The building rose up over Nancy into the twilight sky. A broad brick facade with alabaster ledges and balconies. Shouldering the ledges, flanking the balconies, gargoyles stared out over Gramercy Park. They were grinning homunculi, squatting, gibbering. Wagging their tongues lasciviously. Rolling wild eyes.
Nancy stood on the sidewalk below them. She shivered, cold in her rags. Her eyes moved over the stone monsters overhead, over to the corner window, her window. It was dark up there. Nobody home. She gazed up at it until her vision blurred. She swayed where she stood. Faintly, behind her, she heard children’s laughter. Two mothers were herding their costumed trick-or-treaters around the iron gates of the little park. Nancy listened to their voices wistfully. Closed her eyes. Feeling woozy again. And tired, so tired. If she could get upstairs, if she could get into her own home, onto her own bed … Oh, she would sleep for a year. The cool sheets around her body, the cool pillow under her head. The weight of her mother sitting at the foot of the mattress. Her mother singing.
She swayed backward. Nearly toppled over before she jacked her eyes open wide and steadied herself. She had to hold it together. She had to hang on if she was ever going to get inside.
The building was on the corner of Twenty-first and Lexington. The entrance was on Twenty-first, facing the park. The heavy wooden doors were open, but the doorman was there. A hard-looking Irishman. Face like a hammer, body like a fireplug. He was sitting on a three-legged stool just within the entrance. He had not moved for fifteen minutes.
Nancy lowered her eyes to him, blinking to stay awake. Maybe she should just walk up to him, she thought dreamily. Maybe she should just say, “Hi, I’m Nancy Kincaid. I was savagely murdered today and I’d really like to change my clothes. Are my folks home?”
Well, maybe not. If he didn’t recognize her—if he called the police … She did not have the heart for that anymore. She did not have the energy to escape again. Most of all, she did not have anyplace else to go.
Anyway, the doorman was going to move soon. She was almost sure of it. He had to work the elevator too. She remembered that—or at least she thought she did. If she could just stay on her feet long enough, someone would ring for him upstairs. He would have to leave his post and go fetch them.
So she waited, swaying. She could almost feel the passing time. The dark falling all around her like rain. Getting late, she thought. Getting to be eight. Can’t wait. Got a date. Got to be there for the Animal Hour, woo, woo. The flood of darkness closed around her. She could feel herself going under. Jesus, was it really only this morning that she had vanished from the face of the earth? All that running through subway tunnels, getting arrested, kneeing shrinks in the balls. Fighting with insane gunmen beneath the sidewalks. And then to realize that she was a murderer—and then to find out that she had been murdered—I mean, what a day, she thought. Her eyes fell shut again. She smiled, swaying comfortably on her feet. Feeling the goose pimples tickle her bare arms as the chill October dusk wove through the tatters of her blouse …
Then her eyes shot open. She had heard the bell inside: the elevator. She saw the doorman sigh and push off his stool to his feet. He shut the doors to the building. Through the doors’ glass panels, through their filigreed glaze, she saw him humping away across the lobby. She waited another moment, breathing heavily. Then she looked around. The children were gone. Only a vampire and his girlfriend were strolling arm in arm by the park, pausing under the old iron street lamps. She moved toward the building.
At the door, through the glass, she could see the elevator across the way. The doorman had shut himself in the old-fashioned cage, and now the door slid shut and he rose out of sight. Quickly, Nancy hiked her skirt up. Reached into her panties and pulled out the .38. She struck the thick glass panel with the gun butt. Struck it again, down at the left-hand corner. A small triangle of glass burst from the pane. She heard it fall and shatter on the lobby floor. With another glance over her shoulder, she reached through the hole and seized the doorknob. In another moment, she was inside.
Imitation gas lamps burned low, threw yellow light on the dark oak paneling around the walls. Nancy’s shadow danced on the marble tiles of the floor as she crept forward swiftly. She heard the elevator stop above somewhere. The arrow over the door pointed to the fourth floor. She heard the cage slide open. She went around the corner into a small mailroom.
