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, 19 The next morning, I gave Ilya the last of the Russian morphine, trying not to look at the black and purple bruise on his thigh from the shot I’d givenhimthenightbefore.Itwasn’thardtodo,ifImadesurenottothinkabout how tender the flesh was where the needle went in, didn’t think of the tiny hole it made as symbolic of any larger loss. Ilya closed his eyes, felt the rush of the morphine, waited for the pain to recede. I would have a talk with the neighbor before we went to the hospital to see a doctor. I needed to have enough morphine for Ilya to make good on my promise that I wouldn’t let him end up like Anne-Sophie. Enough for me as well, if I decided not to stick around either. I knew the neighbor would sell me as much as I needed, as long as I had the money. I felt Ilya’s eyes on me. “Don’t even think about it, Vera,” he said. “You promised me. You swore to live to be 100.” “No,” I said, “110.” Which was a bigger sin, suicide or lying to a dying man? I went to get my purse, but when I looked in my wallet I remembered giving the taxi driver the last of my cash. I would have to find an ATM. There would be one near the hospital, or failing that, at a bank on the Boulevard de la Villette. I doubted the neighbor would charge the morphine to my credit card the way the Russian pharmacist had. “I have to go out and get money before we go to the hospital,” I told Ilya. “Will you be okay for a while?” “I’m lovely,” he said, smiling. He was. His eyes glowed like the sea in a tropical postcard. “Yes, you are,” I said. 181 He poked me with a long finger. “You, too, little sister. You, too.” I didn’t feel beautiful. I felt raw. I felt like I had been living on a diet of broken glass. More than anything, I wanted to keep Ilya alive and with me as long as possible, even if that meant his being in the hospital. I put some water by the bed for him and, though I didn’t really think he would be reading, the paperback life of Houdini there as well. Then I put on Ilya’s jeans, T-shirt, and the blue sweater. I took the baby Lenin pin off my black turtleneck and pinned it over my heart. I even put on his boat shoes instead of my boots, knowing as I did it that I was trying to keep my only brother close. I took his keys and let myself out. InoddedtotheneighborasIwentpast.Shewascrackingwalnutsintoabowl, her muscular forearms bare in the morning sun. I found an ATM inside the courtyardofthehospital.Theleavesonthetreeswereopennow,thetulips,too, a blaze of red. An old man was sitting on the bench where I had sat the morning I set out to find the Place Ste-Odile a lifetime ago. I counted the days. Jesus, just ten days had passed. Ten days. It felt like my whole life, or like one really long Russian silent movie. I put my card in the machine, punched in my number, asked for two hundred euros. But the ATM, instead of thinking about that for a moment while it chatted with the ubercomputer in touch with my bank in America, instead of spitting out fresh bills phit, phit, phit, it made an odd clucking sound and a message flashed on the screen. We are desolated, but your card has been confiscated. Please contact your home institution. I hit the cancel button, once, twice, but the card would not come out. What could have happened? Sure, I had been spending like a sailor, but the card had a ten thousand dollar limit, and I hadn’t gone that crazy. Then I remembered John saying this had happened to him once while he was traveling through Europe with Tricia, because she’d bought too many designer clothes in one day. My spending pattern, buying tickets to foreign countries at the last minute, buying expensive luxury items (those boots!), paying for two hotel rooms in two different capital cities at the same time, must have tripped some kind of security program. Somebody, one computer told another computer, has stolen this card. The owner would never spend money this way. Take my word for it. I know. 182 What...
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