The 25th Hour

by David Benioff

  ‘I’ve got to get going, Dad. I’m meeting the boys in a few minutes.’ The veal chop sits half eaten on Monty’s plate.

  ‘I’ll be there tomorrow,’ says Mr Brogan. He removes his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket.

  ‘Tomorrow? What for? I get on a bus and I’m gone.’

  ‘Forget the bus. I’ll drive you. It’ll take half as long.’

  Monty frowns, wiping his mouth with his napkin and backing his chair away from the table. ‘No, thanks, Dad. I’d rather say goodbye here.’

  Mr Brogan pulls a small photograph from his wallet and hands it to his son. ‘Take this. They’ll let you keep it.’

  Monty holds the picture carefully in his fingers. The three of them, the whole family, stand before a lavishly decorated tree. On the back, written in pencil: Christmas Eve, 1976. Monty at six, wearing yellow Mighty Mouse pajamas, holding his mother’s hand and staring at the floor. Mr Brogan remembers how they had pleaded with the boy to smile, had joked and coaxed and threatened, all to no avail.

  Mr Brogan tells the story and Monty nods, though he doesn’t remember any of it. But it hurts him to see how lovely she was, how young. Because he cannot remember her that way; he cannot remember her beautiful, only wasted and crooked on the hospital bed.

  Mr Brogan clears his throat. ‘She—;’

  ‘Don’t, Dad,’ says Monty, still looking at her face. ‘Not now.’

  Monty carefully inserts the photograph in his own wallet, lays down money for the check, stands, kisses his father on the forehead, and walks out of the restaurant. Mr Brogan closes his eyes and listens to his own breathing. He has one wife and she’s buried in Woodlawn; he has one son and he’s headed for Otisville.

  Eight

  A faceless man knocks on the door in Naturelle’s dream, but the sound is all wrong, the knocks too high-pitched, and she realizes in the seconds before waking that what she hears are Doyle’s claws clattering on the hardwood floor. A rough tongue begins licking her face and she opens her eyes.

  ‘Hey. Hey.’

  Doyle’s front paws are planted firmly on the mattress, brown eyes unblinking in his blunted face.

  ‘Come on, Doyle, get down. Down. Down, Doyle, get down.’

  He licks her face again and she tries to shove him away, but Doyle thinks she is playing and bows his head to lick her wrist. Naturelle sits up and checks the digital clock on the nightstand: 9:23. For a second she believes that morning has come, that Montgomery is gone, that she has missed everything. But outside the city is dark, as dark as the city can get. The night is waiting. And what bothers her most is the feeling that slid through her when she thought it was morning – not panic or disappointment or sadness, but relief.

  Doyle barks sharply and Naturelle stares at him guiltily, as if the dog has been reading her thoughts. ‘What?’ she asks him. But he just watches her, wagging the stump of his tail.

  ‘Now?’ She rises from the bed and walks to the window, looks out at the fat flakes of snow dropping slowly to the street. Several inches already blanket the parked cars. ‘It’s snowing,’ she tells the dog. ‘I don’t know, Doyle. It’s really coming down.’

  Doyle barks again, now standing by the closet, and Naturelle raises her hands in surrender. ‘All right, all right.’ She bends down to touch her toes and then opens the closet door and begins rummaging for her running clothes. When she steps into her tights, Doyle sprints into the living room; Naturelle hears his claws skidding on the floor, his excited breathing, his muscular little body banging into furniture.

  Ten minutes later they are jogging counterclockwise around the Central Park reservoir. The snow is falling thickly; the track is only visible for ten yards in either direction. Beyond the chain-link fence to her left is nothing but white, same for the woods to the right, a fringe of bushes and trees hedging the unknown. Naturelle wears a hooded jacket and heavy mittens. She has released Doyle’s leash and the dog runs free, now twenty feet ahead, sniffing at a clump of frozen shit, now thirty feet back, chasing a terrified squirrel through the underbrush. Naturelle knows that Montgomery would be furious if he saw his dog unleashed. ‘Give the city an excuse and they’ll fry a pit bull in butter,’ he likes to say, but it’s too exhausting running and controlling the dog. Doyle is too strong for his own good.

