She rushed into the green, echoing fire stairs with their perpetual faint tang of incinerator smoke and took the steps three at a time. The lobby was unattended at this hour, the front door inaccessible from outside without a key. As she raced through it she hit her pocket, confirming the presence of the keychain. Good girl, you did that right.
The street was as quiet and empty as a closet in an abandoned house. She looked up, down, past the row of trees, beyond the swirling mist. The dank cold sank through her sweater. "Bob," she shouted. Her voice echoed against the blank face of the high rise across the street, which responded with a faltering echo of her cry.
Then she saw movement among the parked cars at the far end of the block. She took off, running for all she was worth, her arms flailing, her feet slapping the wet pavement. There was a thickening of shadow under a BMW parked at the curb. She leaned down. When she did she jostled the car, and its antitheft siren promptly began to warble. "Damn!"
The shadow under the car darted out into the street. It slid across the pavement and halted. The creature stood on the far sidewalk looking over its shoulder. Cindy held out her hands. "Honey, it's me." She could see him twitch his nose, and had the awful thought that even his mind might have been dissolved into the animal form. Maybe he was just and only a wolf now, here in obedience to an urge he no longer understood.
She went between the two cars, ignoring the outraged shouts coming from windows on both sides of the street. If people didn't like car sirens, they could damn well get earplugs. Manhattan is the world car-siren capital. Moving slowly, her hands open before her, she progressed toward the wary animal, which backed off as she came closer. "Bob, Bob ..."
It was a matted creature, wet and bedraggled, just like Bob would be. "Bob?"
She was almost close enough to touch him now. He put his ears back. His eyes were teared pools, swimming with fear.
For an instant her hand came into contact with his head. He crouched, drawing back, baring his teeth. Then, with a flash of his tail, he turned and dashed off.
She started to run after him, but the rain was getting harder and she was freezing cold, and she knew she could not catch him.
For a time she stood watching the dark. Then the siren wound down and the street returned to its quiet. Had it been Bob, or just another stray? Unable even to hazard a guess, she turned and went home. She slept the worried sleep of the lost.
Chapter Twelve
BOB HAD LEAPED ACROSS THE SCATTERING CROWD INTO the alley. There came an animal shriek when his fall broke against the back of one of the spectators, the one with the gun. The man never got the second shot he'd been trying for. Instead he threw his gun aside, bellowing in agony. Dark red trenches appeared in his back where Bob had accidentally dragged his claws. The man crumpled.
Bob ran the other way, soon coming to a fence at the end of the alley, cinder blocks topped by three feet of Cyclone. He raised himself up. Beyond were gardens, a pretty decorative landscape surrounding the lobby of an expensive apartment building. He climbed to the top of the fence, carefully putting one paw above the other, forcing himself to remember to control his body. Along the ground it could go like a glider, but it was not structured for acrobatics.
Behind him there was a loud cry of alarm. He saw two uniformed men sprinting toward him, heard their quick breathing, heard the clink and rustle as they withdrew their guns from their holsters.
Then they stopped. They were bracing to fire.
One paw up, then another, then the first again. He reached the top of the fence.
A click resounded in the silence. Bob knew that it was the hammer of a pistol being cocked. Then another click, and another. Bob scrabbled at the far side of the fence, seeking purchase. A shot thundered, then more shots. Hot wind passed him. One of them brought searing heat to his thigh. With all of his strength he launched himself into the darkness. He fell hard into a flower bed. The cops behind him reached the wall and started scaling it. "We got 'im now," one of them said. "That garden's not open to the street."
Hearing that, Bob almost despaired. His impulse was to lie down, to curl his tail in against his body and close his eyes. Then he saw a glass door that led into the lobby. Bob ran to it—the damned thing pushed out, not in. A thud followed by the whoosh of breath and a curse indicated that one of the cops was already over the wall. Bob worked at the door with the claws of his right paw—claws, he noticed, that had a lot of blood on them. He had hurt that poor man in the alley terribly.
"Holy shit, that thing is smart!"
