They ate breakfast huddled against a cold plate-glass window, displayed like mannequins to passersby on West Fifty-Third. Neither spoke—a shared disinclination that chaffed her suddenly; she couldn’t help it. It amplified the throat-clearing churrs he made between forkfuls of egg. She turned to a large contingency of Asians seating themselves at nearby tables, all wearing masks, reduced to vacant dolls, her annoyance transferred with flighty effortlessness to them, to the unnerving canceling effect the masks had on their expressions.
When they departed the hotel, a fine mist saturated the air. Overcast concealed the landmark skyscrapers, stifling her enthusiasm. She needed to go one block east for a bus to the Village, but she wasn’t confident which way was uptown or downtown.
“You’re not going to walk, are you?”
“I’ll take the bus.”
“Could you maybe, for once, consider taking a taxi?”
The question, his tone—he knew how she felt about taxis—threatened to revive her irritation from breakfast. The thought alone of a taxi—the sticky vinyl, that chemical odor of cleaning solution spritzed over filth—nearly turned her stomach. Bus seats—the hard plastic ones—were tolerable. “Will you see anyone you know in the office?”
“Probably only those best avoided.”
“Why are you like that?”
“How many of your girls will be there?”
“All of them.” The odds of this were unlikely; only a few had RSVP’d. She pointed a finger straight ahead and guessed, “Is that the way to Fifth Avenue?”
“It is.”
“Text me when you’re done with the doctor.” She brushed her lips over his cheek and turned to join the cluster of pedestrians starting across the intersection. “Just a quick text that you’re okay.”
The urgent motion that now surrounded her, leaning into the approaching stream of people, sent a staticky charge up her spine. Sudden elation at the prospect of seeing even just a few of her former Pilates students displaced Calder from her mind. But the same vulnerability she always felt when alone intruded. She became conscious of each step; her gait floundered. As she dodged oncoming pedestrians, almost hopscotching, teetering toward irretrievable imbalance and panic, the usual insecure panic that instantly resurrected Calder, her familiar first resort. It stirred an anxious need to have him beside her, to feel her hand held firmly in his.
When she recognized the bus stop on the corner of West Fifty-Second, the sight affirmed she had lived there before. Self-assurance returned. After a short wait, she boarded a half-empty bus, unlike the crowded Zagreb trams from her childhood, the trapped air dense with the domestic odors exuding from stale clothing: cheap tobacco that made her queasy, the oily chicken broth smell like at home. She paid and found a seat near the rear doors and an open window, one free seat beside her.
At the next stop, one man boarded. Bearded and bundled in thick, wrinkled layers, his appearance triggered weary impatience in passengers around her. Hana watched him speak to the driver, confiding to him, she sensed, until the driver slung a decisive thumb toward the back. The man groped his way down the aisle with eye-shifting timidity as the bus whirred into motion, his big blackened meaty fists, she noticed with a flinching stomach, tightly clapping the chrome. As he approached, she saw the fabric of his oversized clothing was stiff with smooth, earthy filth. But his eyes were calm—calmer than she expected—clear and sharply blue. There was no doubt what would happen next.
He took the empty seat beside her.
Exasperation raised beseeching eyes to the ceiling. She sought the thin stream of air from the open window, closed her eyes into it, and cautiously inhaled.
“My name is John.”
She opened her eyes. Her first thought was to ignore him. But to endure a prolonged awkward silence provoked stomach-clenching turmoil. She glimpsed nearby passengers withdraw into childish invisibility, as effective as the masks she had seen at breakfast. One woman seated directly across—heavy-set and smiling—watched brazenly what would happen next.
“My name is Hana.” Her voice was firm, her expression impassive.
He responded with surprise: “You talk to strangers?”
“I do.” She made a quick assessment: the piercing clarity of his eyes, the complexity of his dense beard. Little hairs grew over his lips into his mouth, which in equal parts fascinated and disgusted her. They must tickle, and, at the thought, a chilly squirm racked her body. She didn’t want to look, but she also did. “You’re not doing well, isn’t it, John?”
“I’m a war veteran.” His eyes found a place in the crook of her neck.
“My brother was in a war.”
“Afghanistan?” His voice cheered; his eyes lifted to hers, but only for a moment.
“Another one.”
A wary, stolen glimpse took in her expression.
“We had our own war.”
“I got addicted to painkillers. After I was wounded.” His eyes returned to the crook of her neck. “I couldn’t stay in the army.”
“The doctors prescribed my husband morphine when he had cancer.” She said it in a deliberately bright voice, as if she shared good news. “He tried it once, but it made him constipated.”
The woman across grinned, her eyes creasing into glistening cheeks.
John turned to the grinning woman like an artless child, then back to stare at Hana’s neck. “Do you live here?”
“I’m visiting.”
“Family?”
“I don’t have family here.”
“Where’s your family?”
“Bosnia.”
“I know where that is.”
“Few people do.”
The pause that followed was awkward. She saw it perturbed him, but she welcomed it. The unexpected self-possession in his clear and open eyes, the lucidness in his simple questions, had unsettled her.
“Why did you talk to me?” He reached up to pull the signal chord for the next stop.
She grinned with determination, feeling the warmth of it through her eyes before she said the opposite of what she thought: “You don’t look contagious or anything.”
The blotched and bloated skin of his face twitched in starts and stops. “I’m struggling.”
“I can see that.”
The earlier wariness flickered again in his eyes.
The bus slowed. John stood, grasped the handrail beside his head, and looked down at her. His eyes glared large through tortuous twists of uncut hair; the small round mouth worked amid ragged tufts of beard. Hana recognized an overpowering urge to speak, words formulating with the effort of a stutterer, bursting to come out.
The bus swung to the curb and stopped.
John lowered his head, his face close to hers.
She glanced once, chin to her chest, drawn by an overpowering curiosity to see the hairs curled over his cracked lips for the last time. She held her breath.
“You struggle too,” he said.
The doors opened. He pivoted off into the clamor of nearby roadwork, then turned to look back at her: erect, slender, straight legs drawn together, hands regimentally at his side.
Her brother.
She stared, struck by the familiar form; a unique one, she had always believed: the exact same posture, a soldierly stance captured in every photo ever taken of him. Distinct now despite the beard, tiny hairs curled over his lips, the resemblance resurrected the faint echo of her brother’s steady voice, almost forgotten, a vivid memory of the apartment in Zagreb, the pungent kitchen, her mother’s sole domain, the stronghold of the sofa, his protective resolve that had somehow pulsed within her despite the ever-present chill of never knowing what would happen next.
She began to cry.
Self-consciously, she looked to the woman across from her, but her face turned. The violent hammering blare outside suddenly reasserted itself. Hana wiped away the tears. Her brother’s calming voice evaporated.
John still stood there. Why? Why did he stand there like that? Her hardened eyes remained fixed on him as the bus lurched into motion and looked away only after he was out of her sight.