I saw the coverlet stir. An elbow went up. “Umn?” said a sleepy voice.
“It’s so dark, my dear. Won’t you let me open the curtains?”
“No, please don’t, the light hurts my eyes.”
She was smaller than I remembered, and her face—a blur in the gloom—was very white. Head shaven, all but a single lock in front. As I drew closer, a bit fearfully, I saw a glint of metal at her temple—a barrette or hairpin, I thought, before I made out the steel medical staples in a vicious coil above one ear.
“I heard you in the hallway,” she said, in a small, raspy voice, looking from me to Hobie.
“Heard what, pigeon?” said Hobie.
“Heard you talking. Cosmo did too.”
At first I didn’t see the dog, and then I did—a gray terrier curled alongside her, amidst the pillows and stuffed toys. When he raised his head, I saw from his grizzled face and cataract-clouded eyes that he was very old.
“I thought you were asleep, pigeon,” Hobie was saying, reaching out to scratch the dog’s chin.
“You always say that, but I’m always awake. Hi,” she said, looking up at me.
“Hi.”
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Theo.”
“What’s your favorite piece of music?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and then, so as not to appear stupid: “Beethoven.”
“That’s great. You look like somebody who would like Beethoven.”
“I do?” I said, feeling overwhelmed.
“I meant that in a nice way. I can’t listen to music. Because of my head. It’s completely horrible. No,” she said to Hobie, who was clearing books and gauze and Kleenex packets out of the bedside chair so I could sit down in it, “let him sit here. You can sit here,” she said to me, shifting over slightly in the bed to make room.
After a glance back at Hobie to make sure it was okay, I sat down, gingerly, with one hip, careful not to disturb the dog, who raised his head and glared.
“Don’t worry, he won’t bite. Well, sometimes he bites.” She looked at me with drowsy eyes. “I know you.”
“You remember me?”
“Are we friends?”
“Yes,” I said without thinking, and then glanced back at Hobie, embarrassed I’d lied.
“I forgot your name, I’m sorry. I remember your face though.” Then—stroking the dog’s head—she said: “I didn’t remember my room when I came home. I remembered my bed, and all my stuff, but the room was different.”
Now that my eyes had adjusted to the dark, I saw the wheelchair in the corner, the bottles of medicine on the table by her bed.
“What Beethoven do you like?”
“Uh—” I was staring at her arm, resting atop the coverlet, the tender skin on the inside of her arm with a Band-Aid in the crook of the elbow.
She was pushing up in bed—looking past me, to Hobie, silhouetted in the bright doorway. “I’m not supposed to talk too much, am I?” she said.
“No, pigeon.”
“I don’t think I’m too tired. But I can’t tell. Do you get tired during the day?” she asked me.
“Sometimes.” After my mother’s death, I had developed a tendency to fall asleep in class and conk out in Andy’s room after school. “I never used to.”
“I do, too. I feel sleepy all the time now. I wonder why? I think it’s so boring.”
Hobie—I noticed, looking back at the lighted doorway—had stepped away for a moment. Although it was very unlike me, for some strange reason I had been itching to reach out and take her hand, and now that we were alone, I did.
“You don’t mind, do you?” I asked her. Everything seemed slow like I was moving through deep water. It was very strange to be holding somebody’s hand—a girl’s hand—and yet oddly normal. I had never done anything of the sort before.
“Not at all. I think it’s nice.” Then, after a brief pause—during which I could hear the little terrier snoring—she said: “You don’t mind if I close my eyes for a few seconds, do you?”
“No,” I said, running a thumb over her knuckles, tracing the bones.
“I know it’s rude, but I just absolutely have to.”
I looked down at her shaded eyelids, chapped lips, pallor and bruises, the ugly hashmark of metal over one ear. The strange combination of what was exciting about her, and what wasn’t supposed to be, made me feel light-headed and confused.
Guilty, I glanced back, and noticed Hobie standing in the door. After tiptoeing out to the hall again, I closed the door quietly behind me, grateful that the hall was so dark.