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It's not his real name, so it's easier. It's not his hometown, so he's always passing through. It's not on the books, so it doesn't happen.
There are the stories, the tales, looks, and whispers. There are the apartments, the restaurants, bodegas, and tailors. There are the scars, the arsenals, the faces, bodies, blood, and tissue.
He's good at lying, repressing, shutting down. Not so much with the reverse. Once he starts, it's hard to call it quits, hard to find a reason it's necessary.
Everything just is.
Then, there's Helen. She's staring at him from a table of similar people in one of a thousand similar restaurants in the area, and he's tracking her from a seat at the bar, analyzing, surveying—and then she smiles. He smiles back and something sticks in his throat. She sends him a drink. He pays the whole of her table's tab and walks past on his way out.
Terrible habit, smoking. Useful, though. Door opens behind him, and it's her.
And that's it. The end.
The start.
Bad news comes four months in. He takes a trip overseas after she tells him, doesn't return for two and a half weeks. She doesn't call or email. Two texts, both asking how he's doing. He weighs his options. Strikes a deal. Exit strategy. Sends her a reply, asks how she's doing. Takes another month to finish the job, board up the windows and fill in the ruins of his life's work, his so-called achievements.
Five years. Joy, worry, excitement, all windows thrust open in Helen's wake, doors he'd locked decades ago. He tells her about his childhood. The truth, not the line. He meets her mom, her best friend, her coworkers. Hears about her past relationships, gives away some of the details of his life to her. It's numerous quiet moments built into the stone, the steel, glass, and cloth of that house. Their gift to each other. He buys her a coffee machine. She has the bathroom shower redone. New walk-in closet for her, and he gets a bathrobe. Their thing, their in-joke. Surpassed my expectations, she told him, one year in. I like routine, he told her, year two.
Third one is terrifying. Not smooth. Vacations cut short. Nights out ending in hospital visits. Weeks and months in bed, in waiting rooms, over the toilet, and carried up the stairs. You love me, she told him. I really do, he said.
Fourth is. It is. No expectations there. Just hope. I asked for you to get well, he told her, right before their anniversary, her third day home. Who'd you ask, she said. Said. Like she already knew. I don't know, he said.
Fifth year. They make it, just barely. He thinks she died by the river, just her body alive in the hospital. Then it's gone too. You loved me, he told her, as the monitor screamed. I really loved you, he finished.
He lies and says she wasn't scared, not then. It was quick. Her mom went two years back. It's cousins, friends, an aunt, people from work.
And Marcus.
It's Helen there in his hands, all around. He'll pay the bills, sort out her things, see that everything's taken care of, and she's given him a dog named Daisy. Something sticks in his throat.