Bob got the door open enough to slip through. He dashed across the slick marble floor, his claws ringing, then silent when he reached a huge Kerman rug. "Good heavens," a doorman in dark blue livery cried. "Oh Lord." He grabbed a telephone as Bob rushed out into the street. He trotted down the curved driveway, then broke into a run again, dashing toward First Avenue. He knew that Carl Shurz Park wasn't far away, but it was too small to hide him. His objective was Central Park. He could crawl down into the brushy part of the Ramble and hide, and nurse this throbbing thigh. He hoped that it wasn't just adrenaline driving him, and that there was only a graze wound.
Ahead of him another police car sped into view. It screeched to a halt at the corner of First. The doors flew open and five cops leaped out for all the world like clowns coming from a circus car. Deadly clowns, though. He could see the somber gleam of the streetlights on their pistols.
He was not a man of action. It took him time to figure out how to deal with situations like this. He kept trying to talk. Explanations clogged his mind. "Excuse me, I've had a slight accident. . . Pardon me, but I'm not nearly as dangerous as I look. . . Ah, the police at last! Could you return me to my home?" To a listener, though, his most civilized, reasonable words sounded like chilling snarls. A repertoire of barks, growls, whines, and howls was totally inadequate to the delicate clarifications his predicament demanded. And that last human vestige, the scream, didn't help a bit. It drove the ignorant to blind panic, and made even decent people vicious.
The wolf, the traditional monster, was on the loose. To live through this. Bob was going to have to concentrate completely on the situation at hand. He could not wonder at the evil miracle that had afflicted him. Right now he had to put a line of cars between himself and those police pistols. The cops would blow his heart out if they could, and mount his head on the wall of their precinct house.
Behind him an entire SWAT team appeared in the street, all running like maniacs, waving shotguns, tear-gas grenades and pistols. Regular cops were closing off the intersection ahead. He'd have to rush somebody, and he chose the street cops. On them he smelled at least a little fear. The members of the SWAT team had an unpromisingly solid odor: sour beer, gunpowder, steel. They weren't even nervous.
For all his soul was worth, he ran. The air roared around him, his ears swept back, his dewlaps parted, and wind rushed coldly past his tongue. It was exhilarating, it was like flying— right into the barrels of five pistols.
Just then, though, there was an intervention: a stocky man burst out of a building ahead. He was carrying an aged 30-30 rifle and wearing a blue bathrobe. His slippers plopped as he ran, his glasses danced on his face. "He's mine," he screamed, "he's goddamn mine!"
Bob passed right between the churning legs and the man went up into the air, his gun describing the arc of a windmill. The man hit with a soft, painful crunch. Then the rifle struck the ground and went off, its report cracking the air, the bullet ricocheting off a wall. "Goddammit, move your fat ass," one of the cops yelled.
It was like flying, or being a ghost, and Bob knew where all the flying dreams come from, those escapes of the night when we leap the houses and the fields: they come from the past, when we could truly run.
"Move! Move! Move!"
The cops were in trouble, their guns glaring straight into Bob's face, unable to shoot because of the civilian still floundering around behind him. He rushed the cops and this time his bark worked. It worked
fine: it was a thunderous, primitive bark. As a wolf he was neither clumsy nor timid.
Their faces folded and twisted, they turned away as if from something loathsome, they began to scramble back into their car. Whining, one of them worked a back window, slammed the door, pounded the lock with the heel of his hand.
Bob jumped upon the sloping shoulders of another of them and launched himself straight up like a rocket. Below him the man slammed into the ground. Bob soared up and up, glimpsing into second-story windows before he came crashing down onto the top of the car, denting it deeply.
Another jump took him to the street behind the police car. He ran full speed down the middle of First Avenue. Traffic was heavy and slow, and he found he could keep up easily. This body could run, could lope, could leap. He could not dislike it anymore, not after the past few minutes. He'd never been much of a physical specimen, not before now. This was quite wonderful! He had gotten past those cops beautifully. He was excited, elated—and then coughing, shocked by how strong the fumes of the cars smelled.
