Nobody Lives Forever

by Edna Buchanan

  Wings flapped nearby—a pigeon, startling them both.

  “Don’t come closer!” the desperate voice croaked.

  “I have to,” he said, knowing he did not. This certainly was in no job description or departmental manual. Police brass would surely criticize this, as they do anything outside of textbook behavior. Sometimes you have to go with your gut feeling. Sometimes it’s wrong.

  The old man stared. “I wanna die,” he whimpered.

  “You’ll feel different in the morning. Everything always looks better once the sun comes up.”

  “No. Leave me alone.”

  “You know what somebody looks like when they fall or jump from this height? The skull shatters, it splits open like an egg.”

  The old man seemed unshaken.

  “What if you change your mind on the way down? After it’s too late? What if you don’t get killed, just crippled, and you have to live with that?”

  The man in the flimsy hospital gown fixed watery eyes on a dark and misty horizon. Rick slipped his handcuffs from his belt and snapped one around his right wrist. He reached out slowly and clicked the other ring around the old man’s hairy left wrist, next to his plastic hospital bracelet. At the sound, the old man swayed slightly, as though about to fall or leap.

  Rick shuddered and held his breath. “Hold it. Take it easy.”

  He heard muffled curses and frantic radio transmission from the room behind him.

  “What’d you do that for?” the old man said.

  Rick breathed again, heart pounding. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But I do know one thing, I don’t have the key with me. Wherever we go now, buddy, it’s you and me.”

  “Why?” The old man arched his neck, and they made eye contact for the first time. “You could get killed. You shouldn’t have come out here. I want to die.”

  “Well, I don’t. And I don’t believe you really do, either. Anybody you want to talk to? We can get them here fast.”

  “Nobody who cares.” His shriveled face puckered in self-pity and his eyes leaked tears. The wind lashed at their knees, flapping his hospital gown like a sheet on a clothesline.

  “I care, Al. I have somebody who cares for me. I think you do too.”

  The old man tried to wipe his runny nose on the sleeve of his hospital gown, but the handcuff caught his arm in midair.

  “Let’s go back inside, have a cup of coffee and talk about it.”

  “I can’t.” The old man quaked. “My legs are numb. I … I’m dizzy.”

  Jesus Christ, Rick thought, not now. Down below, police cars, flashing lights. The fire department’s yellow life pack was out there somewhere, on the way, mounted like a giant Mattel toy atop a speeding fire rescue truck. Rick had seen firefighters leap like stuntmen into the big cushiony yellow balloon five stories below during training exercises. He remembered feeling a strong sense of relief that he was not a fireman.

  The wind seemed stronger now, a high note sounding in his head. His handcuffed wrist jerked as the old man teetered. Rick braced, trying to hold him taut, back against the building, with his cuffed hand. “Take deep breaths and let them out slow. Slow. Now take a couple of small steps this way. Small ones. Careful. I’ll help you balance.”

  “I’m scared,” the old man whimpered.

  “So am I, Al. You have to help me out. I’m thirty-six years old. I’m gonna get married. Her name is Laurel. We’re about to set the date. I forgot to tell you about that.”

  “Tying the knot?”

  “That’s right. I love her, Al, and she needs me. Help me get to go on the honeymoon. Come on, now, little steps. Sidestep. Sidestep. One, two. One, two. That’s it. Our own chorus line—but no high kicks, Al.” The bare feet crab-stepped, then faltered. The old man stared at the gathering traffic and upturned faces in the pools of light below.

  “You think they got TV cameras down there?”

  “Nah, reporters would be yelling ‘jump.’ Let’s not give anybody a thrill. You married, Al?”

  “Why do you think I’m out here?”

  “Atta boy. You still got your sense of humor, you’re okay. Let’s go back inside where it’s warm. Just a couple more steps.”

  “I can’t. How can we get back in the window?”

  “We got out, we can get in. Don’t sweat it.” Rick reached the window, grasping the inside frame with his left hand, as the old man minced cautiously toward him. “Okay, Al. Put one foot back inside. Careful now. Somebody will help you. I’ll follow you in.”

