She whispered my name, “Luke,” asked me to hold her, to talk to her. “Tell me anything,” she said.

I held her tight and started talking. “Remember how the librarian was always telling us to be quiet, and the Duomo lit up at night, so beautiful and…” I stopped, choked up, couldn’t think.

“Please…don’t…stop…” She gripped my arm.

“Hang on,” I said. “You’re going to be fine.”

“Please,” she said, “keep…talking.”

“Yes,” I said and joked about the plague book she’d been reading and slid the cell phone from my pocket and dialed 911, told them where we were as another image slid across my brain: Vincent in the back of a taxi, holding Simone and singing while she coughed blood and begged him not to stop.

Alex’s face had gone white, her lips purple. I kept talking—about the café where we’d first had coffee and the fancy hotel where we had spent our first night—but by then, Alex’s grip had loosened, she’d gone slack in my arms, and I knew she could no longer hear me.

99

The day was chilly but there were hopeful signs of spring, trees starting to bloom, crocuses making their way up through patches of earth, the sky a sharp cerulean blue, the sun strong. I had over an hour and wanted to walk, to think. So much time had passed, and I was still trying to make sense of things and how I felt. I headed north up the Bowery past Cooper Union, its old buildings in sharp contrast to the new modern one, something I’d been thinking about a lot lately—the past and the present. There was construction on every other street, adding to the noise in my head as I made my way uptown, though I still arrived early.

It was just past lunchtime, the café half-empty. I chose a booth in the back, ordered coffee, and passed the time checking my phone, reading and rereading emails so that when Alex said, “Hi,” I was startled to look up and see her.

She took a seat opposite, removed her silk scarf, and unbuttoned her jacket.

“You look well,” I said, measuring my words. I wanted to say You look so beautiful, and she did. Though something had changed, something knowing and open in her expression, almost as if I were seeing the real Alex for the first time.

She ordered a cup of tea and waited until the waitress was gone. “You shaved,” she said. “I can see your face.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“Yes,” she said, then looked down.

I hadn’t seen her since that night she’d been shot almost four months ago, and though I had called the hospital every day, had gone there on three separate occasions, she had refused to see me, until now.

I asked how she was feeling.

“I’m fine now,” she said. “The bullet grazed my lung, but you know that. It looked a lot worse than it was.” She laid her hand over her breast as she spoke, then took it away as if the gesture was too intimate. “The surgeon told me I was lucky…” She paused, thanked me for coming to the hospital, asked about my arm, which had totally healed, then said, “I’m sorry that I didn’t, couldn’t see you, but—”