At Ninetieth Street he made a turn and trotted up the dark sidewalk. He was breathing harder, but despite his wound there was still plenty of run in him. He lolled his tongue and breathed across it fast, moving the air and spreading delightful little tendrils of coolness through his entire body. This is panting, he thought. This is how it feels to pant.
Had he been able to laugh, he would have laughed with the wonder of this new body and the exhilaration of his escape. All he did was toss his head and pull back his rather immobile lips. He did not make a sound.
A car slowed. Pale faces peered from behind rising windows. Excitement sparkled in their eyes, but when he met them they glazed with fear. The car sped off, its occupants silent, haunted. No doubt they would stop at the nearest phone to call in their sighting.
His excitement was fading. The thought of the whole mechanism of the city hunting him down was depressing in the extreme. He moved on, now slinking through fine mist. Stray dogs always seemed to huddle close to the buildings, and as he walked he felt the same vulnerability that they must. A moving shadow startled him and he dove down under the stoop of a grand old brownstone. Beyond the kitchen window he saw a woman in a silk dress and a Kenneth hairstyle talking to a maid who carried a tray of canapes. From farther up in the house there came a spill of laughing talk. How Bob would have liked to be in there among them, drinking and snacking, ready to sit down to a beautiful dinner. Smells assaulted him. They were as powerful as actual blows, these explosions of roasting duck and braising celery, of smooth, thick goose liver and saline, marine caviar. Also, he smelled wine, and the comfortable odors of bourbon and gin and whiskey, of vodka.
He leaned against the iron basement door, moaning to himself, dreaming of a nice little glass of Stoly, frosty cold from the freezer, freezing the throat and warming the heart. Then he would take a caviar canape like Communion, and when it was time for the duck, he would get a breast piquant with sauce, covered with dark, crackling skin, and he would wash it down with glass after glass of Chateau Latour '69.
There was a garbage can off in a dark comer of the understairs. It had a sticky, old-food odor. He went over, sniffed more carefully. There was bread in there among the rancidities, the old butter, the greasy gravy, the wet cigarette butts. He nosed the top of the can. Stuck tight. He pushed again. Angry frustration made him whine. This was just hell, this whole thing, and being without hands was a special hell! He stared at the can. Just like a hungry dog, he was drooling.
He made a loud sound and was astonished at himself. The whine had built into a yap. If he expected to survive much longer, he was going to have to get into control of his own noises.
His stomach tormented him with muscular heaves. Was it eating itself? He trembled. Was this how dogs felt when they were hungry? If so, food was an awful lot more important to them than it was to humans. Dogs weren't slaves to men at all; they were slaves to regular meals. There was really only one choice: he was going to have to knock the garbage can over and hope the lid flew off.
He shouldered it, which had an effect far greater than he had intended. The can seemed to leap from the floor. It smashed against the door with a ringing crash and a fountain of garbage flowed out. Another thing Bob needed to do was get used to his own strength. He had to find the measure of himself, but not now, not when he was standing amid coffee grounds, butts, rotten fruit, bread soaked in vinegar, soy sauce, and sour milk, and a bag of Almost Home peanut-butter-chip cookies that had somehow gotten covered with what smelled like liquid Wisk. Was this to be dinner?
Then he noticed the cold cuts. There were slices of Hungarian salami with little spots of white mold on them: these he gobbled up, chewing slowly, letting the rich saltiness fill his muzzle, closing his eyes with delight. The presence of the food in his mouth banished all reserve. Now he gobbled wet bread, tore into the cookies and damn the Wisk, ate some mushy grapes and a piece of fiercely hard Parmesan slopped in peach yogurt.
It was while he was breaking up the Parmesan with his powerful jaws that he noticed that the lights had come on and the door was open. The elegant woman stood there. "Oh, Mary, a goddamn dog has broken into the garbage." She stamped her foot. "Tell Jake to get down here and get it cleaned up. Honestly, I'm going to have to get a lock for that can."
