Getting to Soho took only about ten minutes, scant time to think. Lou's place was in what had once been a garment factory sweatshop. He'd rented it from another agent at the bureau, who had inherited it from a cousin, a well-known downtown artist, lately dead of AIDS. Lou paid virtually no rent, was there mainly to keep out squatters, and couldn't care less that he was living in one of New York's trendier sections. All he knew was that there was plenty of room, and free parking on the street for his old Buick.
I'd been down many times before. Inside, the space was still inhabited spiritually by the dead artist, with acrylic paint spattered on walls and graffiti I didn't fully understand in the bathroom. The place seemed to be a broom-free area, with layers of the past littered on the floor like an archaeological excavation. And the old Kool-Aid-stained furniture, fitting right in.
What always struck me, though, was the number of photos of Sarah. They were everywhere in the open space, on tables, the desk, several on the walls. Mostly they were old, several blown up and cropped from snapshots, grainy. The space felt like a shrine to her memory.
When Lou let me in, I was greeted by a spectral face, a wheelchair, and a valiant attempt at smiling normalcy. Maybe Lou thought it was real, was progress, but I was immediately on guard.
It was Sarah's eyes that caught me. They pierced into my soul and we seemed to click, just like always, only this time it was as though all our life together passed between us. I had the sense she was trying to tell me something with her eyes that went beyond words, that she was trying to reach out to me, perhaps to recapture that shared understanding we'd had years ago.
Lou introduced me to a Mrs. Reilly, a kindly, Irish-looking practical nurse who was part of the outpatient package the hospital provided. She wore a white uniform and was around sixty, with short-bobbed gray hair and an air of total authority. She'd just finished feeding Sarah a bowl of soup, and was brushing out her cropped blond hair, what there was of it.
Mrs. Reilly glanced at me, but never broke the rhythm of her strokes. "She's tired now, but she's already stronger than she was."
Then Lou spoke up. "They called me early yesterday morning. But by the time I got around to trying to reach you, you'd vanished. So I rang Dave and he told me where you were, up there with that crackpot." He was grinning. No, make that beaming like the famous cat. "By last night, she was walking with some help, so they said she might as well be here. Like I said, it's a miracle."
"You brought her home just this morning?" I couldn't believe the hospital would discharge her so soon, but this was the HMO Age of medical cost-cutting.
"Only been here a couple of hours." He pointed to a shiny set of parallel steel railings in the corner. "That's for physical therapy. Right now she can only walk with somebody on either side holding her, but in a few days, I figure . . ." His voice trailed off, as though he didn't want to tempt fortune. Then he turned toward Sarah. "In a few days, right, honey?"