Shadows of Berlin полностью

Naomi nods again. “Thank you for saying that. And for swooping in when I called. Especially you, Brother,” she says to Aaron, “for footing the bill.”

Aaron shrugs. “No big deal. What was I doing but sleeping anyhow?”

Tyrell appears, unloading the contents of a large kraft-paper envelope onto a windowsill. Slipping his wallet into his coat pockets. A fountain pen. “Missing a cufflink,” he inventories with a slight grimace of pain. “Got a lighter but no cigarettes. One wristwatch with a busted crystal,” he says, then shakes it against his ear. “No longer ticking.”

“Fucking crooks,” Naomi curses. But in any case, Tyrell seems to take it in stride.

“Thank you, Mr. Perlman,” he says to Aaron in a heavy, formal tone, “for coming down here at this hour and for paying my bail.” But it’s a heavy thank-­you. Not a comfortable one. “I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”

“No rush,” Aaron replies, waving off any need for haste. “Really. Whenever,” he says.

“I had actually told Naomi to call my sister,” the man points out thickly. “But I guess she called her brother instead,” he says. This is a sideline scold directed toward Naomi.

“Well, whattaya gonna do?” Aaron shrugs. “Families stick together.” In other words, Jews stick with Jews.

But Naomi leans in. “Let’s just get the fuck outta here,” she injects with an exhausted urgency. She has regained Tyrell’s arm and gives it a tug.

It is raining by the time they exit onto the street. Not a downpour yet, but certainly a hefty sprinkle. There’s a metal bucket by the door, though, containing a handful of forgotten umbrellas with a hand-­printed sign that reads LOST AND FOUND. “Ah, now will you look at this?” Aaron sounds pleasantly surprised as he selects a long, black item. “You want one too, Mr. Williams?” he asks.

“No, thanks,” Tyrell assures him. He lifts his arm free of Naomi and separates himself, squinting at the rain as he turns up the collar of his overcoat. “So, Mr. Perlman, do you think you could see that your sister gets home?”

“Home?” Aaron repeats, sliding open the umbrella.

But it’s Naomi who jumps in. “Wait a minute. What do you mean, see that I get home? I’m not leaving you,” Naomi insists, pained confusion rising in her voice. “Not after all this shit.”

But Tyrell acts as if he’s gone deaf to her. “If you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Perlman.”

“Uh. Sure,” Aaron replies. “Sure.”

“Tyrell,” Naomi squawks, and only now does he acknowledge her.

“It’s late,” he tells her inflexibly, placing his hand on her arm. “I have to be up early, so I need to get home and get some sleep. And I’ll sleep better knowing you’re home safe.”

“Me? What about you getting home safe.”

“I’ll be fine,” he insists. “Really. I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promises and then quickly seals his exit with a kiss on Naomi’s cheek before stepping off the curb and trotting across the street, dodging past the lights of a car.

Naomi calls out his name and advances a step as if to follow him, but Aaron drops his hand on her shoulder and draws her under the umbrella. “Let ’im go, Naomi” is all he says.

“You know, I woulda called his sister except she scares the holy shit out of me. And I guess now I embarrassed him. Fuck!” she spits.

“Look, what difference does it make?” Aaron is quick to reply. “The bail is paid, and the man’s outta the clink. Beside, what’s so embarrassing?”

“What’s so embarrassing is that I put him in the debt of a white man.”

“Oh, is that what I am?”

“You bet it’s what you are. I shoulda just fuckin’ called Chloe like he wanted me to.”

And now Aaron is frustrated that she is refusing to cast him as the hero of this story as she should be. The man who got out of bed in the middle of the fucking night to answer her call for help. The man who shelled out the money, not just for the bail—­twenty-­five bucks, a week’s rent—­but for how many taxi rides? “Okay, okay. Let’s forget about who called who, all right? What’s done is done. Let’s just go, for cryin’ out loud.”

Two days come and then go. It rains. Aaron goes to work, comes home, and goes back out to work. When Rachel arrives at Naomi’s apartment in the middle of the afternoon, she finds that it has returned to its normal state of chaos, except now the ashtrays are overflowing, and there are new cigarette burns on the old blue sofa. Empty bottles of beer stand abandoned on surfaces like lonely sentinels, and the centerpiece of the coffee table is a half-­empty fifth of Smirnoff’s. “I started out mixing martinis,” Naomi explains, “but then thought, fuck it, who needs vermouth? Just fuckin’ cut out the middleman, right?”