Bob was backing away when he heard quick footsteps in the street behind him. He had lingered too long on this block. He should have run like a maniac the moment that carload of people recognized him. But the food ... he was so hungry he wasn't thinking straight.
The woman waved her hands at him, shouted "shoo, shoo!" A man in blue workclothes came hurrying out of the house. "Jake, I want this cleaned up, and I want poison put out from now on."
"Yes, ma'am."
"This neighborhood is overrun. I don't know— what in the world?"
Two cops were running up the street. The homeowner shrank back into her kitchen. The cops stopped when they saw Bob, who was still at tempting a retreat to the sidewalk. He was trapped between the police and the woman. He did not like the feeling of being trapped, did not like it at all. A surge of raw terror coursed through him.
He turned away from the cops—into the sight of the iron understair door being pulled closed. Without even thinking about it, he dashed through that door into the hallway. The elegant woman cursed, Jake blurted an automatic "Sorry, ma'am!" and the two cops came rushing in.
"It's the wolf," one of them yelled. "Take cover!"
You would have thought he was a neutron bomb with four legs and a tail. A glance back revealed the woman, her eyes popping out of her head, Jake cowering behind her, and the two cops, their own faces carnival masks of horror.
If only he could talk! "This is all so silly," he would say. "I'm about the least offensive person you could meet. Ten-year-old muggers practice on me."
At the top of the stairs was a butler's pantry. He went through, hoping that he would find a hallway, but instead he walked into the middle of the party. "I didn't know you had a dog," a woman shrilled.
"I don't," the hostess bleated.
The guns began to follow Bob as he leaped around the room, upended the coffee table, turned over a couch, caused an explosion of ashes out of the fireplace.
Then he saw the street beyond the front window, silent and free. There was no time even to consider. He ran for that window, his feet scrabbling maddeningly on the highly polished floor. Then he leaped, his tail whirling, his paws grabbing air, and sailed out through a cascade of leaded glass. Behind him alarms started clanging. Shapes darted back and forth behind the broken window.
Bob left it all behind, running as fast as he possibly could. For once the police made a slight error; the backup teams came roaring around the corner from Madison. Had they been smart, they would have gone down Fifth, knowing that they would head him off on his way to the park.
He might be able to run like the wind, but his thigh hurt when he did it. Without the anesthesia of desperation,
the wound was getting painful.
When he at last reached the park, it took almost all of his remaining strength to leap over the rock wall. He fell down the other side, landing with a soft thud in a mat of moist leaves, and another world.
Suddenly there was silence, there were smells that seemed to penetrate instantly to the core of his soul, smells that he remembered from some childhood, perhaps his own, perhaps that of the wolf, or all childhood. His body urged him to burrow down into the redolent leaves, but his mind demanded more of him, that he get deeper into the park. He was about at Ninety-second Street: travel due west would soon bring him into the thickest part of the Ramble. He pulled himself to his feet, yelping a little at the spikes of pain that came from his thigh.
Movement in the park was much different from movement on the streets. It was a lot better, a whole lot better. There seemed to be a sort of electricity between his paws and the ground, and the air was tightly packed with odors that he could almost understand.
There came to him the weighted thought that we must have known the world from this perspective before Eden, before we climbed down from the trees. He tossed his head. When he saw them, his heart leaped toward the towers that shone on all four sides of the park. He looked toward the rich far windows of Central Park West and yearned as he had at Kissinger's party for the hiss of luxury.
He was passing the baseball diamonds now and turning in to the Ramble. As he moved he noticed one odor that stood out above all the others and gave him greater alarm than had the police or even the pound employees. It was a musk, deep and tart. What did it mean? Here it rose from a bush, there it covered a patch of browning leaves. He found the bones of a bird and gnawed them, but they were too dry to be of any use. Deep in the Ramble, down in the dark where roots tangled like ropes of distressed muscle, he moved swiftly and silently along. He passed a derelict sleeping under a bench. Then he smelled that odd smell again, so strongly that it stopped his easy slithering through the undergrowth.
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