Full Stop (23 page)

The jogger persisted. ‘Do you know this guy?'

‘No.'
She lifted her head, wondering why he couldn't just do what she asked. He was middle-aged, dressed in running gear, and an odd detail lodged in her mind, the only thing she could recall about him afterwards: he was wearing wire-rimmed glasses, held on by an elastic band which passed round the back of his head.

A crowd was gathering, converging on the two prone figures, and the runner took charge. ‘Does anyone here have medical experience?'

‘I'm a nurse.' A plump, older woman pushed to the front.

‘Can you take a look at him?'

The mugger lay groaning, in obvious pain, and the nurse knelt beside him, asking him questions in a low voice. When she put her hand out, tentatively, towards the wound in his leg, someone in the crowd called out: ‘Hey, don't touch, he might have — ‘

The word AIDS hung unspoken in the air and the woman drew back her hand. Loretta wiped her eyes with her knuckles and watched the boy — he was perhaps 18, she now saw – wincing as he attempted to sit up. She could hear his teeth chattering in spite of the damp heat, an effect of shock perhaps, but no one moved, apparendy paralysed by the spectre of infection. She panicked, thinking the kid needed help even if he had tried to rob her, and began edging towards him, still too shaken to get up. He lifted his head, met her gaze with dark, anguished eyes, and she noticed for the first time that his long fair hair was tied back in a pony tail.

‘Her dog do that?' someone was demanding in a loud voice. ‘Dogs like that, they oughta be tied up. They oughta be shot.'

‘No way it's the dog's fault. Guy tried to mug her.'

Momentarily distracted, Loretta looked up. ‘Honey, where is she?'

‘I got her,' a woman called from the back of the crowd, apparently having taken over the responsibility from the man with glasses.

The boy was protesting, speaking disjointedly: ‘I'm
not
— I didn't — I couldn't stop. I only wanted to speak with her.' A spasm of pain contorted his face and he pushed away the nurse, who was ineptly trying to straighten his wounded leg. ‘Shit, no, please, it
hurts'
Still addressing her, but looking at Loretta, he said pleadingly: ‘You don't understand, she's my
Mom'

There was an excited buzz from the crowd as it recognised a new and exciting development in the drama.

‘She's your Ma, how come she don't seem to recognise you?'

‘You know the kid?'

‘I thought he tried to mug her?'

‘What'd he say? I didn't hear what he said.'

Loretta gasped: ‘His mother? I don't know what he's talking about, I was taking the dog for a walk — ‘

‘You're
British?
'

She nodded, uncomprehending.

He buried his face in his hands and said over and over again: ‘Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.'

An idea, outlandish but just within the realms of possibility, came to Loretta. She put out a hand, touching his arm very gently. ‘You thought — did you think I was Toni? Antonia?'

‘You know her?' he asked eagerly. ‘Ms Stramiello?'

She nodded.

‘You have the hair,' he explained, pointing at her head, ‘and the dog so I thought... He said she walks a big, ugly dog every morning in the park next her apartment block.'

‘Who?' she asked. ‘Who said that?'

‘What's he say?' the deaf man in the crowd said loudly. Someone snapped back: ‘Shut the fuck up, grandad.'

‘Mr Dunow. I paid him to — to find where she lived.'

Loretta was beginning to see the resemblance to Toni, the similar bone structure and hollow cheeks. His, though, were smeared with blood, and he was trembling.

‘Wait,' said Loretta, looking round for the jogger who had initially taken control. He was talking to a black man with a perfectly bald head, gesturing with his hands and laughing, but when he saw Loretta getting unsteadily to her feet, he came to help her. She asked: ‘Has someone gone to call an ambulance?'

He shrugged. ‘I guess not.'

‘Where's the nearest phone?'

‘A phone?' He considered. ‘West End Avenue and 78th, there's a little café –'

‘Please,' she said, ‘get an ambulance. He needs a doctor.'

He hesitated. ‘What about the cops? Didn't he just try and rob you?'

‘No, it was a mistake. He thought I was someone else.'

‘You sure?'

‘
Yes
. Hurry, please, he's losing blood.' At this rate, she thought, they were more likely to get a TV crew on the scene, tipped off by a resident in one of the apartment blocks that overlooked the park, than the emergency services. To her relief, the jogger said a casual ‘OK' and set off at an easy run.

‘Where's the nearest hospital?' Loretta asked, addressing an anorexically thin teenage girl. She wondered where on earth all these people had come from, drawn to the scene as though it was free Sunday-morning entertainment.

‘Dunno. Like — I live in Babylon.'