Brass mailboxes lined three walls. On the fourth there was a solid metal door. Nancy pointed the gun at the doorknob. Her finger tightened on the trigger. On second thought, she reached out and tried the knob with her hand. The door opened easily. Inside there was a wooden pegboard with keys hanging from hook bolts. She lifted the key to 3K. Shut the door. Hurried back into the lobby.
She had not heard the elevator cage slide shut, but she could hear the car in motion now, descending. The arrow pointed to three, then two. Then light showed around the edges of the box. But Nancy had already crossed the lobby to the stairwell door. She pulled it open and slipped inside. As it shut behind her, she heard the elevator cage rattling open.
The adrenaline pumped through her and she climbed quickly. The rags of her blouse trailed behind her like white streamers. She gripped the key in her left hand, the gun in her right. On the third floor, she pushed the door open gingerly. She peeked out to make sure the hall was clear. Then she stepped into the hall, went with long strides toward the door at the end.
The hall lights were dim and she moved from shadow to shadow. The plush paisley carpet muffled her footsteps. She prayed that no one would open his door and spot her there. A beggar with a gun. This stench around her like a cloud.
When she reached 3K, she rang the doorbell. But she didn’t wait for an answer. She unlocked the door with her key and went in. Shut the door behind her. She leaned back heavily against the wood. Her mouth hung open with weariness. She peered into the darkened foyer, seeing nothing but a blur. She brought her hand up quickly to brush tears from the corners of her eyes. Hi, Mom, she thought. I’m home.
It was several minutes before she could move away from the door. When she did, her heart was beating rapidly. She was eager—she had not known how eager she was—to see a familiar thing. Some room she had been in. Something she had touched. A face; her mother’s face. Anything she remembered. The newsman’s sonorous drone played in her head as she came through the small foyer. It taunted her: The savage murder of Nancy Kincaid … It was ridiculous. Obviously. She was not dead. It was crazy. And yet she was, in fact, beginning to feel like a ghost. Unseen. Unknown by anyone. She ached to exist again.
She moved into the living room, the gun held down at her side. She peered steadfastly into the shadows. She could make out an aging, respectable place. A thinning rug on a wooden floor. A stolid sofa. Stalwart club chairs that looked as if they would smell of pipe smoke. Nancy’s eyes darted anxiously from one thing to another as she passed through. Butit allseemed two-dimensional in the dark. It did not seem real. She did not seem real moving through it. Her heart began to beat harder. With every step she took, she felt she was growing more ghostly, more transparent. The savage murder … The savage murder of Nancy Kincaid … Her head felt light. Christ, she was fading away, wasn’t she? None of this was familiar. She could not remember it at all.
She crossed the room and came into a hallway. Doors opened on either side and there was one door at the far end. She moved down the corridor, peeking in the rooms. Looking at the pictures and photographs on the wall. Recognizing none of it.
The savage murder of Nancy Kincaid …
“Who am I then?” she whispered into the shadows. “Who the fuck am I?”
She felt like no one as she reached the end of the hall. She felt she was fading away.
Then she looked in through that last doorway. “Oh!” she whispered. She turned on the light.
It was her room. She had found her room. The lace curtains stirring over the partly opened windows. The Degas posters on the flowery walls. The ballerina jewel
box on the white dresser, reflected in the mirror there. And snapshots wedged in the mirror’s frame. The bed was a sweet four-poster with a frilled canopy over a thick white quilt. A huge stuffed panda was propped against the headboard. She moved among all this with her lips parted, her eyes swimming. Did she remember it? Was it hers? Well, wasn’t it? Of course it was. She knew it was. A young woman’s room that looked like a teenager’s. That looked like a little girl’s, in fact. Yes. That was just her. Because she hadn’t wanted to grow up. Because she hadn’t wanted to move away. She should have found her own apartment, her own job, a job she wanted, her own life … But she didn’t care about that now. She tossed her gun down on the quilt. She took hold of one of the bedposts in her hands. She pressed against it. Rubbed her cheek against the warm curve of the wood. That was it for the outside world as far as she was concerned. She was going to live in this room for the rest of her life. Forever. She never wanted to leave. She closed her eyes and the tears overflowed them. Olly olly oxen free, she thought. Home.
