“Can I be of any help at all?” he asked.
There was a fleeting second when she thought she smelled Peter’s cologne in the air.
“I don’t know,” she said. No one else was on the street, and she wondered if he’d followed her here.
“You’re quite wet,” he said gently.
Her jeans were in terrible condition, now that she looked at them—soaked past the knees and filthy. Her tennis shoes were waterlogged.
“I went wading,” she explained.
He extended a hand. “Rafael.”
“Zoë.”
“Zoë, may I buy you a cup of coffee?”
“You may,” she said. There was no reason why not. She wasn’t one to decline offers of coffee from strange men. She hadn’t had coffee all day, or food for that matter, and it was nearly evening. “Would you mind buying me dinner instead?” she asked.
“Tell me about yourself,” Rafael said. He had taken her to a small dark restaurant not far from where he’d found her, a place so narrow that she might have walked past it without noticing. The street outside was shadowed and still. He’d led her to a table in a far back corner, and now he was sipping red wine while she attacked a plate of pasta.
“I’m a painter,” she said. “I was a painter, I mean.”
“I see. And where are you from?”
“The United States. But I’ve been traveling for a long time.”
“You’re traveling alone?”
“I am,” she said.
“Do you have any family?”
“A brother. I haven’t spoken to him in a while.” Memories of a pay phone in a hotel lobby in Albania, the desk clerk glaring as she capped the whiskey.
“There’s no one else?”
“My parents died in a car accident when I was little.” This wasn’t at all true—her parents were a seldom-thought-of presence in the suburbs of Ann Arbor, probably worried about her, faded to shadows now—but wasn’t she free to reinvent herself? This wasn’t her continent. “I have no children.”
“But you’re married,” he said. She still wore the ring.
“He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry. How long have you been traveling, Zoë?”
“Two years? Maybe three. I haven’t really kept track.”
“A drifter.” Rafael smiled to soften the blow of the word.
She had been reaching for her wineglass but found herself stilled by the idea. Memories of Greece, of Slovakia, of the Arctic, dark cities. “I suppose,” she said. “Yes, I suppose you could say that.”
“I have a confession to make.” Rafael had taken off his sunglasses. His eyes were blue, and she thought him handsome; there was an easy grace in every movement, a confidence in his gaze. She liked his smile.
“What sort of confession?” She was interested in the confession, but more interested in her pasta. It was the first time she’d eaten that day and she was having a hard time chewing slowly.
“I followed you for a while before I approached you.”
A quick bright star of light caught in an ice cube as she raised her water glass to her lips.
“Really,” she said.
“And my interest, if I may be entirely candid, was partly economic in nature. You appear to be—forgive me for speaking so bluntly—a girl of limited means.”
“You could say that.” Zoë was aware of her appearance. She knew she hadn’t been paying enough attention to it. The cuffs of her sweater were fraying and a seam was coming apart at the shoulder. It had been some time since she’d washed her hair.
“It happens,” he said, “that there’s a job I need done. It would take no more than an hour of your time.”
She had all at once the same feeling she’d had those years ago on the ice outside Tuktoyaktuk, when for an instant she’d thought she’d seen Peter standing on top of the snow and she’d been seized by a desperate desire to flee. Rafael’s questions, she couldn’t help but notice, seemed designed to establish that she was alone in the world. Put down your glass, she told herself. Stand up from the table, thank Rafael for the meal, and walk out of the restaurant.
“What kind of job?” she asked, instead of doing any of these things.
“A simple delivery.”
“Of what?”
“A small package,” he said. “It happens to be a matter of the utmost delicacy. You’ll deliver a small package to an address near here, and in return I’ll pay you a hundred euros.”
“In advance.”
“Half in advance, half when you return.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll be waiting for you here, at this table.”
“We’re doing this now?” she asked.
“In thirty minutes,” he said.
“Why would you send someone you don’t know, if it’s a matter of utmost delicacy?”
“You’re at hand,” he said. “All you have to do is knock on the door and tell whoever answers that you have a message from Rafael. You’ll step into the building, give them the package, and you’ll be on your way.”
“And you’ll pay me a hundred euros for that?”
“It’s important to me to see that the package gets delivered, but it isn’t possible for me to do it myself.”
“I see.” There were things she could accomplish with a hundred euros. She could pay for a hostel for a few nights, and perhaps that would be long enough to find a new job. It was suddenly possible that she hadn’t reached the end after all. She wanted very much not to go home.
The package was a rectangular box no larger than a deck of playing cards, wrapped neatly in brown paper. Rafael slid it across the table following the dessert course, extracted fifty euros from a wad in his pocket, and pressed the money into her hand. “The rest when you return,” he said. He nodded at someone behind her, and when she looked up a man who had been sitting at the bar when they came in was standing by her side. “My friend will walk you to the address.”
She felt unsteady as she stood. Perhaps she’d had slightly too much wine. Rafael’s friend said nothing, only nodded to her and set off for the door.
“Goodbye, Zoë,” Rafael said. He winked at her. She looked back as they left the restaurant, and he was speaking softly and urgently into a cell phone.
