He crawled toward the door, leaving a trail of red handprints on the floor. He spat, and one of his teeth clattered on the linoleum. Then he collapsed, facedown.
He didn’t move.
He still didn’t move.
Blood seeped from his nose, forming a little red speech bubble on the floor.
He still didn’t move.
Sirens screamed in the distance.
I was afraid to look away, afraid he would spring back to life. I found the phone under the couch. I lifted the receiver to my ear. Dial tone. 9-1-1.
I took in the room. Cushions on the floor. Broken glass. Ashes. Bloodstains. Carmen under the table, her breath a shaky rasp. The Rooster Man’s body. His tooth on the linoleum tile.
I crawled over to Carmen and felt her pulse, slow and weak. I rubbed my knuckles over her breastbone. She didn’t move.
“Oh Carmen.” I lifted her chin and tilted her head back. I pinched her nostrils together and sealed my lips over her mouth. I breathed into her.
I’d watched Carmen take care of Atti. This is what she taught me: to look deeply into a person’s eyes, to feel for the blood moving through their veins, to listen to their breath while they are still here, still breathing. To see, hear, and feel as a matter of life and death. Like Dad, with his stethoscope.
She had taught me all this, but had I learned it well enough?
Outside the rooster crowed, a dog howled, and the banshee wailed, on her way. I sealed my lips to Carmen’s and breathed.
29 THE FAMOUS ASTRID
That’s how I became the famous Astrid.
The police arrived, and three ambulances, and we were all taken to Bellevue. I got stitches over my eye and was told I had a slight concussion. In the morning, two police detectives visited me. They asked me a lot of questions about what I was doing out alone in the middle of the night, how I’d found Miss Dietz in the park, how I’d ended up living in an apartment belonging to a convicted felon, and how I knew William Dankow. How he had gotten into the apartment. How he’d ended up unconscious on my kitchen floor.
It sounded like they were accusing me of something, but they said, No, they just had to ask all these questions. Don’t worry, they said.
I told them everything I knew. “Is he alive?” I asked.
Yes, with a severe concussion, they said. The doctors were confident he’d be able to stand trial. He’s done a lot of bad things, they told me—really bad—and they’d been looking for him for a long time. They thanked me for stopping him. Then they handed me a copy of that morning’s Post and said, “You’re a hero. A heroine? Anyway, you’re famous.”
The front page headline screamed PSYCHO AND THE PSYCHIC! over a picture of the Rooster Man posing in the park, grinning mirthlessly under his beard, with Fritz on his shoulder. The caption: “William Dankow, Cannibal Killer of Tompkins Square Park.” In the lower right corner was an inset photo of me—a paparazzi shot from Andreas Fischer’s party. “Beaten up by a girl!”
According to the press, the police had been looking for William Dankow, known locally as “the Rooster Man,” in connection with a cooler full of bleached bones that had turned up near the East River, and with the disappearance of multiple young women, including his sometime girlfriend, Katinka Gelfors, a ballet student from Switzerland. They’d found her skull in a locker at Port Authority, buried in a bucket filled with cat litter. He’d killed her, chopped up her body, and boiled her remains to make a soup that he served to homeless people in the park. A soup that included—in a detail that sent a wave of nausea through me—potatoes, as well as, one witness claimed (more nausea), a human finger.
“When you’re ready, there are a lot of reporters out there who want to talk to you,” one detective said. They left, giving me a thumbs-up.
A nurse came in to take my temperature. I asked, for the hundredth time, about Carmen. The nurse said she’d check. They kept saying that, but I couldn’t get an answer.
“Can I see her?”
“Not yet. She’s in intensive care on another floor. We want to keep you under observation for one more day. Tomorrow.”
“What about the reporters?”
“You’re not ready for that. I sent them away.”
* * *
My mother arrived just before dinner. She looked at my face and burst into tears. I let her hug me, then sat awkwardly waiting for her to stop crying. She’s not a big weeper, so when she cries, it means something.
She hugged me for a long time, then dried her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“I told you I was. I sent you those postcards.”
