Heroic Measures

by Jill Ciment

  “You were so right, Alex. Thank God we left Dorothy at the hospital.”

  In the shadow of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, the police barricades abruptly end and the pressure is released. What had been a chute of crazed cattle now becomes an orderly herd. A man stops to straighten out his crushed dry cleaning. A woman answers her cell phone. Alex and Ruth, still holding on to each other, duck into a doorway to get their bearings and catch their breath. South of the bridge, the city looks relatively normal—stores are open, traffic is moving, albeit slowly. Overhead, the cable car from Roosevelt Island is still running, albeit with no one inside. Locking hands, they make their way south. Near the bridge, at the stone feet of its massive pillars, news vans are parked every which way, cables erupting from their interiors, antenna poles telescoping out of their roofs. Atop each pole, a satellite dish tilts heavenward. Cameramen and heavily powdered reporters surround a middle-aged woman in a torn pink parka clutching a Bed Bath & Beyond bag as if whatever it contained was priceless.

  “I was at the checkout when everyone started screaming and running,” she shouts into a thicket of microphones. Her voice is so shrill even Alex can hear her. “I got pushed on the floor and lost my glasses. Someone stepped on my coat and tore it. I forgot to get my card back and now I can’t find …”

  Before she can finish her story of loss, the cameramen pan away and focus on the bridge’s exit ramp. Alex follows their aim. The lower lanes are solid yellow. Against the bridge’s black shadows and the gray afternoon sky, the taxis look dazzling.

  “Breaking news,” announces one reporter after another, repositioning themselves before the cameras so that the bridge, with its golden vein, is now their backdrop. “The mayor has ordered all cabbies back to work. He urges New Yorkers to go about their business as usual, just avoid the Upper East Side.”

  “Just what we need, more traffic,” grumbles someone in the crowd.

  “Who would come into the city?” asks another.

  “Maybe it’s over,” ventures a third.

  The crowd suddenly fractures and people start running to catch the taxis as they pour off the bridge near Second Avenue.

  Still holding hands, Ruth and Alex hurry to catch one, too.

  • • •

  “Where to?” asks the thick-necked Ukrainian cabbie glancing in his rearview mirror at Alex and Ruth. Alex takes off his baseball cap; his white hair sticks up in disarray, like an albino tornado. Ruth yanks loose her wool scarf as if it’s strangling her.

  “Second Avenue and Third Street, please,” she tells the driver, then turns to Alex. “I told the realtor we were coming right over with our deposit.”

  “We shouldn’t give her any money until Pamir’s either caught or dead, until it’s over,” Alex says. “I’m not writing a check while the city’s under siege.” He leans forward. “St. Mark’s and Avenue A,” he tells the cabbie.

  “We could lose the apartment,” Ruth says. “You didn’t talk to the realtor, I did.” She leans forward, too. “Second and Third.”

  The cabbie turns around. His neck is so stiff and solid, it looks, to Ruth, as if only his head swivels, like a cap on a bottle.

  “Just drive downtown,” Alex tells him. “We’ll give you the address when we get closer.”

  “Look at this traffic,” the cabbie mutters, banging on the steering wheel. He guns the engine and lurches an inch closer to the stalled bumper in front of him. “How can the mayor order me back to work? Does he think he’s my commandant? Who gave him such power?”

  “Do you know what’s happening with Pamir?” Alex asks. “Can you turn on the radio?”

  “It’s broken. Last I heard he was in that Beyond place with hostages. Look at this gridlock. That TV professor of traffic was right. He warned the mayor there’d be tidal waves and floods if he ordered the cabs back.”

  “We should at least call the realtor, Alex, and tell her we’re still coming over with our deposit, we’ll just be a little late,” Ruth says.

  “What is she going to do if you don’t call her?”

  “Phone our competition and ask if they want to make a counteroffer.”

  “If the tie had come out differently, and our letter lost, would you make a counteroffer right now?”

