The rain was coming down harder. They backed away from each other at last and laughed at how drenched they were. They got into the car, a much better one than the one he’d had before, a BMW.
“You’re rich,” Elv said.
“I keep my promises,” he told her. “You know that.”
Rain splattered the windshield. He pulled her onto his lap and reached under her skirt, slid off her underwear and fucked her right there, their clothes rain-soaked, the windows of the car foggy. Three years had passed and it was still the same between them. Miracle had warned Elv that he probably wouldn’t wait for her, or if he did, she’d be the one to want someone new, but Miracle had been wrong. If Elv believed in friendship, she would have written and said So there to Miracle. Love does exist, she would have told her. Believe it or not. Elv didn’t ask where he’d been or if there had been anyone else. She didn’t need to know those things. She and Lorry were beyond that.
They drove away quickly. Elv asked how he’d known she was getting out and he grinned. He said, “I called your old friend.” When Elv looked puzzled, he added, “Pete Smith. He said he’d look out for you, and he did.” Pete had gotten her into Bedford Hills rather than an upstate prison; he’d been the one who had recommended her for the dog training program, plus he’d taken Lorry’s calls so that he could report about her situation even though he thought she’d be better off without him. She supposed he had been a friend to her. Her only one. The last time he came to see her, in the week before the release, she’d thanked him for visiting her so faithfully. She hadn’t expected him to. He’d enjoyed their visits. And then right out of the blue he said, “She knew it was an accident. Your mother didn’t blame you.” Elv had been taken aback. He always did that, in the middle of a normal conversation he’d bring up something that had broken your heart. She wondered if he’d done that in the diner, on his first date with her mother, if he’d won her over because he could see through people to their core.
“Yeah, well, Claire does,” Elv had reminded him.
“Oh, no,” Pete told her. “You couldn’t be more wrong. She blames herself.”
THEY WENT BACK to Astoria, but Astoria was someplace completely different now that Lorry had made his fortune. “Are you for real?” Elv cried when they went upstairs to his apartment. “You really are rich!”
Two bedrooms, a brand-new kitchen, a terrace. It turned out the entire building was his. He owned it. He was the landlord now. She didn’t ask Lorry how he’d managed it. All she knew was that he had traveled all over the country, from California up to Alaska, then back east through Canada and the Midwest looking to make things right. No more scams, no more con games, no robberies. In three years, all he’d done was work at jobs he hated. He’d lived in cheap hotels, talked to no one, went it alone. He got through it by thinking about her. It was funny what stayed with you and what you most remembered: the day she broke the window in her mother’s bathroom and he’d taken the slivers of glass out of her hand with tweezers while she told him about the man who had abducted her and the things he’d done; the evening when he came and found her on his stoop, her clothes bloody, after the accident; the time they came upon a pond out in the woods in New Hampshire with water so cold that they screamed after they’d jumped in, then grasped at each other laughing, then found each other, not laughing at all.
Just when it seemed he wouldn’t fulfill his promise to set their lives on track, he’d arrived back in New York and his luck had changed. He got off the train from Chicago, where he’d lost what was left of his money gambling on a series of sure things, and there he was at Thirty-third Street. Home sweet home. Exactly where he’d been at the age of ten, on his own. The old routes he and Hector had used had been sealed up. The gates to the lower platforms beneath the subway were mostly unreachable now. The city had decided to block off the entrances because of complaints of drugs and crime from commuters and shop owners. He stood there, jostled by the bustling crowds, dressed in the only clothes he owned. He said a prayer for his old dog and for his best friend, Hector, and for all of the others he’d known who hadn’t managed to survive the rigors and grief of a life underground. He had little more than he’d had when he first arrived here. It seemed a cruel joke.
Then he saw the gate near the exit to Eighth Avenue. He had memorized all the entrances and exits long ago. This gateway was entirely new. At that moment he had nothing more to lose.
“But you did,” Elv said to him. “You had me.” They were in bed, entwined, spent and hot and naked. This was her favorite time to hear his story, when it was late and it seemed the rest of the world had dropped far away.
There was always more to lose, Lorry admitted. But at that moment, surrounded by his own failure, he was convinced otherwise. Three years and nothing to show for it. He should have been the one who’d gone to jail if this was all he’d managed to accomplish. He reached down, fiddled with the grating, then slid open the gate. Without thinking further, he climbed down beneath the train station. He entered that world just as he had when he was a ten-year-old runaway with so little to lay claim to in the world it seemed he had everything to gain.
It had been a long time since he’d been back. It took a while for his eyes to adjust to the dark. He went down the rusty metal rungs of one of the old ladders once used to check the tracks. The trains hadn’t run here for many years. The ashy smell of the place came back to him in a rush. He felt like one of the coal miners he’d seen when he passed through Kentucky, men who’d been out in the clear air of the world but who’d never forgotten the cloying depths below.