Kissing the Wind

by A. E. Hotchner

  “Can you recall your emotions when they raised you up to the aerial platform high above the ground and you saw no safety net below?”

  “At first I thought it was a bluff to scare me, but when I felt that push on my back that catapulted me off the platform into open space, I screamed and felt the certainty of death.”

  “So this was not the muted reaction you had to the replicated people?”

  “Yes. I was totally absorbed in the trapeze. I had surrendered my identity. I was there in that underground city—no matter that there was no such city or people or trapeze—I bought it hook, line, and sinker. So is that my fate?”

  “Perhaps it would help you if I shared with you the syndrome incidents my patients have accepted into their everyday lives.” He opened his notebook. “Patient one: a giant blue and gray moth, bigger than a 747, comes flapping at her, the wings big enough to suffocate her, and at the last second the moth elevates over her head and zooms off, leaving her collapsed on the ground from her fright. Patient two: dead of night, band of grotesquely clothed men infiltrates her bedroom wall and while whistling settles down on her bed, staring closely into her face, causing her to dive under the covers, and by the time she finally emerges two hours later they have disappeared. Patient three: ‘It was a bright moonlit night, I was sitting in my garden when a huge herd of buffalo came roaring through the fence, headed my way. I did not try to run, just froze, and the beasts split around me. Despite knowing they were unreal syndrome buffalo, I still feared they’d trample me, and I covered my face with my arms.’ Patient four: can see pages of music with complete scores, notes, clefs, accents, rests, but when she tried to play them it turned out they were complete fakes, unplayable, and made no musical sense whatsoever.

  “Like you, these people must live with their Bonnet syndrome, as do many others like them, although the syndrome threatens to intrude into their normal lives and diminish them. But unlike you, they no longer try to combat them. They have accommodated them in their lives, and that’s what you must do to get the most out of your life now. You can’t do anything to stop syndrome kids from showing up for television. You can do something about your attitude, and by accepting them, you may discourage them from appearing at all—or at least as often. None of my patients have been subjected to personal assaults the way you have. You can only hope that events as physical as being trapped in that crate and flying through the air cease to be the norm.”

  “God knows, do I. You once mentioned there was a medicine that worked somewhat on a patient and I thought I should try it; what have I got to lose?”

  “Why not? However, none of my patients were helped—although one got better for a short while—and a few complained of side effects.” He started to write out a prescription. “It’s called quetiapine.” He tore a page off his pad and gave it to me. “It may slow things down a bit. I really think you will only help yourself if you can change your attitude and stop trying to resist the forces of the Bonnet syndrome.”

  * * *

  —

  The first order of business had to be giving up my single practice and bringing in a new attorney to backstop me. I visited Shirley Fiske, an old friend from law school who had gone on to become the dean at Cardozo law school, to ask her if she might suggest a young lawyer who would be a fit for my practice. She happened to have recently been visited by a former student who had gone to Paris after graduation to get a PhD in French literature and now, four years later, was back and wanting to know if she might be aware of a law firm where she might find an interesting opening.

  “She’d be perfect for you, Chet: graduated second in her class, article editor of our law journal, fine personality. What do you say?”

  “I’d certainly like to meet her.”

  “She left me her phone number…” She fished around in a desk drawer until she located it. “Yes, Lois Lowell, yes, here you are. She’s the first in her Georgia family to go to university. I would have put her on the faculty if I had the opening.”

  I had lunch with Lois at the Trattoria Dell’Arte, and she was everything and more than Shirley had proffered. We settled on the details of her affiliation before espresso arrived, and she came back with me to the office. I planned to tell her about my Bonnet syndrome, but, I decided, another time. I was, in a sense, self-conscious about my condition, and I didn’t feel like putting myself on exhibit. It made me feel, well, I guess you’d say “damaged,” not able to maintain myself. Not a good perch for a boss to occupy.

  Lois exuded self-confidence. She seemed genuinely pleased with the nature of my practice, now hers, and she thrust herself into learning as much about the intimate aspects of how the publishing business intersected with the law as she could.

  With this addition of another qualified lawyer to back me up, I felt less vulnerable to syndrome interference. To further solidify my existence under the syndrome threat, I had alarms installed in both my New York apartment and my Connecticut cottage. The syndrome activities at night had become more insistent and penetrating and depressing. There were times in the pitch-dark quiet of the silent night when the syndrome activity suddenly erupted and fear rode up my chest. To have a button that connected me to the local police was reassuring, if only to be used with severe restraint.

  I did eventually inform Lois about my syndrome, and her youthful reaction was, “If it was me, I’d concentrate on what about them I could find positive and good for a laugh.”

  “If only it would be as simple as that. I just want you to know because I may need you to cover for me if the occasion arises.”

  “I plan to research this Bonnet syndrome and learn as much as I can about it. I’ll discuss it with you along the way.”

  “I’d rather not, Lois. The more I talk about it, the more it frazzles me. But, yes, I hope you do read up on it.”