“Phoebe. For heaven’s sake.”
Visiting hours ended, but Mom stayed. The hospital grew quiet. A nurse checked on me, telling me to get some sleep, but I wasn’t sleepy. Mom sat up with me for a while. She studied the photos of me in the papers, the turban, the sunglasses.
“Why ‘Astrid’?” she said, then, “Wait—I know why. Pippi Longstocking.”
“Correct,” I said, both pleased and annoyed. She didn’t know everything about me. But she knew some things.
I itched for a cigarette. I felt around in my jacket pocket—the Mitch jacket—and found a pack, but I didn’t have a match. I looked at Mom. She frowned.
“I might have some matches somewhere.” She dug through her purse until she found a book of matches and tossed them onto the bed. “This doesn’t mean I approve.” I lit a cigarette. She went into the bathroom and returned with a paper cup half full of water. Then she took a cigarette from my pack and lit it, settling into her chair. She dropped the match into the water and set the cup on the night table between us.
“Mom, whatever happened to Danny Washburn?”
“Who?”
“You know, Dad’s old friend Danny Washburn? The one who really knew how to live?”
“Oh, him.” Mom nodded. “He died of alcoholism in nineteen seventy-two.”
I watched our reflections in the window, blurry against the velvety black outside.
“Remember, when you were three, you used to copy everything I did? You had that toy vacuum cleaner, and you’d follow me all over the house, vacuuming.”
“I don’t really remember that,” I said, mildly horrified. “I remember the Bark Button.”
“You were always asking your dad to lift you up so you could press the Bark Button.”
I imitated Snookie. “Ra-ra-rarararararah!”
“He had such an annoying bark. You thought it was funny.”
“So did Dad.”
We smoked.
“Poor Snookie,” Mom said.
I shuddered. “Yeah, poor Snookie.”
“He lived a good longish life.”
“Till you stuffed him in the freezer.”
“It was a heat wave. Do I have to explain that again?” She tapped a tube of ash into the cup.
We smoked some more. I told her that I’d seen Dad’s ghost, more than once, in Tompkins Square Park. I described him, the way he was dressed, the way he beckoned to me. “Do you ever see him?”
“No,” she said. “But then, you were always his favorite.”
The door opened and the night nurse burst in, waving her hand in front of her face. “What do you think you’re doing? Put those cigarettes out before the fire alarm goes off.”
“Sorry.” I doused my cig in the paper cup. It went out with a pzzt. Mom dropped hers in too.
“Don’t do it again, or I’ll have to ask you to leave,” the nurse said to Mom, as if Mom were a bad influence on me. She crossed the room, cracked open the window, and bustled out.
“Whoops,” Mom said. “Let’s try to sleep.”
She fixed my covers for me and settled in her chair with her coat over her for a blanket. We were quiet for a few minutes. Then she said, “You know what the worst part was? For me.”
“What?” I asked warily.
“I couldn’t picture you in my mind. I didn’t know where you were, so I couldn’t comfort myself by ima
gining what you were doing.”
“Oh.” That’s when I felt it, the weight of what I had done. Because not knowing where Carmen was had given me that same unmoored feeling. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
She closed her eyes. “Tomorrow I need to see your apartment, so I can picture you there.”
“It’s kind of a mess.” I imagined her walking into the kitchen as I’d left it, grim and bloody, a crime scene, and worried it would scare her.
“If it’s messy, we’ll clean it up.”
* * *
In the morning, after I checked out, they let me visit Carmen at last. Mom wanted to come but I asked her to wait for me in the hospital lobby.
They’d just moved her out of the ICU. She was awake and sitting up in her bed, a tray of barely touched toast and eggs, sunny-side up, on the table.
“Hey look, it’s Mitch,” she said sourly. I realized I was still wearing her jacket. I took it off and draped it over the chair beside her bed.
“You could have come back to get it,” I said.
“I was busy.” She refused to meet my eyes. She was so thin, her cheeks had caved in, carving even deeper angles into her face. Her thick auburn hair stuck out around her head in all directions, shorter than I’d ever seen it, as if someone had chopped it off with a hatchet.