  She has asked Montgomery a dozen times what he plans to do with the dog, and she has never got a straight answer. Where will Doyle go? After February, which Monty already paid for, Naturelle will have to move out of their apartment, back to the Bronx with her mother for a while, until she can find a job and get a place of her own. And Mrs Rosario would never allow Doyle – or anything else that belonged to Montgomery Brogan – into her home. Doyle and Mrs Rosario met one time and hated each other: the dog, ears flattened against his skull, had snarled at her on first smell; the woman, scowling, had said, ‘Looks like he been chewed on by rats.’ And Montgomery, to make everything worse, had pointed at Mrs Rosario’s dyed hair and said, ‘It’s probably the hair. He hates anything that shade of red.’

  Naturelle’s mother had warned her about Monty, and now that she has been proven correct she wastes no opportunity to gloat. What angers Naturelle most is that her mother seems happy about the whole situation, glad that the moody white boy turned out to be the criminal she suspected. ‘I don’t know why you stay there,’ Mrs Rosario says. ‘Somebody going to come shoot that boy in the head, and shoot you too if you in the way.’ What makes her mother’s comments doubly irritating is that Naturelle has had the same thought, lying awake in the dark.

  She has always known that one day Monty would be arrested or murdered, that he would leave their bed in the morning and not return at night. She could not imagine growing old with him – she could not imagine Monty growing old at all. In her mind she tried to gray his hair, to furrow his skin with wrinkles and put a hitch in his loose stride, but the pictured Monty always shucked off these disguises and grinned at her, free and easy and relentlessly young. He was like a smart boy who has not yet learned to fake an interest in other people. He was careless with the affections of his family and friends. He had always been loved; he never had to work for love.

  So why does she stay? Often when Naturelle pictures Monty she pictures him driving, his left hand curled around the underside of the steering wheel. She remembers one time, riding with him down Second Avenue, when every light turned green at the perfect moment and they sped happily along, the fingertips of Monty’s right hand tapping the inside of her thigh in time to the music on the radio. Then, on 12th Street, a yellow cab shot through a red light and Naturelle knew they had no time to brake; she saw what was going to happen, saw their Corvette broadside the taxi, saw their hood accordion and their bodies slam forward, saw it all in an instant – except it didn’t happen. Monty accelerated and cut behind the cab, just missing its rear bumper. His fingertips never skipped a beat.

  Thirty seconds later, when she was able to speak, she said, ‘I thought we were going to die.’

  ‘The cab? I saw him coming.’ A commercial came on the air and Monty switched stations, searching until he found a song he liked.

  And that was why she loved him, because at his best he possessed more natural grace than any other man she ever met, because some days he performed miracles and didn’t even notice.

  There were nights, before all the troubles began, when Naturelle could not imagine wanting to be with anyone else. She felt important walking around with Monty. People watched them, bent their heads together, and whispered when they entered restaurants. The bouncers at most of the nightclubs in Manhattan knew Monty; they would see him approaching and nod, drape their huge arms around his shoulders, and huddle for a minute’s quiet conversation. Even when Monty did not know the bruiser working the door, he would march with Naturelle to the front of the line, announce, ‘I’m Montgomery Brogan,’ and usher her inside. Nobody ever stopped him and he never, ever, paid a cover charge. Naturelle imagined some of these bouncers probably recogniz
ed his name and knew that he always gave a generous cut to security. But other times she was sure the name itself meant nothing, it was just the way he said it: ‘I’m Montgomery Brogan.’ He knew he was getting in, and the bouncers sensed this and never stopped him.

  Naturelle hears the footfalls of another jogger approaching from behind. She glances over her shoulder: a lone man, wearing a polyurethane track suit and a ski cap. Doyle? thinks Naturelle. Where you at, boy?

  ‘Another fanatic, huh?’ says the man, slowing his pace to jog alongside her. Naturelle nods but says nothing. ‘I thought . . . I’d be the only one out here. How many laps you running?’

  ‘Three,’ she says, scouting the bushes for the black dog.

  ‘You run a good pace. You were on . . . your school’s track team, huh?’

