Torture to Her Soul(38)

She looks torn as to whether or not to believe me, and I realize then why it matters so much. She's still looking for a reason to doubt me, looking for justification to hate me, grasping any smidgen of skepticism that comes along to try to convince herself that she shouldn't love me.

She doesn't want to love me.

I don't blame her.

But the fact remains that she does.

She loves me.

And she probably hates that fact more than she hates me most days.

I look away from her when the light turns green. She seems to, for the moment, decide to believe what I'm saying. She glances back at the passport, scanning over the few stamps I've collected before closing it.

She tosses it in the center console and slouches in her seat, shifting her body so she can lean against the door and stare out the window. "Do your parents still live in New York?"

"Yes."

"Here in the city?"

"Yes."

"And you don't see them?"

"No."

"Why not?"

I sigh as I pull up at yet another red light. Traffic is heavy today. It's going to take a while to get back to Brooklyn at this rate. I'm exhausted, and nauseated, and my body is really starting to ache.

I cut my eyes at her, seeing her inquisitive look. "You sure you're not writing a book about my life?"

She rolls her eyes. "I'm just trying to figure out who you are."

"You know who I am."

"No, I don't." Her voice has a hard edge to it, a slight hint of anger that makes my skin prickle. "You're like a caricature to me, Naz… you're an outline of a man, a vague sketch of a person, and I'm just trying to fill in the rest of the picture, add some color between all these black lines, and I don't know how to do that, how to figure out who you really are, without prying it out of you."

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything," she says. "I want to know everything about you. And I know you told me the answers might not be pretty, but I don't care. If we're going to have any chance in hell of doing whatever it is we're doing, of actually building something together, I'm going to have to understand what makes the answers so ugly in the first place."

I consider that for a moment, sitting in silence as I stare through the windshield at the bright red light, waiting for it to change. Once it turns green, I make an unexpected turn, cutting in front of other cars, ignoring the blare of their horns, as I hook a left down a nearby street.

It veers us away from Brooklyn when I take yet another left, setting us back in the direction we just came.

"Are you hungry?" I ask, glancing at Karissa.

She stares at me with disbelief. I can see the fury brewing in her eyes, anger at being disregarded, at having her questions ignored. Any walls I busted down are already being reconstructed, her guard going back up, her armor coming on.

I'm grateful for it, for the moment.

She's probably going to need it.

"You haven't eaten yet today," I say when she doesn't answer.

"Yeah, well, you haven't eaten in like a week."

She's exaggerating, but that doesn't matter, considering I have no intention of eating today, either.

"You must be hungry," I say. "Let's get you something."

She merely shakes her head as she looks back away. I don't talk anymore as I drive north through Manhattan. I sneak glances at the other side of the car whenever traffic stops us, seeing her expression hardening, the anger still there, growing along with her confusion.

She wants so badly to ask where we're going, to demand I tell her where I'm taking her right now.

The deli is in a faded brick building in Hell's Kitchen, wedged between a butcher shop and a little corner grocer, tucked in below a bunch of cluttered old apartments. Metal bars needlessly cover most of the tinted glass windows, a green awning running the length of the building above them, Italian Delicatessen written in block letters along the brick. The actual name of the place isn't on it anymore, hasn't been for decades although the spot it used to hang up top, front and center, is still discolored compared to the area around it.

It doesn't matter, though, not really.

Name or no name, the deli's iconic.

People drive in from upstate for one of their sandwiches, for just a taste of their fresh mozzarella, for a pound of their smoked ham. They can move it to a fucking alley and sell it out of the back of a truck and people will still make the trip.

Everyone thinks it's a sign of the owner's modesty, that he never gave a shit about recognition, that he never bothered to have the sign replaced after renovations years ago. The food's what matters, he tells people when they ask. Who cares what you call it as long as you come eat.

But I know it's not humility. It's regret.

He just doesn't care for the name anymore.