  Rick glimpsed Jim’s nearly bald head at the window, heard heavy breathing and realized it was his own.

  The old man extended his bare foot. The wrinkled sole, black with grime, groped uncertainly in the air for a moment. Jim caught it solidly by the ankle. Dusty reached up and wrapped her arms around the old man’s waist. A smattering of applause and cheers rose from the police, fire and hospital personnel gathered below. Jim and Dusty were slowly lowering him into the room when the old man suddenly flailed both arms. The cuffs yanked Rick’s right arm and his feet flew out from under him.

  He spun in midair, clawing at the sill with his free hand. The sounds below turned to a something like a sigh, then shouts of alarm.

  Dusty, Jim and a uniform clung to the old man, who bellowed as his shoulder wrenched out of the socket and his feet shot toward the ceiling. The grunts and gasps sounded like a wrestling match as they grappled to hold onto the frail body. “Don’t let go!” Dusty panted.

  “Somebody get a rope!” Jim yelled. “A sheet, anything!” People milled in confusion and panic at the door behind them.

  The old man screamed as the cuff bit into his wrist with all the force of Rick’s weight at the other end.

  Rick saw dark sky and the sheer, clifflike facade of the building. His legs climbed empty space, feet searching for something solid that was not there.

  The pain in his right arm was excruciating. His left hand slipped from the sill, but Jim caught his wrist. A good solid catch. Rick heard the sound, flesh on flesh, like a slap.

  Two men were holding on to Al. Dusty took Rick’s right arm above the elbow with both hands, and she and Jim heaved together. Rick hurtled over the sill and everybody fell to the floor in a panting, cursing, tangled heap.

  Tears shone in Dusty’s eyes, but she never cried.

  “You son of a bitch,” Jim got to his feet, growling. “Don’t you ever do that again.” His voice was tough, but his hands shook and he sat down heavily on the narrow hospital bed.

  Dusty bit at her lip and winced at the pulpy purple flesh around Rick’s right wrist as she unlocked the cuffs. “Okay,” she said lightly, trying to sound piqued. “I give up, what were you trying to do out there? Give everybody a major coronary?” The tremor in her voice gave her away.

  Albert was rolled swiftly away, strapped to a gurney, moaning and grasping his injured shoulder. Rick still sat on the floor, looking dazed. A hospital orderly and Dusty tried to help him stand. He shook them off and got up slowly on his own. “Oh, no.” He looked down at his clothes. “I ruined my good shirt.”

  Dusty held Rick’s coat and gun while Aileen cut away the remainder of the shirt in the emergency room, preparing to take him to X ray. “Like old times, isn’t it?” the nurse said cheerfully. “Remember the time you fell off your motorcycle?”

  “I didn’t fall off,” he protested, gingerly examining his wrist. “It skidded on a patch of oil when I was chasing a suspect in a stolen car.”

  “Sure,” she said. “And the time you fell off the DuPont Building?”

  “I knew there was some reason I didn’t like heights,” he remembered. “I didn’t fall off. The fire escape broke under me while I was chasing a suspect.”

  “Sure. And remember this one?” Smiling, she tickled an old crescent-shaped scar an inch below his collarbone.

  “I always wondered about that one,” Dusty said, without thinking. “How did it happen?”


  “Knife,” Aileen said, raising an eyebrow. “That was the time he finally caught a suspect he was chasing.”

  “That’ll teach him,” Dusty said. The two women exchanged knowing glances, acknowledging what each had shared with this man.

  “You’re ganging up,” Rick complained. He rubbed his forearm and winced, oblivious to the moment. “Nobody’s even read me my rights.”

  “So how come you never broke this wedding shit to me?” Jim demanded as they climbed into the car. “Setting the date, huh? You shoot your mouth off to a stranger, but your partners are the last to know?”

  “I would have said anything to keep that old man from showing me his trick high-diving act.” Rick looked sheepish. His arm, not broken, rested in a sling. “I just wanted to connect with him.”

