She hitches her tote, does a quick head check of the street: A car is cornering farther along near Hector’s Café, a song by Georgia Satellites blaring from the speakers. Nomi stays cautious. The last thing either she or Irma needs is to have their continuing connection exposed—bad for Irma, still on the force, and bad for Nomi, whose access to police intel would be crippled. She turns left onto Washington, then left again toward home, staying low.
Before the deli grocery on Gansevoort, she stops. Simon Noone is still making his calls at the pay phone kiosk, his paper bag sitting on the phone housing. His back is to her. To be honest, this is a guy she’s barely noticed except for registering his presence on the floor above with the polite disinterest you maintain as an urban courtesy for your immediate neighbors. Now she retreats near a dumpster and its typical whiff of garbage and rotted offal so she can examine him like he’s some kind of weird bug.
First, the superficial stuff: He looks to be about mid-twenties. He has height, a lean build, broad shoulders. His peacoat hangs well over his black shirt and jeans—the shirt looks like silk, although she might be mistaken. He’s wearing engineer boots, and he’s pushed his sunglasses up into his hair. It’s a good look on him; the pieces all seem thrifted, but he clearly knows quality. Which is interesting, because living among the artists and drag queens of the West Village, Nomi’s learned that personal style is almost always about instinct, what feels good, what looks right. If this guy really has no memory of his past, if he’s dressing purely on instinct, she’ll bet a dime to a dollar that he once came from money.
And he has no idea. Because he has amnesia.
She chews her lip. Goddammit. Is she really thinking of engaging with this?
That would be stupid, because there’s something off about him, no doubt. The way he followed her—that lack of recognition of social cues could signify that he’s lived somewhere the cues are different, or it could mean he’s a jerk. Hard to call. Although the way he monstered Malcolm in the hallway ... That’s significant. The blankness of Noone’s tone during the incident was unnerving—then after it was over, he seemed completely casual, as if he’d flicked some sort of internal switch from “intimidatingly scary” back to “normal.”
Noone said he’s good at languages: Violence is a language, apparently one he knows well enough to toggle on and off.
Again, living in Central America for five years might have affected his reactions to incidents that seem threatening. But confrontational situations aside, there’s something else strange about him, like a flush of fever under his skin, radiating heat when you get too close ... Nomi’s own skin prickles in response, although she can’t quite put her finger on why. The strangeness is there, though: amorphous, subliminal.
Unfortunately, she’s just messed up enough to find strange people interesting.
And it doesn’t dilute her kneejerk reaction to his story.Amnesia.To lose your memory is to be cut off from everything you know. All your people. Your understanding of yourself: your lifestyle, your job, your identity. To be pruned away from all the elements that form a picture of yourself that makes sense ...
She knows what that’s like. Knows it fairly intimately, in fact.
Noone turns in profile, taps his pen against the phone housing, talks down into the handset, glances toward the dumpster. Nomi feels his attention land when he sees her. He gives her an acknowledging nod, maybe knowing that she is—right this minute—making up her mind about him.
She thinks of the way his hands shook.Now do you see why I need your help?
“You’re not doing this,” she whispers. “No fucking way. Just cut him loose.”
Right.
Nomi marches along the street to the phone kiosk. She makes a small wave, although she’s clearly already got his attention. “Hey.”
“Okay.” Noone’s eyes are on her as he finishes his call. “Yes, I appreciate this very much, thank you.” He hangs the battered receiver back on the hook. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Nomi says. “Who are you calling?”
No preamble, no apology for the rude question—Noone’s eyebrows rise, but he replies anyway. “A bunch of organizations that may have done missionary fieldwork at the border of southwest Mexico and Guatemala from 1981 to 1983. I want to see if any of them lost any people.”
“You think you were a missionary?”
“No.” He makes a thin smile. “But ... I don’t know. That’s the problem, right? I could have come from anywhere. I could have been a backpacker, or a missionary, or—”
“Look, I can’t help you.” If she’s going to be rude, might as well give it to him with both barrels. “I’m sorry, but I have to be selective about which cases I take, and my slate is too full right now.”
“Oh.” His expression falls, then firms. “All right, I understand.”
“Do you?” She wants to get this straightened out. “Because I don’t want you knocking on my door tomorrow with—”
“I said I understand.” He tucks a page of notes and his pen into his coat pocket. “I asked, you answered. It’s fine. I can be a grown-up about it, you don’t need to worry.”
He looks stiff, but not petulant. Nomi examines his eyes. He has very blue eyes.
“Fine,” she says. “Great. It’s just that we live in the same building, so ...”
“Nomi,” he says quietly. “I won’t harass you to take me on as a client. Okay?”
“Okay.” She’s suddenly uncertain: His politeness and use of her first name have given the exchange a solemn intimacy. She shakes it off.“Thanks for taking it so well. And it was good to meet you, anyway, considering we’re neighbors and everything.”
She offers her hand. Like with their first introductions, his handshake is warm, firm, professional. It feels like they’ve come to some kind of gentleman’s agreement, and that’s a good note to end this on, so she extricates herself and lets him get on with his calls.