  * * *

  —

  In the weeks that followed I did my damnedest not to be negative toward whatever the syndrome unleashed, but I wasn’t very good at it. I was constantly trying to devise methods to turn away the assailers. I moved my furniture around in my New York apartment, blocking the area where the children would crowd around to watch television. When the road in Connecticut was invariably beset with all those medieval buildings and dilapidated neighborhoods only seen by me, I’d shut my eyes and try not to be irritated by looking at them. But even with my eyes shut, the syndromers managed to throw repulsive visions into my brain.

  But for the most part I made myself go along with the indignations hurled at me. Three strutting pigeons on the balcony of my New York apartment turned into three dancing squirrels when I went out on the balcony, then the squirrels turned into three large rats that ran around chasing each other before floating off the balcony and disappearing into the sky. Another time, vines thick with sunflowers began to entwine themselves all over the balcony and choke the view when I was sitting in a chair.

  When I was in my New York apartment, syndrome activity was incessant. Geraniums would fill the bathtub, but when I got in, there were no plants, though the impression of the plants would appear on my body. One night I awoke with a start to find three hideous faces looking into mine, barbarous faces of villainous men, snarling, ferocious, bloody. I howled and pulled the covers over my head, blocking out the sight of them. I continued my protesting with my eyes covered and yearned for a panic button on the headboard that would give me a sense of protection but that I would probably never give in to.

  And so it went. However I tried, I couldn’t make any real headway toward reforming my attitude toward the constant syndrome obscenities. To be awakened from a deep sleep with the ghoulish faces of three fiends hanging over you, peering into your eyes, is not conducive to saying, “Hiya, chaps, glad to see you.”

  I tried to induce myself to start writing a new addition to my detective series but I still hadn’t regained my ability to—ouch—see things
from Honeywell’s perspective.

  At least my practice was running smoothly enough. While I was still at a loss for how to prepare for trial in the Tee case, the intrusions had not affected my legal judgment and therefore my clients could still rely upon me to offer sagacious pearls of legal wisdom, such as “Don’t put Mickey Mouse on your book cover if you don’t want Disney to sue you.” Lois had avidly devoted herself to studying and taking courses in copyright, defamation, right of publicity, and all the rest of what I call “publication law.” She had an enchanting personality and worked well with some of the journalists who were my clients. I would sometimes brave lunch with Lois, and she handled the annoying vicissitudes of my syndrome assaults with ease.

  As Doc Brevoro had predicted, the quetiapine, like all the other attempted remedies, had no effect on the stings of the syndrome thrown at me. I tried to maintain the optimism he counseled was necessary to thrive beneath the yoke of the Bonnet, but I found myself nagged by a perceptible decline in my enjoyment of the overall life I was now living, focused as it was entirely around a disease that accepts no cure.

  chapter eleven

  The one constant that had always served me well was my deep friendship with Charlie. Aware of my gradual withdrawal from social activity, he made sure we dined often, especially in the country, and that we had lunch every Wednesday in New York. When we lunched alone he always made a point of talking about my fears and despondencies. He did it in such a fraternal way that I looked forward to the times I could see him and discharge some of my troubles and menacing thoughts into his safekeeping, helping me back to a positive attitude.

  So it was on my way to have my weekly lunch with Charlie at Mykonos that I found myself on the corner of Fifty-Ninth and Madison, waiting—not without anxiety, considering past syndrome visits—for the “Walk” light to appear. About a dozen of us were pressed close together as we stepped off the curb and hurried to beat the countdown. However, halfway across, a woman walking beside me stumbled. To keep from falling, she grabbed my sleeve. Instinctively, I tried to help her, but she pitched forward, ripping my sleeve from my suit coat as she fell forcefully onto the road, striking her head. Blood started to run down her face as she lay motionless, unconscious, my sleeve clasped in one of her hands. For a moment I was unsure whether any of this was real, but then two men and a woman broke away from the crowd and stayed with me to help wave off the oncoming cars and buses. The woman called 911. The two men wanted to move the fallen woman out of the traffic and to the sidewalk, but I told them that with a head injury we’d better leave her as she was until the ambulance arrived. New York drivers being what they are, they jockeyed each other as close as possible to us, on top of which there were bicycles, buses, trucks, pedicabs, electric scooters, and God knows what else threatening us in a decidedly unballetic fashion. One of the men was wearing a topcoat, and he took it off and covered the stricken woman with it. As far as I could tell she was a rather well-dressed, attractive young woman, but I was too occupied with the unruly traffic to actually concentrate on her.

  An ambulance from Lenox Hill Hospital, its siren clearing the way, parked diagonally in front of us, blocking off the immediate traffic. A squad car with two cops pulled up and funneled all traffic into a single lane until the unconscious woman could be removed. The ambulance driver and the technician inside first attended to the woman’s bleeding forehead, and when it was stanched, they brought a stretcher from the ambulance and very carefully wrapped a neck brace around her throat and straightened out her body. They slowly edged her onto the stretcher and took her into the ambulance. One of the police came over to me.