  ‘No,’ says Naturelle, who lettered all four years in the distance events.

  ‘We’ve got this corporate challenge . . . coming up in March.’ He is puffing mightily as he runs, his words interrupted by great steamy snorts and exhalations. ‘You know . . . ten kilometers for charity . . . that whole deal. My bank gives a lot of money . . . but only if . . . only if . . . I finish the race.’

  ‘Good luck.’ Naturelle is trying to decide whether to speed up or slow down.

  ‘I work down at Shreve, Zimmer . . . investment bank.’

  Deciding that the man is about to collapse, Naturelle speeds up. ‘I have a friend who works there.’

  ‘Yeah? Whew . . . who’s that?’

  ‘Frank Slattery. You know him?’

  ‘I’ve heard some stories about that guy . . . I’m dying . . . okay, yeah . . . Frank Slattery.’

  ‘What kind of stories?’

  ‘Jesus, slow down . . . He a good friend of yours?’

  She thinks about it. ‘I guess so.’

  The man coughs into the back of his hand. ‘This is serious snow, huh?’

  ‘What kind of stories?’

  ‘You can really run. Man . . . oh, man . . . I don’t know him real well, but . . . slow down, slow down . . . whew . . . supposed to be . . . real ballbuster.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Serious hard-ass. Word is . . . goddamn me . . . word is he almost got canned today.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Nah . . . that won’t happen. He’s a star. Christ, lady . . . you’re killing me.’

  Doyle jumps out of the snowy nothingness, barking madly, his fangs glittering in the lamplight.

  ‘Whoa! Fuck me, whoa, whoa, whoa!’ The banker jumps for the chain-link fence and climbs midway up as Doyle growls below, gnashing his teeth.

  ‘Hey!’ yells Naturelle. ‘Doyle! Hey! Come over here! Doyle! Come! Here!’ Doyle finally obeys, trotting over to Naturelle’s side.

  ‘Safe?’ asks the banker.

  ‘I’m really sorry. He gets a little hyper.’

  ‘Hyper? That’s what you call it?’

  The banker drops from the fence and stands doubled over, his hands on his hips, gasping for air. Naturelle jogs in place, hoping he’s not about to have a heart attack. ‘You okay?’

  ‘That thing . . . oh, Jesus . . . that thing is yours?’

  ‘He’s my boyfriend’s.’

  ‘He’s . . .’ The man begins to laugh, still bent over the track. ‘I’ve got some luck . . . huh? The one woman I’ve met . . . outside the office in the last month, and she’s . . . got a boyfriend and a pit bull. Oh, God. Okay . . . I’m okay. A boyfriend and a pit bull. Plus, I can’t even keep up with her!’ He laughs again, looking up at Naturelle and shaking his head. ‘Sorry. I don’t get out much. They’ve got us locked in there one hundred hours a week.’

  ‘Sorry about Doyle,’ says Naturelle, turning from the man and continuing her jog.

  ‘Hey!’ he calls after her. Naturelle pivots, running backward while watching the man.

  ‘Are you Italian?’ he asks.

  Naturelle shakes her head. ‘Puerto Rican.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’ He thinks for a moment. ‘But you’re Catholic, right?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Naturelle is now fifteen yards away, Doyle by her side. The banker is disappearing in the snow.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Maria.’

  ‘Wish me luck in the race, Maria!’ he calls after her. ‘That I don’t die or something.’

  ‘Good luck!’ she yells and faces front again. ‘And you,’ she says, looking down at Doyle, ‘are a bad dog. You leave me like that again and I’ll kick your little black ass.’

  They run on through the snow, Naturelle breathing easily, her small feet beating a steady rhythm. Two years ago she ran the marathon. A beautiful day. Half the city turned out to watch her and her comrades run the five boroughs, everyone cheering for a common cause. It wasn’t a competition, that was the beauty of it. Nobody outside the professionals really cared what place they came in; finishing was the point. Coming across the Verrazano in a herd of thousands, Naturelle had felt, for the first time in her life, that she truly belonged to this city.

