Kurt said, “I left her three messages.” The woman whose apartment shared a kitchen with Claire’s, he said, would have found a way to get him word if something bad had happened, if Claire had never come home. “I’m worried, but I don’t have a reason to be worried. And there’s no way she was out that late.”
Fiona didn’t mean to shout, but it came out too loud: “Can’t you just go over there?”
“That’s not our—we have an arrangement. Not a legal arrangement, but if I ever showed up when it wasn’t my day, she’d split. She’s made that crystal clear.”
Cecily said, “But in an emergency situation—”
“No,” Kurt said.
A siren blasted right outside the window. It was short—police warning someone to move out of an intersection maybe. Nevertheless, all three of them jolted, and Fiona’s heart started beating like a hamster’s.
“Give me the address,” she said. “I’ll say someone at the bar gave it to me, and if that doesn’t work I’ll say I tricked you. I broke into your apartment and got it off an envelope.” It wouldn’t be far from the truth. “No, wait, I’ll say the detective found it.”
Cecily put a hand on Kurt’s knee. “Wouldn’t that be for the best?” she said. “Then you’d know they were safe.”
He seemed to relax, rather than bristle, under Cecily’s touch.
If nothing good came of this for Fiona, at least maybe she’d have been responsible for the Pearce family reconciliation. Maybe Cecily could send her weekly updates on Nicolette, as she got to watch her grow up, as Fiona sat home alone in Chicago.
Fiona handed him her phone. “Just type it into my GPS,” she said. “As far as she knows, I haven’t seen you in years.”
Kurt sighed and took the phone.
As soon as she had it back, Fiona grabbed her purse. She said, “If you want to wait here, you can.” Kurt squeezed Fiona’s shoulder with his giant hand.
Saint-Denis was a zoo of blocked-off streets. The cab driver had asked three times if she was sure she wanted to head up there.
“I wait to make sure you get in,” he said. “You here long? I wait to drive you back too.”
She told him she’d be three minutes. She hoped she’d be coming out to tell him he could leave, to give him an extra tip.
A young man was heading in the door right ahead of her, so instead of messing with the jumble of buzzers and names, she followed him into the narrow hallway. The place was labyrinthine, but she finally found number eight. A red plastic bucket and green plastic shovel outside the door.
She knocked with her uninjured left hand, which felt wrong, unlucky.
When Claire opened the door, she left the chain in place.
She said, “What the fuck.”
“Honey, just—”
“No, this is not okay.”
“I had no other way to reach you.”
“This is not okay.”
Her hair was pulled up sloppily on top of her head. She looked as if she hadn’t slept.
“You’re safe?”
“Obviously.”
“I’m alright, too, in case you were concerned.”
“Listen, it’s her nap time.” Claire’s voice softened slightly. “This, just—I can’t deal with this right now.”
“I understand.”
“I’m not sure you do.”
“Can you give me your number, at least? So I don’t have to stalk you at work?”
“I have your number.”
“Listen, what’s the harm?”
“This is the harm.”
“Okay.” Fiona put her hands up in surrender. “You’re alive, your daughter’s alive, that’s all I needed. I’ll leave now.”
Claire let out a loud, angry sigh that Fiona couldn’t begin to decipher.
Fiona wanted to storm off, but the whole point of coming to Paris—she and her shrink, together, had been clear on this point—was to put herself out there. To keep her arms open even when Claire closed hers. To be the parent, not the child. She said, “Call anytime. I love you, sweetie.”
Claire shut the door without saying anything, without even waving.
1986
That September, Katsu Tatami fell on the street. Someone took him to the ER at Masonic, where he was sent up to the AIDS unit. Teddy reported that Katsu was wishing aloud to die before he was stable enough to be dumped back into County. But he got stable, and back he went. County discharged him almost immediately, and when he was unable to breathe the next day, they told him they no longer had an available bed. He waited two weeks, not quite bad enough to go back to the Masonic ER, until finally, too late to do much good, County readmitted him.
Yale knew he had to visit eventually. Partly because it was the right thing to do, and partly because in the worst-case scenario, he’d end up at County himself, and he needed to see it, needed to get it over with.
One night, he pulled on Julian’s dental floss and the last of the string came out, just long enough to use. He tried not to take it as a bad sign, but it felt like one. He decided to visit Katsu the next morning, before it was too late.
* * *
—
He’d been a finalist for a job at Saint Louis University, and he was still in the running for a regular development job at DePaul, here in the city, but he was still unemployed. Dr. Cheng had told him to take the first job that offered insurance. “The bigger the company the better,” Dr. Cheng said, “so you’ll get lost in the shuffle.” Meanwhile he was on COBRA, which would quickly drain his savings. He could afford it till January, barely, and then he’d have to choose between insurance and food.
In the meantime Dr. Cheng would keep the tests off Yale’s record. As far as he was concerned, Yale had only come to see him for a sore throat. When he applied for new insurance, Yale would just be asked about a history of AIDS—not about the virus. “You will not be lying when you say no,” Dr. Cheng said. “And then a month after you’re approved, you come in for the test again. Officially.” But it was risky, and if it was ever discovered—if the government seized test results, anonymous as Dr. Cheng claimed he’d kept them; or if Yale was in an accident, had blood drawn at the hospital, etcetera—he could be denied coverage forever. He’d wind up like Katsu, praying one of the beds at County would be open when he needed it.
Yale called Asher, hoping he’d say something reassuring, but what Asher said was “Get a job fast.”