Zoë held the package in both hands. It was curiously light. She was worried that it might be fragile, and it was certainly important; Rafael’s friend kept glancing at it as they walked. She wondered if it could possibly be jewelry—a blood diamond? She wanted to ask, but she feared the question was indiscreet, and he seemed to be a man not given to talking. Her feet were cold and wet in her sneakers. At least the tide had receded. They were in a corner of Venice that seemed all but deserted, buildings pressed close on either side of the street. Night had fallen, and the streetlamps were few and far between, pools of light spilling over cobblestones and walls.
“Here,” Rafael’s friend said. It was the first word he had spoken to her. They had stopped before a narrow stone building. He rang the doorbell and was gone almost instantly, sliding into the shadow of a nearby doorway. She knew he hadn’t gone far, but she felt acutely alone on the silent street. The graveyard stillness of a city without cars.
The man who opened the door was very old, stooped and blurry-eyed in an impeccable black suit. It seemed to Zoë that he couldn’t see her very well.
“I have something for you,” she said. “A message from Rafael.”
He considered this for a moment before he stepped back to let her enter. She found herself in a dimly lit foyer, wall-mounted lamps casting shadows on the walls, a black lacquered sideboard with a potted white orchid gleaming in the half-light. She was painfully aware of how dirty her clothes were, how ragged and wet. He closed the door behind her.
“Here,” she said, and tried to give him the box, but he shook his head and gestured for her to follow him. She thought about turning and slipping back out into the street, leaving the box by the orchid and running away, but she was seized by curiosity. She wanted
to see what came next. She wanted to do the job correctly and return to Rafael for the other fifty euros. It had perhaps been a mistake to leave her backpack with him, in retrospect. The wine she’d had with dinner was wearing off quickly.
The butler moved slowly down the hallway before her, his thinning hair soft and wispy at the back of his head. She wondered who he was, if he had a family, if he knew Rafael. Her shoes were making embarrassing squelching noises on the carpet. He opened the last door on the right and she stepped into a long, low room, a study. There was a massive black desk at one end, chairs and a sofa at the other. A man in his early thirties sat in an armchair reading La Repubblica. Everything about him looked expensive, from the high shine of his shoes to his carefully tousled hair. His shirt was pink. He made a show of folding his newspaper unhurriedly when he saw her, but she noticed that his hands were shaking.
An older man was walking away from her, and she had the impression that he’d been pacing. He pivoted sharply when the door closed behind her, but said nothing. The butler had retreated into the hall.
“Hello,” Zoë said, but the two men only looked at her. “I have a message from Rafael,” she said.
She held out the box. The older man came toward her, and she saw the strain he carried, bloodshot eyes and slumped shoulders, a two-day beard. His suit was expensive, but his collar was in disarray, he’d pulled his tie loose, nails bitten to the quick. He took the box from her hands and held it for a moment as if weighing it. She watched the color leave his face. He set the box on a low marble coffee table before the man in the pink shirt, sank down into the sofa, and closed his eyes.
The man in the pink shirt glanced at Zoë. He unwrapped the box carefully and removed the lid, pulled back the layer of gauze within. He let out a strangled sound in his throat.
The box contained a human ear. It had been washed clean of blood and it was small and waxy, blue-white, a porcelain seashell with a pink stone earring in the shape of a rose still attached to the earlobe. As she stared, the man in the pink shirt put his hand on the other man’s shoulder and murmured something to him. The older man was still for a moment, as if it took two or three heartbeats for the words to absorb, and then he began a slow downward movement that reminded Zoë of a marionette being lowered on its strings; he slumped forward on the sofa until his head was nearly at his knees, curling in on himself; he pressed his hands to his face and began silently weeping.
The man in the pink shirt sat still for a moment, looking at the ear. He carefully replaced the gauze, set the lid back on the box, carried it away to the far end of the room, and put it high on top of a bookshelf. Zoë stared at him, waiting, trying to guess what might happen now. His face was expressionless when he turned to her.
“I didn’t know,” she said.
“It’s a beautiful night,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “Let’s go for a walk.”
He opened the door and ushered her out into the dim corridor. When she glanced back into the room, the older man hadn’t moved. The back door of the building opened into an empty courtyard, houses silent all around them. She breathed the cool air and thought about running—but where could she go? The courtyard was enclosed, and anyway, they were already in motion, the man in the pink shirt holding her arm. He was leading her to a wooden door in the far wall, their shadows moving black over the cobblestones. Light escaped here and there through the cracks between shutters. She could hear a television somewhere, voices rising and falling, canned laughter. When she stepped through the wooden door she found herself on the edge of a canal, water lapping near her feet. The man in the pink shirt stepped through behind her and closed the door. Something caught the light just then, the quick sharp gleam of a gun in his hand. She wasn’t sure where it had come from.
There was no one else by the canal, and the buildings on the other side were dark. He took her arm again and they walked together, an unhurried stroll down the length of cobblestones with the water rippling black beside them. The slight pressure of the handgun against her ribs. She felt strangely detached, a sleepwalker in a long dream. Her thoughts wandered.
