“What happened to her?” I said.
He gave a sad smile. “She died, Jude. She lived and we were happy together and there was a lifetime in each heartbeat, a million perfect Nows. And then she died.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He looked at Novo. “It was a long time ago.”
“And you’ve been here ever since?”
Henry nodded.
“I kept everything,” he said. “At the beginning, I was sure she would come back. I couldn’t understand it, not really. I pictured her rushing in the front door and scolding me for getting rid of all her things.”
I thought of Mrs. Midler’s life laid out like that, the flesh picked off its bones, those plates, split apart like orphaned children.
“Later,” he said, “when I knew she wasn’t ever coming back, when I finally understood her death for what it was, as something permanent, I just couldn’t bear to part with them.”
“What else was hers?” I said.
“The clocks. All the furniture. Those books. The map of the world. Dulcie loved to travel.” He looked at the map and at us, and he wiped his watery eyes, pale as marble. “But after she left, I never could.”
Novo put his hand on me, and I looked down, and I held it in both of mine, his skin its own map, his body another country.
Henry got up and walked to the window. The sun shone almost straight through him, like he was made of paper, or something thinner than flesh. He took a long, deep breath, and he was shaking a little.
“Are you okay?” I said.
He bowed his head, under the weight of it, and the pulse in my veins got bass heavy, and my heart felt huge in my chest. “The next part has been hard.”
“Stop now,” Novo said. “Take a rest. You’re exhausted.”
Henry looked at him, and I knew there was something else they weren’t saying then, to me.
“What is it, Henry?” I said.
“Nothing compares,” he said. “Nowhere near. Never will.”
“Compares to what?” I said, and Henry didn’t speak for a minute. He held one more piece of fish out for the birds and then he wiped his hand on a rag and went over to the chair where Charlie Parker was still perched. He stroked the bird’s tired feathers with one gentle finger, took off his glasses, and brought it up to his face for a closer look, his pale eyes flat with sadness, his frown a deep dark line.
“To this,” Novo told me, taking my hand, bringing my knuckles to his cheek, holding it there. “Nothing compares to us.”
SIXTEEN
We scaled the wall at the side of the house, up to my roof, Novo and I. I climbed up first so I could watch him arrive: hands first, then face and eyes and shoulders. We looked at each other, for too long, without speaking. I remember thinking if I looked away he might fall and I’d be to blame, like I was the only thing keeping him up there. There’s not much I wouldn’t give to have that over again, that feeling at the beginning, whatever the risks. He crouched there, a hand’s width from me, and it was like seeing him through a microscope or something, so much detail, like I had nothing else to look at in the world. Only him. Nothing but him. Tiny scar on his cheekbone, hairline crack in his tooth, and his mouth—soft, I already knew it, and dark as a bruise. I felt these details, little barbs in my chest and fingers, my limbs, my gut, hooking me in. I can only talk about Novo’s face in pieces. I can’t put it all down in one place, the mind-numbing, accidental perfection of it. Up to my neck in him, even at that distance, happy to drown. I breathed, like I’m breathing now. Things quickened—the blood in my veins, the day’s noise, more urgent suddenly, more . . . well, more everything. Novo wiped the dust off his hands, straightened up.
I knew it already. Nothing compared to this. To us.
“Jude,” he said, and I said, “Novo,” and that was it. Enough. He looked at me and smiled. Gap-in-the-clouds, shaft-of-sunlight wonderful. I could feel it. But I still had so many questions.
“Who are you?” I said. “Where did you come from? And why did you come here? To me?”
He shrugged. “I got out of a car.”
“Nine thirty-four,” I said.
“Yes.” He smiled. “Nine thirty-four. Doesn’t matter where I was before. I’m here now. We’re here now. That’s the point.”
He scanned the houses and the yards and the hills and sea beyond. The shine on his hair was lacquer, the water at night. A pulse ticked, soft, behind his ear. He bit his lip and I thought I could taste it, and I felt all the spaces between my ribs suddenly, all my body’s absences, all the ways I wasn’t only me, and I thought, This is what desire feels like. This is why people lose their minds over it. I had to force myself to look away. I was greedy for the sight of him, but like someone who’s been starved, and has to eat slowly, take small bites, because the thing they want more than anything on earth might be too much, suddenly, for them to take.
Below us, someone smacked flies against a window and the woman opposite-but-one weaved her way up her yard with a long drink to where a deck chair sat cowering under a tree.
“Poor Henry,” I said. “He’s so lonely without her.”
“Do you think it speeds up?” he said. “Getting old? Like, the longer you live, the smaller a part of your life a year is? Does time just get quicker and quicker and then stop when you stop or whatever?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I guess we’ll find out in the end.”
“Maybe not.”
I said, “How old is Henry, do you think?”
Novo didn’t answer me.
The old gardeners were doing something with a climbing rose, shout-whispering at each other, bicker-bicker, like irritated snakes. Together we watched them. “Were those two in love once, do you think? Are they still?” he asked.
“I have no idea, Novo. So far, they just seem to fight a lot. I’m not sure they even like each other.”
The look on his face was something sweet and tinged with envy, and he said, “Their garden is beautiful though, isn’t it? I wonder if a whole life together feels as good as that.”
I smiled at him.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing. I don’t know. I’m just . . . People usually just talk about smaller things than that.”
“Than what?”
“Than that.”
“Oh. You want to talk about smaller things?”
“No. I didn’t say that. I just said that people usually do. People talk about politics and football and what they did over the weekend.”