes. Did they, too, read them as love letters, or did he imagine all of it alone?
Some things were signals. Once, on the phone, Silvia asked him, "Have you met someone yet? Not to say that you've forgotten Laurie, but have you met anyone?"
"Only you," he replied, and he was certain she could hear the smile in his voice across the continents.
"Tobin," she'd replied, "I'm so far away, don't you think you can do better?" And there were nights he felt he could not.
Silvia was highly literate in a way that allowed her to write to him intimately about nothing of consequence. And he was lovelorn. It made him quick to read meaning into her words and imagine what she hinted at with metaphor and allegory. Sometimes she sent photos of herself in front of landmarks, taken by fellow tourists or local friends. He kept those with other irreplaceable things in his safe, in a cupboard next to the fridge. She was always far away in the background of these photos, wearing a little smile.
As she backpacked and hiked and sat on buses and reconnected with old contacts the world over, he'd overhauled his apartment and looked out for hers. Once, he knocked on her landlord's door to ask about the financial side of things, ready to lie and introduce himself as a long-time friend, only to be told that Silvia owned the unit outright and had paid two years of maintenance in a single sum before she left. So with all those who loved her now dead, she had probably become somewhat rich. Who knows what her brother had left her, or what Phillipe had left her, after walking her brother to his death and then committing suicide himself. Who knows what kind of will that crushing guilt produced.
His own apartment was, at the outset, like living in his wife's coffin. It was a long, slow, painful process to empty it of the memory of her, of her things, of the layout and shapes that made him look for her around each corner. He bought new curtains, laid a rug in the living room, gave away a lot of her kitchen things. He filled up the space with whatever Silvia sent instead, with new books, with magazines.
If you had looked at the room you would see he was a man transformed.
***
So then came that spring night, on the phone, months had gone by, almost a couple of years. She called him from that GSM phone he'd given her, which somehow never got lost or stolen or dropped. She asked if he would be in the city the next Sunday night.
"Of course," he'd replied. "Where else would I be?" He strained to hear her reply. She sounded weak and very far away.
"You might be meeting me at JFK then," she said, and his heart leapt in three directions at once. " If you can, I'd like for you to meet me there…I'm coming home. A lawyer friend of mine helped get me cleared again—provisionally—and I'm coming back to interpret, as a consultant for a Canadian company."
He aimed for pure affection...and just managed a choked up bit of gratitude. "Thank you. I'll be there."
"I can't wait to see you," she said, and then the conversation wandered off into the irrelevant for a few minutes, but his heart rate stayed high. "Tobin, I didn't want you to worry, but I've been ill. I need to come home. I'm calling you from the hospital in San Salvador."
"The hospital? Are you alright?" He asked. "Will you be able to fly?" He also wanted to ask her where that home she needed actually was.
"All I did was eat something that wasn't quite clean. It gave me an infection. For a few days I was trying to self-medicate but that wasn't putting a dent in it. I got worse, I admitted myself. They've rehydrated me, and gave me painkillers and three kinds of antibiotics," she said, "can't say I'm comfortable…but I think I'll live."
"Silvia," he said, "take care of yourself," and if anyone had been listening in on that call, they would have known it was love.
"My friend Marina is here. She's keeping an eye on me and my things. I'm going to be with her the night before I leave and I'll call you at the airport, okay? Don't worry about me."
"How can you say that, don't worry about me?"
"I know," Silvia replied, "you always have. I'll see you so soon. Goodnight."
***
It was a fast week.
On the expressway back from JFK to the city, she reached out and held his hand for a moment at a stoplight. He turned to her, startled, and saw her lazy smile. "In Bolivia, they say that a couple holding hands in the street is 'making little empanadas.' I like that."
He looked at their hands, paused at the red light.
"Silvia," he mumbled, and then he was unsure of how to continue, but she kept his hand in hers and leaned her forehead against the window, peering into the rainy evening.
"Don't worry," she replied, as if to say: we can start from the beginning. I'm nervous too.
***
They drove back to her apartment to eat dinner. Silvia looked exhausted, despite making protests that she slept on the plane. Tobin made her toast, and a bowl of soup from a can, neither of which she could finish.
Leaving the dishes in the sink, they spent the hour before nightfall in a heap on the couch, sleepily watching the news. Silvia did actually sleep for fifteen or twenty quiet minutes, during which Tobin stared down at her and considered how their lives had unfolded since the night of the bus bombing.
A colleague called her about the job that coming week. Something about lease negotiations and a share transfer issue for a corporate deal, in a few days. She agreed to appear for it, despite still being sick.
The whole conversation occurred with her cheek pressed against the curve of Tobin's stomach; he didn't dare move. When she finally hung up, he pulled her up towards him and kissed her and kissed her. She kissed him back, and he held her face in his hands.
"You know, there were nights when I truly believed you might not have come back," he said. "Was Europe next?"
"Why, would you have met me in Paris?" She joked softly, and kissed him on the cheek, sitting up to better put her arms around him.
"I almost bought a couple of travel guides," he admitted, only a half-joke, as there had been many lingering moments in bookstores for him, as she went from place to place and he traveled with her vicariously.
"Thank you for waiting for me," she said, and moved from the couch. He helped her up. "I have to take medicine and I have to sleep. I have to sleep for at least three days, god, I feel like I haven't slept in so long." She scrubbed at her eyes with her hands. "But when I wake up I want you to be here. I want to be able to talk to you and touch you at the same time. I missed you so much."
"I know," he replied, "I know, god, I know. I'm not going anywhere."
Later that night he woke up briefly, just to send Dot a message from his work phone: 'not coming in this Thursday or Friday. Personal.' And Silvia didn't sleep for three days, only until the next afternoon.
Soon he figured out how to tell her he loved her. And she figured out how to tell him she loved him. That part took a little longer, and it was not symmetrical, but they had no trouble understanding one another.