THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2019 67
Pam seemed not to hear. Viki was
looking at Molly. Molly, still wearing
headphones, was grinning and squirm-
ing as she interacted with her iPad.
The buzzer sounded.
Viki said, “Are we expecting a
delivery?”
That was my province—online gro-
cery shopping. “No,” I said.
Nobody moved. We listened.
The buzzer sounded again.
“It’s her,” Pam said. “I’m telling you,
it’s her.”
I
turned off the gas flame and put a
lid on the saucepan. I wiped my
hands with a dishcloth. Dinner was
pretty much ready. The kale had been
steamed and the chickpeas and onions
had been sautéed.
“That’s strange,” Viki said, peering
at the intercom video. “I don’t see any-
one.”
I went over to see for myself. No-
body was visible at the entrance.
Viki said, “She might be inside al-
ready. Someone might have let her in.”
Our building had no doorman. In
order to enter, a visitor had to be buzzed
through two doors. However, if the
visit coincided with a person exiting
the building, often the doors would be
held open as a courtesy. This didn’t
mean that the visitor could go right
up, however, because the elevator was
controlled by the host.
The intercom screen went dark, which
was to be expected.
I said, “Look, it might not be her.”
It happened sometimes—an impatient
food-delivery guy buzzing multiple
apartments.
Viki said, “She just texted me.”
Bring me up? In the elevator.
Our front door has two locks. I
turned them both.
Viki said, “Let me talk to her.”
I got out three plates and served the
food.
Viki made the call from the bed-
room. We didn’t speak, Pam and I. I
thought about putting an arm around
her, but was deterred by the bulk of her
coat. She didn’t touch her food.
Viki came out of the bedroom. She
sat down at the table. Her face was ex-
hausted or something. She said slowly,
“She won’t leave. ‘I want to talk to her,’
she keeps saying, in this weird calm
voice. ‘I have a right to talk to her.’ She
sounds off. She sounds really off.”
“Maybe we’re jumping to conclu-
sions here,” I said.
“That stupid gun,” Pam said. “I’m
scared, Vik.”
Viki said to nobody in particular,
“She wanted to be a missionary. In col-
lege. You know—go to Africa. Con-
vert everyone.”
Pam started crying. She displayed
her phone: the calls were still coming.
I didn’t know if Pam’s assessment of
the threat was reliable or not, but I did
know that very specific situations are
associated with murder and mayhem,
and that a breakup is one such situa-
tion. I said, “There’s no way out of the
building except through the lobby.
We’re going to have to call the cops.”
“No,” Pam said, her face in her hands.
“They’ll shoot her. No.”
I was filling my mouth with kale
when I noticed that Pam was pointing
a finger at me. “You,” she said. “You
could do something. You know what
I’m talking about.”
Viki was contemplating me with a
strange expression. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.
I forgot all about that. My God, yes.”
I took a sip of green tea. The impor-
tant thing was not to do anything dumb.
As I was deliberating, as I was try-
ing to determine exactly how an unin-
sured aerial intervention would help
matters, I was blindsided by a feeling
that I can describe only as a powerful
sense of arrival—as if all my life I had
been trekking, in a series of unconscious
gradations and unconscious turns, on
an imperceptible road that finally, at
this exact moment, had delivered me
to a new place and a new dimension
of action.
Slowly, I stood up. I went to a win-
dow and opened it. Bright, enigmatic
apartments were everywhere. As the
cold entered the room, I turned toward
the two women so that they could be-
hold my face. I spread my arms as if
they were wings. I rose into the air.
“Tell me what I should do,” I said, and
their visages filled with awe and dread.
V
iki’s sister, Maya, is in the habit
of dropping by without warning.
In mitigation, she has a recognizable,
superfluously insistent way of buzz-
ing that functions as a heads-up. I was
carved from mangrove and mahogany.
The goatskin is dyed so red the color sprints
back and forth across that thin, thin line
between very elegant and exquisitely tacky.
We take both. Caramel and beige,
we are the whitest things around.
The shopkeepers greet us with a fondness
and familiarity that is also historical apology.
But we look back through our bodies completely
pleased by what—for millennia—the cell has seen
and done—and sustained. Something between us
refuses pity, because, of all the ancient masks
hanging from these walls, we are
the only two still walking and talking.
—Robin Coste Lewis
