Leo raises his right hand like a Boy Scout. “I swear on my mother’s life, Nomi, your name didn’t come up.”
“All right. Then I gotta ask around some more.” She rubs her mouth, scanning the street, then steps in and grasps his shoulder, squeezes. “Look, Leo, we can keep this local—my name stays off your lips, then I don’t need to dropyourname to anyone at Tenth Precinct, okay?”
“Absolutely, sure.” This chumminess is apparently more Leo’s style. His stiff posture relaxes, and he nods compulsively. “I’d appreciate that, Nomi, I really would.”
She lets her hand drop. “Okay, done.”
“So we’re cool?” He glances between Simon and Nomi again, his eagerness to have this conversation over giving his features a shiny cast.
“We’re cool.” Nomi snorts, shooing with her hand like he’s a naughty kid. “Now go on, go back and finish your drink. Have one for me.”
Leo grins, happy to be let off the hook. “You’re solid, Harriet.”
She rolls her eyes. “Get the fuck outta here. Take it easy, Leo.”
As Leo moves back to open the door into Hector’s Café, Nomi walks off without looking at Simon. He has to fall in beside her as she crosses the road and stomps down Washington, hands fisted.
Simon glances at her: Her lips are fish-meat white. He keeps his voice lowered. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t talk to me. Keep walking.” They’re nearly at the corner with Gansevoort. She blows out air. “Has he gone back inside Hector’s?”
Simon glances back. “Yes.”
“Good.”
She manages to make it around the corner before her knees buckle and she staggers, clutches the lip of a nearby dumpster.
“Easy ...” Simon grabs her shoulder, plus a handful of the back of her shirt.
“I’m fine. Seriously, I’m fine, let’s just get home. This whole damn street smells like blood.” She pushes up, grimacing with nausea.
“I don’t even notice anymore,” Simon admits. “We don’t have far to go. But is it a smart idea to return to your apartment?”
“They’re not coming back today.” Her eyes are bone weary. “I already got my delivery.”
At the tenement, she insists on tackling the stairs to the second floor herself. He holds his jacket loose in one hand as his other hand hovers at her elbow. She bats him away. At her apartment, Simon collects her hat and tote, and a yellow document envelope lying on the linoleum in front of her door. Nomi snatches the envelope, scrounges for her keys.
He frowns. “Is opening that envelope really wise?”
“What’s it gonna do, give me a paper cut?” She’s already inside, ricocheting gently off the hallway walls. “All right, make yourself at home, I guess.”
Simon follows her in. Her apartment is long and thin, a corridor with a bathroom on the left, then a left-side living area. On the right, a galley kitchen, then the door to a tiny office. A large number of plants. Actually, that’s an understatement—there aredozensof plants, slender and twisting. Leaves spill down, reflect the light, green tones softening the gray-brown space. It’s like being back in the jungle, and he suddenly wonders why he’s never thought to recreate something so familiar in his own apartment.
Nomi holds the wall, the back of a brown leather sofa, the edge of the kitchen counter, until she gets to the office. She opens the yellow envelope, leaning on the top of a compact desk, before snorting and throwing the envelope toward the waste basket.
Simon’s curious. “What was in it?”
“Nothing. Blank piece of paper.” Turning carefully, she backtracks, hobbling for the bathroom.
“Do you need me to help you with anything?” he offers.
She gives him a withering look over her shoulder.
Okay then.Simon finds a brown leather lounge chair in the living area that he’s happy to settle into. There’s a narrow coffee table. The sound of water running in the bathroom. As he dumps his jacket and pulls the dressing materials he needs out of his pocket, Nomi—in her weird baggy jeans, damp hair slicked back, bare shoulders, a towel wrapped around her pale lean torso and tucked under her armpits—shuffles past the sofa and his chair, disappearing behind a Japanese folding screen.
It’s not until she’s left his line of sight that he registers she was topless under her towel.
Also, that she has a ton of tattoos. He’s glimpsed the black flames around her left wrist before, but more flames, plus thorns and rose blossoms, reach all the way to her elbow. She has a circlet around herright upper arm and—most astonishing—two large black birds fighting across her right shoulder. From his observations, most American women don’t have tattoos. Maybe here in this country, tattoos for women mean something different than they do in Guatemala. But so far as he knows, it’s illegal to get tattooed in New York City.