  “What is it with this bus?” the cabbie mutters, gunning his engine and honking to no avail. The broad side of a double-decker Grey Line Tour bus now takes up the cab’s entire windshield. Ruth can count only two sightseers inside, a man and a woman. The woman is squinting uptown toward Bed Bath & Beyond, her faced pressed to the glass, her hands cupping her eyes as if she were holding binoculars. The man is asleep beside her, head back, jaw slack.

  Forty-five minutes later, despite the Ukrainian crazily changing lanes, revving in place, kissing bumpers, and relentlessly honking, the cab is only at Fourteenth Street, stuck in another swamped intersection.

  “It will be faster to walk home from here,” Alex says, paying the driver. “Can I get a receipt?”

  On the corner, in the first lit storefront they pass, a laundromat, six souls are gathered around a small television playing on the fluff ‘n’ fold counter. A massive black garment fills the screen.

  Alex opens the door. “Is that his mother?” he asks anyone who will answer.

  “Yes, she’s standing outside BB and B, talking on the phone with her son,” someone says.

  Ruth steps closer to the tiny screen to see with her bad eyes. The black garment is shaking and blurry. The angle must be from one of the news helicopters circling over the Upper East Side, shot with a telephoto lens: the fuzzy black shape keeps changing form.

  “How long has she been talking to her son?” Ruth asks.

  “They’ve shown the same clip for the last half hour. We don’t even know if Pamir’s on the line. They can’t broadcast the call because it might taint a jury later on,” says a girl with a tongue stud folding her laundry while she watches.

  The garment fades and the basset-eyed newscaster takes over the screen. “Only fifty-two percent of our viewers say they’d come out if their mother called. What do the experts think?”

  He’s turns to the double-chinned forensic psychologist from this morning. Six hours under the hot lights and her lipstick looks as if it’s melting. “The suicide bomber believes he’s doing this for his mother,” she says.

  They step outside again, keep walking south. At the corner of St. Mark’s, they dart into the magazine shop to see if the stout old counterman, who always sports a bow tie, has his radio on.

  “Anything new?” Alex asks him.

  “He still won’t talk to his mother,” says the counterman.

  They turn east toward home. Mr. Rahim, in only shirt-sleeves, is smoking in his open doorway. He smiles when he see them, delicately tamps out his cigarette, and inserts it back into the pack to smoke later.

  “What’s the latest?” Alex asks.

  “According to the forensic professor lady? Or my wife?” Mr. Rahim says. “The forensic lady believes Pamir won’t speak to his mother because he already has a foot in the next world and he’s frightened his mother’s voice might call him back. My wife thinks Pamir is too ashamed to speak to his mother. She has relatives by marriage from those same Afghanistan mountains; she says the villagers are as simple as beasts. My wife’s convinced Pamir’s on drugs: she thinks that stupid girl yesterday wasn’t his hostage; she was his dealer.”

  “What do you think?” Alex asks.

  “I think before Pamir took refuge in Bed Bath and Beyond, he had no bomb or weapons or leverage, and now he has steak knives and hostages. How’s Miss Dottie?”

  “She’s coming home tomorrow,” Ruth says.

  “You still miss your mommy and daddy?” asks the nurse, returning with a bowl of food, Dorothy’s first real meal in days. As preoccupied as her ward mates are with contributing to the barking, they also smell her food. The Mexican hairless’s high notes, already shrill, go up an octave. The pug’s bulbous black eyes practically pop
out with each yelp.

  Though Dorothy is still too despondent to have an appetite, she doesn’t want these two to get her meal. She crouches over her bowl, curls back her black lips, and bears her yellow teeth. Her threat does no good. She can sense the other dogs’ agitation fueling their appetites; anxiousness is making them ravenous.

  Lest she have to share, Dorothy forces herself to eat. She takes a small bite and chews, and as she chews, something unexpected happens. She no longer smells the other dogs, only meat; she no longer hears the barking hysteria, only herself chewing. The circumference of her bowl might as well be the whole globe; she sees nothing else. And she no longer aches for Ruth and Alex. While she’s eating, nothing else is real.