  “Sounds like wishful thinking to me,” Jim said.

  “You never know,” Rick said cheerfully. “Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.”

  Dusty, in the back seat, said nothing.

  Twenty-One

  Rick’s injury frightened Laurel to tears, but she quickly snapped back and coped well, filling the house with cut flowers, morning glories, sea lavender and scarlet sage from the yard. Their fragrances mingled with mouthwatering aromas from the kitchen. She cosseted and babied him, announcing that her special egg custard would cure any hurt. It slid down his throat silky smooth, sweet and creamy.

  He thought he was sated until a primitive drumbeat began to throb from the stereo speakers. She paraded proudly and seductively into the bedroom in four-inch-high stiletto heels he had never seen her wear before. Her lips and fingernails gleamed blood-red and she no longer seemed shy and modest, as she often was, about exposing her breasts. In fact, she had rubbed the nipples with something that glistened. All she wore with the spike heels was a yellow hibiscus behind her left ear and a pair of his boxer shorts—and something clinking beneath the shorts, a surprise. A St. Valentine’s Day joke, a novelty gift to her when they were first dating—a chain-and-metal chastity belt. Medieval knights supposedly had locked their ladies into such contraptions before riding off to the crusades. Vicious little metal teeth ringing the opening were designed to inflict severe damage to any member daring to enter. He had felt guilty at the time because the gift embarrassed her. She didn’t even seem to know what it was for. Now she did.

  Role-playing again. God, he loved it. Swinging her hips, calling herself Marilyn, teasing him unmercifully into finding the hidden key. She was even hot to play sex games with his gun. He took it from her as she moistened the barrel.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” he warned. “This is no plaything. Too many people get hurt in games with these. I go to too many scenes where ‘unloaded’ guns went off.”

  She curled her blood-red lips and pouted. He grinned. “It would be too embarrassing to explain how the family jewels got shot off,” he told her.

  She giggled. “We could unload it.”

  “Christ, it’s loaded? I thought you already emptied it.” The discovery nearly cost him his erection, but not quite. She tossed her bright hair back over her naked shoulders and wet her lips. “I thought you liked living dangerously.”

  “What a wacky broad, I love it,” he said, unloading the gun. He slid the weapon under the bed and dropped the bullets onto the carpet beside it. “Come here, you,” he said, reaching for her. “I’ll show you how dangerous I can be.”

  He awoke and saw that the room had been straightened as he slept. He heard the shirring of the juicer, smelled sausage and coffee and padded barefoot into the kitchen. She was already dressed, wearing an eyelet-trimmed apron and mixing batter. It struck him that she had even changed her nail color since last night. “I squeezed the orange juice,” she said, smiling. “Ready for waffles?”

  “Do you know what an amazing woman you are?” He nuzzled her warm neck. It smelled like vanilla.

  He sat at the table, drank juice and coffee and repeated the lies he’d used to lure Albert back from the ledge. She turned from the mixing bowl and studied his face, her expression grave. “Were you putting the old man on, Rick, or do you really have marriage on your mind?”

  The coffee was excellent, the sun streamed in the windows and the room around him glowed. A good day to be alive. “Jim said it sounded like wishful thinking.”

  She smiled and resumed mixing, holding his eyes in her gaze. “Is it?”

  He had come close to being killed out on that ledge, though he would never admit it aloud. Cheating death stirs certain emotions about life.

  “I do want kids,” he said matter-of-factly. “Christ, some of the guys my age already have teenagers…”

  Her gasp interrupted. She had scorched her fingers on the waffle iron. She looked dazed, then examined her blistering skin. “I’ll get some butter,” she said, wincing.

  “Wait, didn’t you say the other day that aloe is best for burns? I thought you put some in the refrigerator. Didn’t you, babe?”

  No answer. Instead, she was staring at the kitchen clock, the ersatz coffeepot perking away, high on the wall above the sink. “That must be fast,” she whispered.

