He gets out of the car without answering, slams the door, and strides up the walk on those long legs of his. I jog to catch up. It’s nearly noon, and the concrete radiates blistering heat.
“Dorian,” I persist as we swing through the double glass doors into the bracing chill of the air-conditioned lobby. He’s already sanitizing his hands, placing a thin mask over his mouth and nose.
“Youcareabout them,” I say, arranging my own mask. “Enough to keep tabs on them for decades. Who are they?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. They are shriveled husks waiting todie. Now hush.” He approaches the window where a tired-looking woman sits behind a computer. “We’re here to visit Gabriela Escarra and Alan Campbell.”
“Alan Campbell?” The woman raises her eyebrows. “Okay…that’ll be Room 132 and Room 215.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem, honey.” She’s staring at him, chomping her gum and batting her fake eyelashes, completely oblivious to me.
And she’s not the only one who stares. As we head through the lobby door and down one of the hallways, many eyes follow our progress.
“See how they watch us,” Dorian whispers. “The yearning in their expressions. They’re starved for the youth and beauty they once had. They’d drink our vitality into themselves if they could. Any of them would kill you in a second if they thought it would give them a chance to be young again. A chance at a second life.”
“That’s not fair to assume,” I hiss back.
I’m unsettled, because in some of the faces we pass, I do see that kind of resentful avarice and bitter hunger. But there are gentle eyes, too, lit in delight and wonder, kind faces crinkling with smiles at the sight of Dorian and me. Pleasant voices, thin with age, rise from women chatting in a huddle of wheelchairs. There’s robust laughter from a group of men playing a game and the click of needles from two women knitting companionably.
A spotted hand lifts as we pass, reaching for Dorian’s arm. He pauses, taking the questing hand and laying it gently back in the elderly woman’s lap. She smiles up at him.
As we turn a corner, I fall back and walk behind him, skirting a cluster of wheelchairs. More hands reach for Dorian, shaking fingertips grazing the crisp folds of his shirt, and I have a sudden,sharp memory of a coloring page I was given as a kid at the Catholic church—a picture of Jesus walking through a crowd of the sick and injured who stretched their hands out to touch a bit of him, even the hem of his robe.
Dorian may look like a young god, but there’s no salvation in his beauty.
We pause outside an open door, and after a moment’s hesitation, Dorian forges in.
The room smells faintly of ammonia and body odor. There’s a small pile of clothes on the floor. An oxygen machine hums and hisses at intervals.
Dorian approaches the woman on the bed. The oxygen tubes in her nose have slid askew. She’s staring blankly at a game of golf on TV.
I step forward, adjusting the loops of tubing over her ears so the short pieces fit properly in her nostrils again. She blinks at me, then at Dorian, her straggling eyebrows puckered in confusion. She has high cheekbones and a distinct jawline that not even sagging skin can disguise. Soft gray hair feathers from her scalp.
I can tell she was lovely once.
“Gabriela,” says Dorian quietly, and he tugs the mask down so she can see his face.
She blinks again. Then she lifts one shaking hand.
“Mi cielo,” she says in a cracked voice. Her wrinkled lips wobble, and her dark eyes glisten with tears. “You are not real. This is not possible.”
“I’m real, Gabriela. I’ve come to visit you.”
Her head rocks back and forth on the pillow. “No, no—you’re young. You cannot be him. You can’t be the man I am thinking of. That man had pieces of the sky in his eyes, but his heart was like an iceberg.”
“I am that man.” Dorian kneels beside the bed and begins speaking to her in a flood of Spanish. I know some Spanish from classes in high school and college, but I can’t keep up with the fluent rush of Dorian’s words. He curls his right hand around hers while his other hand strokes her forehead.
I stand motionless at the foot of the bed. What I’m witnessing is sweet and terribly sad, and it makes me hot with illogical jealousy because Dorian clearly shared something special with this woman. I thought I might be his first love since Basil. I’d hoped I was. I… But that’s silly, because Dorian doesn’t love me. We had sex—deeply connected, truly thrilling sex—but that doesn’t mean we’re in love. This isn’t a fucking Disney movie.
After a few minutes, they switch back to English, and Dorian introduces me. Gabriela points to the pictures on the walls of her room—her children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. She can’t remember their names, but she knows they are hers. Her family.
There’s a black-and-white wedding photo, too. I peer more closely at that one, fascinated by the gorgeous, vivacious-looking Gabriela of the 1950s. She’s wearing a crisp white gown, and a voluminous veil is pinned into her neatly curled hair. The man next to her is short and broad, with a genial smile and kind eyes.
When Dorian tells her we have another visit to make, Gabriela pats his hand. “Take off that—that—” She waggles her finger at the mask he has replaced.
“The mask?” he offers.