It was a long while before she opened her eyes again. She gave a little laugh and sniffled. Looked around her. She let go of the bedpost and moved over to the dresser, to the mirror. She ran her eyes over the photos there. They were photos of girls mostly. Teenaged girls standing together, laughing. Arms thrown around each other’s shoulders. Girls in evening gowns with boys in tuxedos beside them. Girls making faces, clowning in costumes and thrown-together outfits: the rich dame, the motorcycle bandit, the New Orleans whore. Her eyes moved from face to smiling face and she ached, she was so hungry, to remember any of them, one of them.
But there were only phrases. Words rising to the surface of her mind like bubbles in a pond. Would you stop worrying? You look fantastic … Well, you ask him out. Guys love that … Lets just hit Columbus Avenue and shop until we die … Phrases, words, but no voices. She just could not hear the voices. She could not remember them.
Her eyes began to fill again. She glanced up at her own reflection. Whoa. She snorted. What a sight she was. Jesus. Her skin looked like the side of a submarine. Her hair … Well, I just had it dipped in shit and I can’t do a thing with it. There were scratches and streaks of black filth on her cheeks that made her lips look ashen like the lips of … well, of a corpse. She studied herself. She was almost fascinated by the disaster. And then, slowly, she smiled a little.
Ooh, she thought. Do you know what I’m going to do?
Moments later, she was stripped naked in the bathroom down the hall. She was in the shower. Catching the hot spray on her chest, letting the water run down between her breasts, over her belly. Her sense of rushing time was gone. Her sense was gone of everything except that water. On her back. In her hair. The shampoo in her hair. The foaming soap on her face, on her breasts, in the crack of her ass. The satisfaction of the black water running off her, running down the drain.
She dressed again in the bedroom, gleefully stuffing her old clothes in a little pink waste can by the window. She found fresh panties in the dresser. Wonderfully dry panties—soft where her thighs had been chafed by the others. She found a full-length mirror on the inside of the closet door, and she watched herself as she fastened her bra. She was half in love with the sheen of her own skin, pink from the heat of the water.
She pulled on some loose-fitting black jeans and a bulky gray turtleneck. She slipped her pistol into the jeans’ waist, covered the handle with the sweater. She turned this way and that, studying herself in the mirror. Dressed for travel, armed for hunting, she thought. And the reflection of herself in her clean clothes made her feel more awake, more clearheaded, than she had all day.
She pulled on a pair of sneakers and she was finished. She stood in the center of the room. She felt satisfied with herself, but she was a little at a loss as to what to do next. She had to fight back that sense of urgency that was creeping back on her now. She glanced over at the dresser. Noticed a lipstick beside the ballerina box. Ooh, she thought. She went to it. Uncapped it. A pink gloss, good for her pale skin. She leaned in close to the mirror and spread it on.
Oh, it was a luxury. She would never take makeup for granted again. Wonderful makeup. She would build a shrine to it. Lipstickhenge. She would sacrifice a lamb. Just to feel it on her lips now, to see the color come, as if she were drawing it out of herself, drawing herself out of the ashes, becoming more distinct, more real …
Her hand stopped moving. Absently, she pressed her lips together to even out the color. But her eyes had moved away from her reflection now. She had noticed something—another reflection in the glass.
It was a clock. On a table on the far side of the canopy bed. Right under the shade of a bedside lamp. She had not noticed it before. It was a small digital clock with red-light numbers. 6:27. She stood there, with the lipstick in her hand, staring at the numbers reversed in the mirror. An hour and a half, she thought. And she thought of voices down a hallway. Eight o’clock. She narrowed her eyes. Trying to remember. That long hall …
But now she noticed something else, something in front of the clock. And she thought:
We’ll have to draw him there. Bring him there at just the right time. Voices down a hallway. The hard carpet under her hands, against her cheek. The low voice at the hallway’s end. You won’t forget now. You have to be there. Eight o’clock.
She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until the air came shuddering out of her. She put the lipstick down on the dresser. She turned around, away from the mirror. What is it? she thought.