  “Nope.” He consulted his watch. “Right on the button. Keeps perfect time.” He found the aloe, wrapped and neatly labeled, in the vegetable storage bin next to the avocados and summer squash. He sliced a chunk from the fleshy leaf and smeared her fingers with the sticky juice. The burn did not appear serious, but it must be painful, he thought. Her eyes were misty.

  “Nothing I said, was it?” he teased. She looked wary, as though she had no idea what he was talking about. “I mention wedding bells and kids and you put your hand in the waffle iron. I guess it’s a better sign than if you stuck your head in the oven.”

  “Oh, Rick!” She threw herself into his arms and hugged him tight, voice quaking with emotion. “I think we should get married right away. I need you so much.” She was crying.

  “Hold on,” he said, startled. “We don’t want to do anything hasty. All I mean is that it’s probably time to start thinking about where this relationship is headed.” He kissed the burned fingers. “Feel better, babe?” She nodded and said nothing. She looked pale. Small wonder, he thought. They certainly had not slept much. She seemed withdrawn, almost frightened. She should take some time to get used to the idea. Actually, he thought, so should he. He now felt a bit scared himself. How the heck did this happen? Somehow he had stepped in it without intending to, almost committing before knowing he was ready. He was usually more cautious. He felt uneasy without knowing why.

  Her moods, both dark and light, came and went like quicksilver. A hour later she was bustling in the kitchen again, humming as she worked.

  Twenty-Two

  She insisted on shaving Rick the next day in deference to his injured arm, still stiff and sore. “You don’t need your good right arm as long as you have me,” she said.

  “You sure you know how to do this?”

  “Of course,” she said confidently. She wiped her hands on her apron and tucked the towel around his neck like a bib. “I shaved my father a few times after he got shaky and couldn’t do it himself—and he survived.”

  She sat Rick on a low kitchen stool near the sink, his face wrapped in a hot towel. Perched on a higher stool behind him, she was able to wrap her bare legs around his middle as she worked.

  He had brought his shaving cream and safety razor in from the master bathroom, but she ignored them. A straightedge razor and a natural bristle shaving brush with a marble handle were laid out on one of her thirsty 100 percent cotton kitchen towels next to a steaming hot bowl of water.

  “Where’d you get them?”

  “I’ve used them before. I’m old-fashioned. I think they do the best job.”

  He relaxed against her soft body and let her play the role of barber as she brushed warm lather onto his face. He enjoyed being babied. “I hope that thing is sharp enough.”

  “I keep everything very sharp.”
Delicately, she picked up the razor. “There’s nothing worse than a dull blade.”

  He closed his eyes as she began on the right side of his face, stroking against the stubble. She seemed to know what she was doing.

  “You know, Rick,” she said, as she skimmed the blade clean on the edge of the bowl. “I think we need a fence, a privacy fence, between our yard and the Singers.”

  “Why?” he grunted, trying not to move.

  She went on carefully scraping his upper lip. “I know that Ben and Beth are your friends. But as the poet says, good fences make good neighbors.”

  He grunted questioningly again.

  “Before their cat disappeared, it was always sniffing around over here. Now they’re talking about a puppy for Benjie. The boy won’t even stay in his own yard.” She sounded exasperated. “He’s tramped through my impatiens, and I found a toy shovel in my herb garden. We don’t tolerate anybody mucking about in what we work so hard to grow. He has no business over here uninvited.” The razor rang against the rim of the bowl with the clear sound of a small bell.

  “He’s just a little kid, honey. How much damage can he do? Someday my kids will be playing in the yard, and it won’t make much difference.” He felt her legs tighten around his midsection. “I thought you liked Benjie. He’s just doing what kids do, babe. They mess up, spit up, break things.” He grinned until he felt the blade on his face again.

  She tilted his chin up firmly and drew the razor along his throat. Her legs clasped him so tightly, knees wedged into his ribs, ankles locked around his solar plexus, that he was uncomfortable. He had never realized how muscular her legs were. This was not such a good idea after all. “Easy,” he muttered from between his teeth, wanting to stand up and escape, but afraid to make a sudden move with the blade still at his throat.