  “I’M NOT SURPRISED PAMIR IS HOLDING HIS hostages in kitchenware,” says the forensic psychologist as Alex and Ruth, shedding their overcoats, turn on their television. “Most suicide bombers target places where crowds gather for food—open markets, cafes, restaurants. Food is culture and it’s our culture they want to blow up.”

  “Try another channel,” Ruth says.

  Alex switches to the next network, Fox News, a station Ruth normally refuses to watch. This afternoon, she doesn’t say a word.

  “One tactical possibility is the lone sniper,” speculates a retired general with appallingly dyed hair. “If a sniper can crawl undetected through the air-conditioning ducts between the floors, he might get a clean shot at Pamir, without endangering the hostages.”

  “I hope Pamir isn’t watching this in the store,” Alex says.

  “I don’t think they sell TVs.”

  Alex presses ahead to the next news channel.

  “Tokyo’s market opens in less than the four minutes,” says a beautiful Singaporean with a swan-length neck. “How will world markets react to New York’s crisis?” she asks her guest, a stock analyst with a walleye who is obviously smitten by her.

  “I’m going to check the messages to see if the realtor called,” Ruth says. “She must be wondering where we are?”

  “If she called, it’s only to pressure us,” Alex calls after her as she disappears into the bedroom. “She doesn’t expect anyone to bring over a check right now.” He gets up and goes into the kitchen. All he’s had to eat today was a bran muffin. He opens the fridge—an iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and a grapefruit. He needs something more comforting. He opens the freezer—mushroom barley soup! From Fairway! He takes out the ice-hard container, opens the microwave, sets it on the lazy Susan, and presses high. The microwave hums loudly. He peers into its window and watches the soup twirl in place, like a ballerina in a music box.

  “Where are you? I left a message on your cell. Please call me as soon as you get this,” says the realtor’s dry, vexed voice on their answering machine.

  A second message plays, “The sellers are getting anxious. They want me to open the bidding again if you don’t get here in the next ten minutes.”

  Not quite sure what she’s going to tell the realtor—the truth, they’re home, or a white lie, they’re running late— Ruth reaches for the phone when it suddenly rings: she pulls back her hand as if the phone had tried to bite her.

  “The other party, the ones whose letter didn’t win the tie,” says the answering machine, “just phoned to say they’re seriously considering making a counteroffer. Call me ASAP.”

  Had the realtor simply said the other party was still interested, Ruth would have believed her, but Alex is right, no one makes a counteroffer right now.

  She waits a moment, and then dials the realtor back. “We’re still at the animal hospital. No one’s being allowed to leave. The police say it’s too dangerous. Pamir is just around the corner at Bed Bath and Beyond. We’re in the red zone,” she says, when what she really means to tell the realtor is, We haven’t sold the cow yet. We will not be pressured.

  Ruth walks into the kitchen just as the soup ends its dance.

  “Who called?” Alex asks.

  “You were so right. The realtor only wants to pressure us.”

  She takes two bowls out of the cupboard, and then looks for the ladle. In the living room, the television begins playing the fully orchestrated Breaking News theme song. It might as well be a bugle calling Alex to arms. He hurries back to his post on the sofa. Despite the martial music, the screen is as motionless as a still photograph: a long shot, probably taken from a rooftop, of an eerily empty First Avenue, save for Pamir’s mother, tiny against the cityscape, now surrounded by helmeted silhouettes acting as bodyguards. The black garment and her protectors progress at a very slow crawl up the avenue. She looks, to Alex, like a black insect with eighteen legs.

  “You think Pamir’s finally going to talk to his mother?” Ruth asks, a soup bowl in each hand. She sits beside him.

  “I think his mother wants to talk to her son in person. Those policeman appear to be leading her to him,” Alex says, taking his hot bowl and stirring his soup. He thinks he sees movement behind the store windows, though Pamir’s mother is still a good five hundred yards away from the entrance. In the army, his job had been to spot targets for snipers.