  “You with the woman?”

  “No. We were in a group crossing and she grabbed on to my sleeve to keep from falling.”

  “Then you don’t know her?”

  “No, not at all.”

  He asked the other two men and the woman, but they didn’t know her either.

  He came back to me. “You see her handbag?”

  “I think I did, lying on the ground over there when she first fell.”

  “But you didn’t pick it up?”

  “No. Too busy with the traffic.”

  “Well, it’s not here. You mind coming to the hospital? We’ve got to fill out a report, and we need your statement.”

  The ambulance attendants had carried the woman from the street and into the ambulance and secured her. I took off my one-armed suit coat and got in the ambulance with the attendant. The driver closed the back doors on his way to the driver’s seat and put the ambulance in motion along with its siren. The squad car led the way to the hospital, its own siren going full blast.

  The attendant covered the woman with a blanket. He picked up a phone that hung on the side of the ambulance and dialed a number. “Emergency Department,” he said, and told someone his ambulance, number thirty-six, was bringing in an unconscious woman with bleeding head trauma.

  When we arrived at the hospital there was a team waiting for her, headed by the chief emergency physician. The woman was still unconscious. New dressings were applied to her forehead, which had not completely stopped bleeding. Another doctor appeared, identified on his white jacket as Dr. E. R. MacIntire, Neurology. He examined the woman’s forehead and raised her eyelids to inspect her eyes.

  “Did she fall on her head?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “in the street.”

  “All right, let’s get a quick CAT scan. There may be internal bleeding in the brain. Let’s step on it.”

  The cop came to get my statement about what had happened. I asked him about the woman’s identity.

  “Don’t have it,” he said. “We’ve searched the corner wire baskets for her purse, but it’s not there. Snatchers usually pocket the money, throw the handbag away. Not this time. Hopefully she’ll come out of it soon and then we can ask her.”

  I went into the emergency waiting room and called Charlie on my cell to explain why I had missed lunch, and apologized.

  “Well, at last a girl finally fell for you.”

  “She’s a mystery girl.”

  “How so?”

  “Someone stole her handbag after she fell and there’s no way to identify her.”

  “Expensive shoes and dress?”

  “No, not really.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Couldn’t tell. Her hair was sort of stuck to her face, plus the bandage and some street dirt.”

  “Well, don’t worry, someone will report her missing—always do.”

  “I hope she keeps my sleeve, that was a favorite suit.”

  * * *

  —

  I had a very busy afternoon working with an editor who was questioning the way some people were depicted in a book he was publishing—the autobiography of a Hall of Fame baseball superstar who had a scurvy side to him and had depicted some people in a potentially libelous manner.

  It was seven o’clock when we finally, with Lois’s help, finished, and as I was locking up I found myself thinking about the nameless woman and her fate. That she had grabbed my sleeve somehow in a funny way tied our fates, so I took a cab to Lenox Hill to see how she was doing (and, incidentally, to retrieve my sleeve).

  I intercepted an obliging nurse who was on the way out of the ER. She said there had been no change in the woman’s condition—that she had not regained consciousness and no one had shown up to identify her.

  The following day I stopped by the hospital on my way home from lunch with a client, and this time I fortunately saw Dr. MacIntire in the corridor.

  “She is still unconscious but not showing any of the usual causes, like a fracture or swelling of the brain or anything else that we can identify. You don’t know who she is, do you?”

  “No, just happened to be there when she fell.”

  “And no one was with her?”

/>   “No one I saw.”

  “I can tell you all her vital signs are relatively normal. We’ve taken her off everything—hasn’t seemed to make any difference. And all the things we’ve done to restore consciousness also seem to have had no effect on her.”

  I left again, curiosity and anxiety unabated. I was much more concerned about this mystery woman than I should have been. Why? Maybe it was that when she started to fall and clutched at me, I failed to grab her and keep her from falling—a far-fetched justification for a peculiar kind of guilt I couldn’t explain.

  chapter twelve

  On the third day of the mystery woman’s incarceration, I again went to the hospital to check on her status and to my surprise found that she was no longer in the Emergency Department. I checked at the information desk and discovered that she had been moved to a step-down unit, which meant that she had improved, probably regained consciousness.

  When I reached her location, there was a man in a black suit with a briefcase talking loudly to a woman, obviously my mystery woman, who was in bed. Her forehead was bandaged and she wore a heavy hospital robe. She was conscious.

  “Madame,” the man was saying, “just sign this permission for me to represent you against the city and I guarantee you from a hundred thou on up. I’m very well connected at city hall.”

  He was thrusting a pen with a document at her.

  The woman said, “No.”

  I stepped into the room and approached the man. “Who are you?”

  He proffered me his embossed card: Harlan Fitzheimer, and underneath that, Attorney at Law.

  “I can get a hundred thou for a fall with a bruise, a hundred fifty on up if there’s blood. This one plus unconscious can easy go double.”