Chang-rae Lee - The surrendered

The door opened and there before June was a woman loosely draped in a bedsheet. She looked like a life-drawing model, earthy, shapely, her full breasts pushing out against the thin fabric.

“Did you forget the key…?” the woman said, trailing off on sighting her. She was sleepy-eyed. “Oh, excuse me. Can I help you?”

The woman wasn’t so much beautiful as she was beautifully present, animate, with her tousled reddish-brown hair, her décolletage speckled with ruddiness, the smooth globes of her shoulders shining and delicate. She was perhaps the same age or even slightly older than June but June suddenly felt like a dried, buckling veneer in the face of the woman’s lushness, this outer layer that you could chip away without effort.

“I’m sorry to disturb you. My name is June Singer. I’m looking for Hector Brennan.”

“Oh.” The woman held the sheet tightly around herself with one arm, the other crossed in front of her, her hand gripping the knob. Her expression had instantly hardened. “He doesn’t want to work for you again.”

“Again?”

“He doesn’t want to see you. He made that clear already. So I think you should get on now.”

“Please,” June said, suddenly feeling like she ought to brace herself. “Please. It’s too much to explain, and I want to speak to him now.”

“I can listen. Explain to me.”

“How can it matter to you?” June cried sharply, both of them surprised by her harshness. The woman instinctively stepped back but June leaned in before she could shut the door.

“I’m very sorry,” June said wearily. She felt as though she were slipping inside herself, her outside stiff but her soft tissue melting away within. Her condition had now become apparent to the woman, whose eyes flashed on the realization that this insistent, brittle person standing before her was in fact very ill.

“I’m very sorry,” June said. “May I ask your name?”

“It’s Dora.”

“Please excuse me, Dora. I’m sorry. I very much wish to speak to him. That’s all.”

“He’s not here,” Dora told her. She examined June closely. “He was just here a little while ago. I don’t know where he went.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“I’m sure soon,” Dora said, partly opening the door now. “But I don’t know. Listen, are you okay?”

June faltered at that moment, perhaps more intentionally than she consciously knew or would admit, but with enough sudden gravity that Dora had to step quickly forward to grab hold of her arm; she would have fallen hard otherwise, or even let herself fall.

“I’m all right,” June said, “but thank you.”

“No, you’re not. You’re not well, are you?”

June answered by letting Dora fully hold her up; her embrace was strong but still gentle, careful.

“How did you get here?”

June said she was driven, but then she felt her legs give way again, forcing Dora to hold on to her even more tightly.

“You better come inside,” Dora said, guiding her into the apartment. “Hector will be back soon enough, I’m sure.”

“Thank you. You’re very kind.”

Dora helped her into an old armchair and excused herself, saying she was going to the bedroom to put on clothes. When she returned, she was holding a glass of ice water.

“Here,” Dora said. “It’ll make you feel better.”

“Thank you.” June took a drink and the water helped to steady her. She watched as Dora poured herself the remains of a bottle of red wine, coaxing the very last drops to fall. She had put on a nice-looking if slightly too colorful striped summer dress. Clothed, Dora appeared more ordinary-looking to her now, a middle-aged woman who had thickened around the middle, around the neck, in the upper arms, though certainly not in an unpleasing way. Life, gathering. The apartment was small but tidy and there were the remnants of what looked like a nice dinner on the table, an almost whole fruit pie. A twinge of jealousy unwound in June’s gut, which was ridiculous, as she could expect nothing from either of them, but the sight of their shared domesticity made her feel that much more alone and desiccated.

“Have you been together for a while?”

“Me and Hector?” Dora said, sitting across from her with her already empty glass in her hands. “Not really. I mean, no, not long at all. I don’t know what we’re doing yet, exactly. But it’s good. I guess you’ve known Hector a long time.”

“Yes,” June said. “A long time.”

“And you want his help again?”

“Well, yes. Did he say if he would?”

“He has a job he likes. Or at least that he doesn’t mind. I don’t know that he’d switch jobs.”

June didn’t quite understand and let Dora talk further and she soon realized that Dora was under the impression that he’d been some kind of handyman for her, and without any hesitation June found herself telling her that Hector had worked for her at the antiques shop, delivering furniture to customers. She didn’t care that Dora might find out the truth later; it was now or never, for tomorrow they would have to leave if they had any hope of finding Nicholas. But all she made up about Hector seemed within possibility, given what Clines had found out about him, and Dora didn’t question anything she said; in fact the more June began to tell of how reliable he had been, how careful he was at transporting and handling the pieces, how well liked he’d been by the customers, the more this widened view of him seemed to relax and please Dora, to ratify what she was clearly thinking and hoping about him. It was manipulative and cruel on June’s part, yet here was Dora beginning to smile a little, warming to her, and because she felt her own strength waning June couldn’t help but keep elaborating, saying how he’d been a skilled handyman (which he had been, at the orphanage), a tireless worker. It was only when she closed her shop did he move on, and she was lucky to have found him again, after all these years.

“You respect him, don’t you?” Dora said. “You consider him a good man.”

“Yes. I do.”

Dora lowered her eyes, peering down into her glass. “Were you lovers, once?”

“No,” June said firmly, deciding she wasn’t lying to her at all on this; there had been the single instance, yes, but it was another for whom she and Hector had been yearning. “Not that.”

“You’re not very convincing.”

June couldn’t help but smile, but she didn’t say any more about it. She said instead: “You love him.”

Dora sighed. “He’s not too selfish, like a lot of men I’ve known. He’s certainly not mean, even if he rarely shies from a fight. He can be surprisingly funny. And very generous, even though he can’t have much more than a few hundred dollars to his name. I suppose all that’s good enough for me.”

“Yes. You could do much worse.”

“I have, plenty of times.”

“I doubt it.”

“You’re nice to say that. So will you tell me now what you want from him?” Dora asked her, staring straight into June’s eyes. “Please don’t lie. And I’m sorry but you’re sick, anyone can see that. You obviously don’t really need him for your business. So how do you want him to help you?”

June paused to take a sip of water.

“I want him to come on a trip.”

“A trip? What kind of trip?”

“It wouldn’t be for too long, a week, or maybe two, at most.” She added, if more to remind herself: “It can’t be longer than that.”

“But for what reason?”

“I’m looking for my son.”

“Your son?” Dora said, with alarm. “What does Hector have to do with him?”

June tried to calculate whether it would be advantageous to tell her. But she was tired and muddled and she said, “Nothing. Nothing.”