“What were you doing?”
“Looking for Atti.”
“Where? I searched all over downtown for you.”
“Everywhere.” She picked up her fork and stabbed it into a slice of toast. The fork balanced on its tines and then tipped over with a clank. “I told you, he was the only person I could count on. It was true.”
“It’s not true. You can count on me.”
“Really. The facts tell another story.”
“I know they do. But it’s true. You can count on me. Now. Now you can.”
She freed the fork from the slice of toast and poked its tines into an egg yolk, which bled over the plate.
“I thought I’d proved it to you,” I said. “I tried to help you the way you always helped Atti. I learned it all from you.”
“Are you waiting for me to say thank you for saving my life? Okay, Phoebe. Thank you. Except I don’t mean it. Because before I woke up in this hospital bed, I saw him. I almost found him. I could be with him again, right now, if you hadn’t saved my life.”
I sat down. I swallowed. It took effort.
I’d been so eager to see her, I hadn’t expected that she’d still be mad at me. Even madder than before.
“When are you getting out of the hospital?”
“I don’t know yet. They’re making me go back to the Humph.”
“How long?”
“Six weeks, maybe two months.”
“I’ll visit you every week. I’ll bring you those cakes from De Robertis, and People magazine and chocolates and anything you want.”
She didn’t say anything. To fill the silence I sang, “I’ll give you fish, I’ll give you candy…”
“ ‘Give Me Back My Man’? Tactful.”
“I’ll change the words to ‘give me back… something else.’ ”
“You can’t change the words. The words are the words.”
A nurse interrupted, saying Carmen needed to finish her breakfast and rest.
“I’ll visit you,” I repeated. “And when you get out, come live with me.”
She didn’t look up, didn’t reply. She hadn’t looked at me the whole time I was in the room.
* * *
The lock on the street door was still broken. As we walked up to the third floor, Mom took in the smeared walls, the cracked tiles, the chicken bone on the stairs, the skeleton of a broken umbrella in a corner, the smell of cabbage and pot. I spotted something shiny on the second floor landing and picked it up. A stethoscope.
“That’s funny,” I said.
“I don’t think it’s so strange,” Mom said. “There’s a chicken bone. There’s an umbrella. Why not a stethoscope?”
When we reached my door I couldn’t open it. The key didn’t work. We went back downstairs and I found a note in my mailbox from Mrs. Lisiewicz. She’d changed the locks. I knocked on her door. She smiled at my mother and handed me a new set of keys. She asked how I was feeling and said I didn’t look too bad, considering.
I still had the stethoscope in my hand. “I found this on the stairs,” I said.
Mrs. Lisiewicz took it and handled it as if it were a dead snake, fascinating and a little disgusting. “The ambulance men must have dropped it this morning.”
“This morning? You mean yesterday morning.”
“No. This morning.”
“What happened this morning?”
“Miss Kulish had a heart attack.”
“Miss Kulish?” I didn’t know who that was.
Mrs. Lisiewicz hugged the stethoscope to her chest, miming the old lady with the clock. “ ‘What time is it?’ ”
“Oh, no. Did she die?”
“Not yet. But she won’t be back. She can’t live on her own no more.” She shook her head. “There have been many ambulances lately.” She passed the stethoscope back to me. “You keep it.”
The new key opened the door. I braced myself, but Mrs. L. had cleaned up the place and fed the cats. She’d stocked the kitchen with cans of tuna, some kind of Polish cheese, some Oreos, and lots of crackers: Ritz crackers, graham crackers, Triscuits, Goldfish. She’d left a vase of bodega daisies, dyed blue, on the kitchen table. She’d even made the bed. The apartment looked nicer than I’d ever seen it. Julio and Diego greeted us calmly, rubbing against my calves, tails happy and alert, as if nothing bad had ever happened here.
Mom toured the two rooms like a prospective renter. “It gets a nice amount of sun.” She noticed the bat, clean and polished and propped up in a corner near the couch. She picked it up, spun it around to the autograph, kissed it, and put it back in its place.
