When the Thrill Is Gone

51

I called home on the way over to the apartment Aura set me up with. Katrina answered after seven rings.

“Hello?”

“The old man still walkin’ on his own?”

“His blood work is amazing, Leonid. The doctors have him and Elsa down there right now to redo everything.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Remission.”

“No.”

“Remission.” The repetition of the word proved Katrina’s deep knowledge of my soul. She understood my fears and distrust and that I hadn’t traveled very far from my early adolescence when my father abandoned us and my mother died soon after. She knew that I needed her to repeat the word in the tone of the emotion it carried.

“He is very healthy, Leonid. He is strong again.”

I closed my eyes and stood stock-still in the middle of the busy walkway. People bumped into me and made angry comments but I didn’t care. This was the most wonderful, and therefore the most dangerous, thing that had happened in my life over the past year.

Remission. Survival when the odds are against you. Somebody you love who doesn’t leave, doesn’t die.

“Leonid,” Katrina said through the Bluetooth in my ear.

“I have to go, Katrina.”

“But—”

“I have to go.”

“I want to talk to you about Dimitri.”

“If you’re worried you don’t have to be. Between me and Twill he’s fine. And if you’re worried about his girlfriend... well, I am, too. But what you gonna do when a man falls like that?”

“He’s a boy.”

“Yeah, maybe. But she is most definitely a woman.”

“Leonid.”

“If I don’t hang up this phone and get my head together I’ll probably be dead before morning. Do you understand that?”

“I will talk to you at breakfast.”

What I said to Katrina was absolutely true. The elation I felt over Gordo’s possible survival threw all of my natural defenses into disarray. I wanted to celebrate, to dance in the streets and drink down a whole bottle of brandy. I had mourned that boxing trainer the way the Apostles had grieved over Jesus. He might as well have been dead and buried, but here he was, maybe risen and alive.

I stopped at a little brown stoop on Eighteenth between Sixth and Seventh. There I sat, trying to remember that this was just a lull between rounds, that my opponent had been playing with me up until now and that the possibility of getting knocked out was real, and even probable.

There is no victory until the final victory, my father used to say. His words came back to me and I sighed. Let your comrades celebrate in their foxholes and their trenches, but you remember that the war is still raging and that your enemy is sharpening his bayonets even while your friends laugh and sing.

Those words got me on my feet. They propelled me down the street toward a resolution that was uncertain at best.

I had made it to within seven blocks of my destination when my phone sounded again. I looked at the little blue screen and hit the green button.

“Hey, Z.”

“Mr. McGill.”

“What you got for me?”

“Do you think I’m beautiful?”

I stopped again.

“What?” There was a smile on my face — I could feel it.

“I want to know what you think I look like.”

I drew a deep breath in through my nostrils and took a step.

“Zephyra,” I began, “beauty is your ugly-duckling little cousin who’s been hiding in the corner ever since you walked in the room. If you were my girl I’d put shutters on the windows and break every camera in the house.”

She giggled and said, “You’re a fool.”

I nodded.

“I’m serious,” she said into the unseen silence.

“I’m right, too, girl. And I’m sure you don’t need my word for it. So tell me what’s wrong?”

“I kinda like Charles.”

“You mean Bug?”

“Yes.”

“So?”

“I always liked talking to him,” she said. “From the first time you took us out to lunch. I told him to lose weight. I really shouldn’t have done that, but he wanted to go out with me and I didn’t know what to say.”

“He’s working out three hours a day. Must’a lost twenty pounds so far.”

“I know. I don’t want to hurt him, Leonid.” That was the first time she ever called me by my first name. It was my week for firsts. “And I know if we... get intimate I’ll probably end up dropping him.”

“There’s no problem there, Z.”

“But he’s so serious. He wants me.”

“Just tell him you can’t be like that right now. Tell him that he can go out with you on Wednesdays but don’t ask about Friday nights. Tell him that you’re still playing the field and that if he wants more he needs to go someplace else.”

“But—”

“Tell him that and let him make up his own mind. For him it will be a mitzvah.”

“What’s that?”

“Something that only a woman like you can do for the man he will become someday.”

After that call with Zephyra I was calm again. I don’t know what it was about her wish to keep her beauty in check that eased my own fears, but I walked a little faster — and made one last call.

There was no answer but I got a call back in less than a minute.

“Hey, LT,” he said.

“You in place?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Stay there till it’s over, or something goes wrong, okay?”

“Whatever you say.”

“Remember,” I cautioned, “do not hesitate.”

“Never do.”