Once in Michigan she’d been held up at gunpoint. This was when she was dealing coke to art school students, and she knew it was dangerous, but no transaction had ever gone bad before and her guard was down. She knew as soon as she walked into the apartment that everything was wrong: the squalor, the way the girl sitting on the sofa was staring at her, the cigarette burning in an overflowing ashtray, the way the door closed just a beat too quickly just as someone said her name—Zoë, I’m real sorry about this, we’re just going to take the money and the coke, no one’s going to hurt you—and then she’d heard the click of the safety catch. Okay, she said quietly. Okay. She raised her hands. The colors of the apartment were florid, a fever dream of red and purple and orange, and she found herself staring at the curtains and trying not to look at the girl on the sofa, who smelled bad when she leaned in close to pull the wad of money out of Zoë’s jacket pocket, and then later out on the street, unharmed, she’d felt so alive, so giddy that she started laughing even though she’d just been robbed and snow was falling through the haze of streetlights; she looked up and she felt it, felt it fall on her face—
“I told Rafael that if he did this, I would kill the messenger,” the man said softly. He sounded apologetic, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes when she glanced at him. His grip tight on her arm, their footsteps quiet on the stone promenade. Time was moving very strangely. She felt that perhaps she’d always been walking beside him.
“But I didn’t know what was in the box.” She heard her own voice as if from a long way off.
“It is a request for payment,” he said. “It’s an escalation. It’s a message that demands a reply.”
“Whose ear is it?” she asked, but he didn’t answer.
In Greece she bought a postcard of her village by the sea, the little place where she was living with the white buildings and the church and the endless light, and she sat on the beach at the end of a difficult day and wrote a note to her brother: Jon, it’s Zoë. I’m sorry for your worry and I just wanted you to know I’m still alive, I hope you’re alive, too, I wish I knew you better, I’m sorry we were never close—
“We’re close now,” the man said. They were nearing a dead end. A boarded-up restaurant with a wide awning that reached across the width of the promenade, where once there must have been café tables shaded from the sun, and on the other side of the awning the promenade ended in a brick wall. They stepped into the awning’s ink-black shadow, and Zoë realized that they were all but invisible to anyone who might be watching from a window, now that they’d passed out of the light.
She’d had a dog when she was little, Massey, a cocker spaniel with ears like silk who quivered with joy when she came home from school, and when it rained they splashed in puddles together—
“Here,” the man said.
They had stopped by the brick wall. Zoë turned to look at the canal, all rippling moonlight and black. Darkened buildings rising up on the far side, moored boats. What was strange was that she wasn’t frightened. She could hear nothing outside of herself but the sound of the man in the pink shirt breathing beside her, the movement of water. Both of them were waiting, but especially her.
“Step forward,” the man said softly, “toward the water,” and she inched toward the canal until her shoes were at the very edge. She felt the metal against the back of her head, the click of the safety catch being released. There was an instant when it seemed that nothing had happened, but then the moonlight expanded and became deafening and there was only pure sound, the gunshot flashing into blinding light—
Her brother making a snow angel in the playground—
Massey chasing a squirrel in the grass—
“It’s cancer,” the doctor said, and Peter gripping her hand so tight—
Prom night in Ann Arbor, the headlights of cars pulling up in front of the auditorium, the slippery tightness of her green silk
dress—
Blue ice shadows on the Beaufort Sea—
“You have a fever, sweetie, no school for you today,” and a cool hand on her forehead, her mother’s voice—
“Stand up,” Peter murmured. His hand on the back of Zoë’s head, where the bullet had entered her. “Stand up, my love. Let me look at you.”
DENNIS MCFADDEN
The Ring of Kerry
FROM New England Review
AS A GIRL, Eena one day heard someone make mention of the Ring of Kerry. To her childish mind then, a title so grand could never be given to a thing so ordinary as a route for tourists to traipse; a magnificent name such as that could only be fit for a splendid piece of jewelry, a ring that might grace the finger of a queen. Even after the mundane truth became known to her, there was always a spot set aside in her heart for the real Ring of Kerry, the genuine, golden, gem-laden article of fabulous beauty and imponderable worth.
And so the first time she laid eyes on her grandmother’s ring, there it was. “You should have seen the thing, Mister,” she told Lafferty. They were in the bed of her room above the restaurant, she with the sheet up to her chin to hide the flatness of her chest. She was a stray, a mutt, skinny as a reed, unruly red hair immune to the brush, ears that stuck out like the handles on a jug, and brown eyes so big they could occupy her face entirely. Thin light from the cloudy afternoon squeezed through the blinds of the window, and he could hear the warble of a tin whistle from the Commodore Pub across the street. “The grandest thing I ever seen,” she said. “Fine, delicate carvings, little circles and twirls all around it, they might have been etched there by the angels. Lovely emeralds like clusters of green stars, and gold thick and shiny as the icing on a cupcake.”
“The Ring of Kerry,” said Lafferty. “Old, was it?”
“Ancient. My great-great-grandda discovered the thing one day in the bog when he was gathering turf for his fire. In a rotted old leather packet, as though it had been hid there long ago and somehow forgot.”
The Best American Mystery Stories 2013 Page 24