She could see it more clearly now. Lying right in front of the clock, a faint glow of red on the shiny white cover.
Oliver Perkins.
Ollie. The name murmured at the end of the hall. The name on the shiny white cover.
She moved quickly away from the dresser. Moved around the bed to the side table. The book was lying face up, the title clear in black letters. The Animal Hour and Other Poems by Oliver Perkins.
That’s him, she thought. Good God, that’s him. She picked the book up. Her hand was shaking. She began to turn the book over and she knew what she would see. The voice from down the hall was murmuring, murmuring to her. Whispering in her ear. He’s got to die at just that point, so don’t forget. Eight o’clock. The hall seemed to telescope, grow shorter and longer. The voice was in her ear, then far away, down the hall. And she turned the book …
She saw the face she knew she would. His face. Angular and sardonic. Wanting her from deep in the eyes: lonesome without knowing how lonesome, needing her love, her comfort. It was her poet: the one she had imagined. A face to turn to her in the dark, to press against her skin in the dark, against her breast …
And he’s the one, she thought. She shook her head at the photograph, thinking: He’s the one who’s going to be murdered tonight. The low voice whispering down the hall, whispering in her ear. Oliver Perkins. He’s going to be killed. He’s going to be killed at eight o’clock.
You have to be there.
She gazed down into the lovelorn face a long moment. Then she jerked back suddenly, the book falling from her hand, fluttering to the floor. She gasped, covered her mouth to keep herself from crying out.
There had been a loud, jolting noise from down the hall. The front door was opening.
Someone was coming into the apartment.
Avis was sitting in the blue dark. The rocker was gently moving. The baby was taking a few last sleepy tugs at her breast. The balloon-pattern curtains were drawn against the evening light. But around her, in the pearly outglow of a street lamp, the shapes of mobiles were visible as they swung and dangled. The shapes of stuffed animals, of cardboard mice and birds and frogs, sank into the gathering gloaming. All the colors of the room sank slowly into blue. Avis held the warm weight of her baby against herself and stared into space.
In her daydreams, she was sitting at Zachary’s bedside. He was lying there ill, gazing up at her weakly. She was running her cool fingers over his hot, damp brow. She imagined his gratef
ul face.
She knew what he looked like. She had seen his picture. Oliver had once shown her an old Polaroid of the two brothers together. Arms around each other’s shoulders. Zach’s smaller, slender body pulled to Ollie’s. His broad, shy, silly smile. She knew he had taken drugs for a while and that he had had breakdowns. And she knew he had a girlfriend whom Oliver didn’t like. In her daydreams, Zach’s girlfriend was in prison for the murder that Zachary didn’t commit. When he was acquitted at the dramatic trial (at which Avis had been the key witness) he collapsed into Avis’s arms …
Avis took a deep breath and then let it come streaming out of her. She rocked gently back and forth. The baby was slack in her arms, asleep. It was after six, maybe close to six-thirty.
The baby would sleep for at least half an hour now. She could run downstairs, Avis thought, and check on the Perkins brothers. If the baby woke up and cried, she would hear him through the window. She did not want to take the baby downstairs.
She thought about that now. Oliver would be there, she figured. He would introduce her to Zach. She had made some chicken soup with rice for Zach’s bad stomach. She would heat it up for them. “It’s no trouble,” she would say. After Oliver told her what was going on, she would say she had been too agitated to finish the horrible book she was reading. So she had made the soup instead. The soup was in a plastic container now on the counter in the kitchenette.
She stood up out of the rocking chair, cradling the baby. She stepped forward in the dark, ducking through the mobiles. She moved to the rail of the crib. Lay the baby down among his stuffed animals. She tiptoed out of the room, closing the door behind her.
She stood for a moment in the living room. The empty room with its canvas chair and its folding card table. Its un-decorated white walls and the bare white bulb in the ceiling above. Voices came in through the window. The crowd murmur from the street, and the sound of footsteps on the lane: people hurrying to see the parade. She stood for a moment, thinking. And then she decided: yes. She would go downstairs. Definitely.
The Animal Hour Page 23