  “Do you think his mother’s going to ask him to surrender?” Ruth asks.

  “Why else would she go to him?”

  The eighteen legs suddenly stop. The bodyguards raise their shields to envelop the black garment, like a steel carapace. A ribbon of words scrolls across the screen’s bottom: The shield material is able to withstand a projectile traveling at velocities of up to 1.5 km/second. This is approximately equivalent to dropping four diesel locomotives onto an area the size of one’s fingernail.

  “What are they waiting for?” Ruth says.

  “They’re probably hoping to lure him out,” Alex says, taking his first taste of soup. Even before the spoon reaches his lips, he suspects it’s still too hot to eat, but he takes a sip anyway. He scalds his tongue, but he doesn’t lose his focus. Something is happening behind the glass. The shadows are congealing into a solid entity: Pamir must be rounding up his hostages.

  The phone rings. Without taking his eyes off the store window, no bigger than a postage stamp on the screen, he reaches for the phone with his free hand, but Ruth stops him.

  “What if it’s the realtor?” she says.

  “I’ll tell her what you told her: she should stop pestering us. We’ll bring over the deposit as soon as it’s safe go outside again,” he says.

  “I told her we were still at the animal hospital, in some kind of lockdown.”

  “Why did you lie?”

  The answering machine picks up. Ruth disappears into the bedroom to listen, while Alex remains on the sofa, watching the congealed shadow. It appears to be inching toward the store’s main entrance on a great many legs, too.

  “We’re at the beach house,” says the answering machine. “Rudolph insisted we get out of the city.”

  Ruth lifts the receiver. “May.”

  “How’s Dorothy?”

  “She’s walking. She’s coming home tomorrow.”

  “You and Alex must be so relieved.”

  “You can’t imagine.”

  “Is anything happening? Our TV isn’t working. There’s six feet of snow on the roof. Rudolph’s on the ladder right now trying to fix the cable. I told him he’d have been safer staying the city and shopping at Bed Bath and Beyond.”

  “I think Pamir’s about to give himself up. His mother is standing outside the store right now,” Ruth says.

  “Rudolph!” May shouts. “Get off the ladder and pick up the other extension. I’m on the phone with Ruth. Pamir is about to turn himself in.”

  Ruth takes the cordless back into the living room.

  “Is it the realtor?” Alex asks.

  “May. Their TV isn’t working.”

  Ruth sits beside him on the sofa and straightens her glasses. “Nothing’s happening,” she tells May. “His mother and her bodyguards are still standing in the middle of the street.”

  “Look at the window,” Alex says, pointing
to the screen.

  It’s a long shot of an empty First Avenue. There must be a thousand windows. “Which window?”

  “The one directly below the Beyond sign.”

  Ruth now sees the shadow, too. “Something’s going on in the store,” she tells May.

  The shadow slowly disappears from the window and reappears just behind the entry doors.

  “I think he’s coming out with the hostages,” Ruth tells May.

  “Or maybe he’s trading the hostages for his mother,” Alex says, picking up the living room extension.

  “What kind of trade is that?” Rudolph asks, picking up his end.

  Suddenly, glass appears to blow apart exactly where the shadow had stood. Ruth’s sure a bomb went off. “Oh my God,” she mutters before realizing that the flash of glass was only the automatic doors springing open.

  “He blew himself up?” Rudolph asks.

  “God help us,” May says.

  “No, no,” Ruth says. “Nothing’s happened.”

  The shadow begins stepping into the daylight. Ruth can now distinguish separate beings, ten terrified human shields.

  “The hostages are coming out,” she tells May and Rudolph, “but we don’t know if Pamir is hiding behind them or back in the store.”

  “What does the newscaster think?” May asks.

  “He’s quiet for once,” Ruth says.

  “He doesn’t know anymore than we do,” Alex offers.

  “When has that stopped him before?” Rudolph asks.

  Alex points to the screen as if all four of them can see it. “Pamir’s directly behind the two women in front. See how stiffly they’re walking, as if they’re on a single leash.”