The light on my answering machine was blinking. I had fifteen messages.
“Ms. Hayes, this is Tom Garvin, I’m a reporter for the New York Post, and I’d like to speak to you as soon as possible. Call me back at…”
“I’m calling from the New York Times. We’d like to interview you about your encounter with William Dankow today, if we could…”
“Hey. Phoebe. I heard what happened.” Jem. “I hope you’re okay. Hope Carmen is okay too. I was thinking, remember that night we bumped into each other outside the park? Maybe the guy who was following you was the killer! Gives me chills to think about it. Anyway, give me a call, let’s get together.”
“Who’s that?” Mom asked.
“Nobody.”
There were more messages from magazines and newspapers and TV shows, asking for interviews. Then, the last message:
“Phoebe, it’s Wes. Listen, let’s rethink your Astrid column. You’re getting a lot of attention, you’re a national hero, I think it would be a hit. We could syndicate it, and you’d make some money. Give me a call when you can. Oh—and—I’m sure you’re fielding a lot of requests for interviews. I can help you with that. Call me.”
“What’s that about?” Mom asked.
“This advice column I’m trying to write.”
I waited for her to say that I could write a column from anywhere, from home if I had to, home where I’d be safe, where there were no cannibal killers or junkies or nightclubs and where, after last night—she had made a onetime exception for last night, under special circumstances—I wouldn’t be allowed to smoke either. I waited for her to say that so I could tell her she was wrong—the column was about New York, so I had to stay here, and nothing she could say would make me go home anyway.
But all she said was, “I think you’ll be good at it.”
We were hungry, so I took her to lunch at Odessa. She went home on the three o’clock train.
30 VISITATION
Carmen gets out of rehab today.
I tried to visit her that first week at Humphrey-Worth. It’s in Tarrytown. I rea
d Carmen’s copy of Edie on the train. There was a photo insert with a picture of beautiful teenage Edie in her room at Silver Hill, lying on a bed, laughing and kicking her graceful legs in the air as if it were the most delightful place in the world. I almost envied Carmen. The Humph was supposed to be just as country-club posh as Silver Hill.
I arrived at the start of visiting hours. The place was impressive, a brick Victorian mansion surrounded by newer buildings and set on acres of fields and woods, like a small women’s college. I checked in at the front desk and was asked if I was a member of Carmen’s immediate family. No, I said, and the clerk frowned. “No visitors other than family,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Can I just see her for a minute to say hello?”
The clerk shook her head. “These are the rules.”
“But I came all the way from the city.”
“Sorry.”
I glanced around as if there might be a way for me to sneak inside. But that was ridiculous.
“Will you tell her that I came to see her?”
“You may send her a letter if you like.”
Frustrated, I turned to go. Len and Betsy opened the door, bringing chilly air in with them.
“Phoebe. What are you doing here?” Len’s posture was uncharacteristically stiff.
“I didn’t realize only family members are allowed,” I said. “I just wanted to see her and sit with her.”
They glared at me, jaws tight. “You have a lot of nerve,” Betsy muttered. Then, with great control, Len said, “I hope you’re well, Phoebe. Goodbye.” They pushed past me to the desk. I was momentarily paralyzed by the surprise of seeing them and the change in their manner toward me. Clearly I was no longer Carmen’s sweet, trustworthy friend. My face flushed with shame and I hurried out.
I caught a taxi back to the train station, where I paced the platform, fuming at the Dietzes’ coldness. It wasn’t fair. I’d saved their daughter’s life.
When the train arrived, I settled in a seat and lost myself again in the tragedy of Edie Sedgwick. Twenty-eight years of money, drugs, loneliness, and fame; exciting and glamorous and terribly sad. I couldn’t separate the glamorous threads from the sad ones. They twined and fed on each other, the glamour impossible without the sadness, and the sadness heightened by the glamour. Toward the end, the book got a little boring: Edie left New York, and the story’s energy drained away. She moved back to California and got married, still zonked on pills. One night she swallowed her barbiturates as usual and went to sleep. Her husband found her dead beside him in the morning.
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