  In the final miles of the race, crossing 86th Street in Manhattan, she looked for Monty, who had promised to be there. No Monty. She searched the crowd for his pale face but could not find him. And as she ran she realized that he really didn’t give a shit. She had trained for five months, run sixty miles a week, and established a new diet limiting her fat and sugar intake – that was the worst part. Naturelle inherited her sweet tooth from her grandfather, who came to the Bronx as a young boy and still worked as an orderly at Mount Sinai Hospital. At least three times a day she needed her fix: black licorice, white chocolate, gummy coke bottles, peanut butter ice cream, macadamia nut cookies, coconut haystacks, truffles, candied orange peel, halvah – anything good. For five months she went without her beloved sweets, five months of the spartan life, making do with plums, figs, nectarines, and, especially, bananas. Naturelle would always sigh when she unpeeled a banana. How could anyone get excited for a banana? But she did it, she had put in the work and on the day of the marathon she was coming through, her form perfect, her wind good, her legs holding up nicely. While the man she lived with, the man who claimed to love her, slept on in their king-size bed or spoke quietly into his cell phone or watched cartoon cats and mice chase each other through yellow houses.

  She was furious at him until 81st Street, when she heard him calling her name and looked back to see him chasing after her.

  ‘Christ, didn’t you hear me calling? How many fucking Naturelles are there?’

  A clutch of onlookers standing nearby began laughing, and Monty stared at them and then smiled himself. He wore a white T-shirt and jeans; he looked like he was still in high school. They jogged shoulder by shoulder.

  ‘Here, you hungry?’ He had peeled and quartered an orange; he held three sections out to her, half mushed. ‘I ate one,’ he said. Naturelle laughed and ate them from his palm. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You’re in the home stretch. Just think: one hour and we’ll be in a hot bath. I’ll meet you in the park, right?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Shit, twenty-six miles. You’re crazy.’ He patted her on the butt and she ran on, her mouth sweet with orange juice.

  A beautiful day. Later they sat in the tub and Monty massaged her calves while she leaned back with her eyes closed. The hot water, Monty’s hands, Aretha Franklin on the radio . . . Naturelle smiles, thinking back on it, then laughs out loud when she considers what an effort it was for Monty to be sweet. He couldn’t keep it up for long. Holding her leg above the water, he ran his fingers over the Puerto Rican flag tattooed on her ankle.

  ‘Not this again,’ she muttered, preempting him.

  ‘You were born in America, you lived in America your whole life, you’ve been to Puerto Rico twice, for vacation. What is that? Should I get an Irish flag tattooed on my ass ’cause that’s where my grandparents come from?’

  ‘You don’t have any room on your ass for a tattoo.’

  ‘Oh, is that right?’ He poked her in the ribs. ‘Is that a fa
ct?’

  ‘Your skinny little white-boy ass,’ she told him, pinching his rear disdainfully.

  ‘Between you and me, our kids will be just right.’

  Monty would joke about their future children; Naturelle never did. She could not imagine Monty as a father. She could easily imagine him impregnating women, but not being a father. The image of Montgomery walking through the park with a baby riding on his back was ludicrous, impossible.

  Naturelle and Doyle finish their laps and run east from the reservoir. At Fifth Avenue she pulls the leash from her jacket pocket but Doyle slinks away. Naturelle knows what that slink means; she pulls a plastic bag from her jacket pocket and waits. She sees the tag SANE SMITH spray-painted across the base of a lamppost and remembers what Monty told her, that Sane Smith is dead, drowned in the East River.

  When Doyle squats and fouls the clean curbside snow, he avoids looking at her; he always appears a little ashamed when he does his business. Naturelle wonders if Doyle was born a bashful dog or if bashfulness was beaten into him by his old masters. To this day he cringes when a stranger extends a hand meant for petting.

  After the ritual is completed, they jog east to Lexington Avenue, where Naturelle ties Doyle to the post of a pay phone and walks into Papaya King. ‘Hey, Luis. Coconut champagne, please. Large.’

  Chewing on a straw, Naturelle sits on a stool and looks out through the glass door. Doyle waits in the snow, eyeing the passing pedestrians sadly. ‘Only a minute, Doyle,’ she whispers. Naturelle sips her sweet drink and watches the black dog shiver in the cold.

  Nine