Chapter 21: Gate

Clara read the text over my shoulder in the elevator.

"'Don't come, it will make me stay,'" she read out loud. "Mom. That's not a no. That's an instruction."

"He wants to go home."

"He wants you to come and make him not go home. Everybody can see that. The doorman can see that."

The elevator opened on the lobby.

"Lunch first," I said. "I promised you lunch."

"We'll eat at the airport."

"Airport food is terrible."

"Then buy me a hot dog on the way. He'd like that."

I bought two from the cart on Park Avenue. She ate hers in the car with mustard on her chin.

It was four in the afternoon. The flight was at 9:40.

"You could just call him," Clara said.

"He'd let it ring."

"Then you'd have to go anyway. So go now and skip the part where you're sad."

There's no way to reach a gate at JFK without a ticket.

At the counter, I bought two, to Geneva, one way.

"Are you seriously buying a ticket to Switzerland to talk to a man?" Clara said.

"Two tickets."

"I'm not going to Switzerland."

"Then don't get on the plane. But you're coming to the gate. I need a witness."

The agent behind the desk looked from one of us to the other and decided not to ask.

We found him at the far end of Terminal 4, alone in a row of blue chairs by the window.

He was in the borrowed suit from the memorial.

His duffel bag was between his boots.

He was watching the planes come in, and he looked exactly the way he'd looked on my clinic's terrible plastic chair at seven every evening.

He saw us and closed his eyes.

"I said don't come," he said.

"I've never done what I was told in my life."