Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

It’s the way Roy turned, where he wanted to go. He went around the comer and down to Washington Street and then north. I guess that’s the way he went with Leon a lot of the time. I didn’t give it any thought. I was so glad to be out. I just followed him. And then this trucker stopped.” She turned to look at me as if for the first time realizing how bizarre what she’d done was. I saw her hands were shaking, her lower lip, too. “He asked if I needed a lift. He said he was going to North Carolina, he could use a little company. I said no. I thought it was funny at first, then scary. And then we walked up Little West Twelfth Street and Roy found a sock. I let him off leash and he was running with it, growling at it, dumping it back on the ground, crouching as if it were a sheep, then grabbing it again, and I kept thinking about the ride I’d been offered and it just pulled at me. It just kept after me, the way Madison used to.
    “I tried to go back home. I really did. I got as far as Horatio Street and then I stopped and I walked back to the market, to where the trucks were. Another one stopped on Gansevoort Street, the hookers giving me the eye, like was I taking their jobs away from them. I was going to walk away but then the driver opened the passenger door and asked if I needed help. I told him I did. It was strange, hearing myself say that. It was as if someone else had answered for me. But the moment it was out, I knew it was true, perhaps the truest thing I’d ever said.”
    “What did he say?”
    “Nothing. He leaned across the seat and reached for my hand.” Sally sighed and looked at the ocean for a moment. “Roy jumped in first,” she said, her face still toward the water. “And then I got in. The driver leaned across me and pulled the door closed. ‘Where to?’ he said. And I said, ‘Where are you going?’ And that’s how it started.”
    “Did you come here right away?”
    “I didn’t know this was where I was headed. I was headed away, not toward, if you know what I mean.” Checking to see if I did, if I was on the same page.
    “I do,” I told her. And I did.
    “He went as far as Georgia. He gave me bus fare to get here. Paul. That was his name. He never told me his last name.“
    “Did you tell him yours?”
    “My first name only. But I remember thinking Russell, Sally Russell. So someplace inside, I must have known I was coming back here. We’d signed the register ‘Mr. and Mrs. J. Russell.’ ” She looked out at the water, then down at the sand. “I doubt we fooled anyone. I was fifteen. Now that I’m in the business, I know it doesn’t matter.” She shrugged. “No one cares.”
    “But why did you come here, after what happened?“
    “This is the only place on earth I’ve ever been happy.“
    “Are you happy now?” I asked her.
    She looked down at Roy, then out at the water.
    “I am,” she said, “as happy as I think is possible for me.“
    “Do you live here?” Nodding back toward the Madison. “I run the place. I have a cabin in the back with a small kitchen and a modest salary. I don’t need much.”
    The sun was overhead now, the air still and hot. I suddenly wanted to swim, to swim with Sally. I walked back to where I’d left the bag from Hank’s, tore it open and pulled out the snorkel and the flippers, nodding this time toward the ocean. Sally smiled, the first and last one I’d see.
    I pulled off my shorts and put on the flippers. When I took out the mask, she said, “Don’t forget to spit in it.“
    “Thanks,” I told her. And I did.
    Water could wash away forensic evidence, dirt, even stress. It could reshape rocks, smooth glass, and sometimes, perhaps for Sally, it could wash away memories or at least the pain that came with them. Perhaps it would wash away the pain I was feeling, pain for a little girl back in New York, because though I’d found Sally, she wouldn’t be coming back with me. With my heart feeling broken, I followed Sally into the ocean, hoping that would glue it back together, hoping for some of the magic Sally had found here, not once but twice.

Chapter 25

    Once again I dreamed of fish, striped, dotted, patterned, pied fish, tiny fish that swam together as one being, solitary fish with undershot jaws, fish that looked as if they’d eat you as soon as look at you, New York fish, street-comer fish, gangsta fish, only this time I was wide awake. This time I was following Sally into a small cove, grasses swaying as