Loretta closed her eyes, unable to bear it. Someone mentioned the Roosevelt, someone else St Clair's, and an argument broke out. The nurse was questioning the boy again, asking about injections — tetanus, rabies, whether his shots were up to date. Loretta thought rabies was the least of their problems, compared to the risk of infection from Honey's saliva and loss of blood, and she crouched beside her: ‘You did say you were a nurse?'

The woman flushed. ‘I have some training, it was a while back but my brother-in-law's a dentist, couple days a week I help out in his office ...'

Loretta rolled her eyes upwards. ‘There's nothing wrong with his
teeth.
Please, leave him to me.'

The self-styled nurse withdrew and Loretta lowered herself gingerly on to the ground, taking the boy's clammy hand. ‘The ambulance'll be here soon,' she said reassuringly, wishing she knew something about first aid. His leg looked a mess but at least it wasn't gushing blood. She didn't dare move him, thinking the bone might be fractured.

‘Now what's she doing? What's going on?'

It was the deaf man again and Loretta lost her temper. ‘Why don't you all just...
go home?
' she demanded, having to restrain herself from putting it more rudely. People shifted and
complained, not hiding their disappointment that nothing much was happening, and she was relieved when they started to drift away.

‘Excuse me,' said the woman who had spoken earlier, ‘but I have your dog ...'

‘Oh, I'm sorry,' said Loretta, looking up. She felt the boy shudder and squeezed his hand. ‘Don't worry, she won't hurt you.'

The woman said sympathetically: ‘You want me to walk her till the ambulance comes?' Loretta accepted the offer gratefully.

‘Will she come see me?' Toni's son asked suddenly. ‘If they keep me in the hospital?'

In the distance, a siren wailed.

Loretta ducked the question. ‘What's your name?' she asked. ‘I've been staying in Toni's flat but I'm going home tonight, to England. I'll have to try and get hold of her before I go.' She frowned, not relishing the prospect of informing Toni, on this of all weekends, that her grown-up son had turned up out of the blue.

‘Frank,' the boy said, a bit reluctantly. ‘Frank Ryan.'

An Irish surname, Loretta thought, remembering that Toni's parents were Catholics. She was doing mental sums, working out that if the boy was 18, as she had guessed, he would have been born when Toni wasn't much more than that herself, presumably the result of a teenage romance.

‘I tried to — I wanted to go up to her apartment but those guys on the desk ... Mr Dunow, he said it was better to contact her direct. I mean, not call her up first or anything.'

The siren was getting louder.

‘Not long now,' Loretta said, and a moment later an ambulance swung on to Riverside Drive, coming to a halt against the kerb. A couple of paramedics got out, running round the back and taking out a stretcher.

‘Will she come see me?' he asked again, still holding her hand.

‘I'll have to find her first,' Loretta said evasively. She was about to say she'd come to the hospital herself, after she had
taken the dog home, but she realised it might take her some time to get hold of Toni. ‘I mean, I know where she's staying, she's in the Hamptons for the weekend.' His face fell and she added quickly: ‘She'll be home tomorrow. Where do you live?'

‘Newburgh.'

It meant nothing to Loretta and she thought she should write it down, if she could borrow a pen and some paper, but at that moment one of the para-medics touched her shoulder. ‘Are you hurt, ma'am? Do you need medical attention?'

Loretta got up stiffly. ‘No, not me.' She gestured towards the boy, Frank. ‘He's been bitten, I'm afraid my dog... It wasn't her fault, she thought he was trying — ‘

‘You have blood on your face,' the woman said matter-offactly.

‘Have I?' Loretta was puzzled for a moment, then she remembered her hands. She looked down at the palms, which were scratched and bloody. The other para-medic was kneeling beside Frank, asking him questions, something about health insurance. The woman said: ‘You a relative?'

Loretta shook her head.

She turned, spoke to her colleague, and together they began preparing the stretcher, getting ready to move Frank on to it. It was a painful manoeuvre and he cried out, but in a surprisingly short time they were wheeling him towards the ambulance.

‘Where're you taking him?' Loretta called after them.

‘The Roosevelt. Tenth and 59th.'

‘Do you have far to go?' It was the jogger, whose return Loretta had failed to notice.

She shook her head and pointed. ‘Just over there.' The woman who had volunteered to walk Honey reappeared, and Loretta took the lead from her. ‘Thanks,' she said, meaning both of them.

‘No problem,' the jogger assured her. ‘Livens up a dull morning. You want me to walk you home?'

Loretta's eyes widened and she shook her head. He lifted a hand, gave her a mock salute and loped off.

‘Miss? Is this yours?'

The dog-walker was holding out a manila envelope, A4 size.

Loretta stared at it, remembering something one of the porters had said, or written in the log-book, about the boy with the pony tail trying to deliver an envelope or package.

‘Yes,' she said, holding out her hand. ‘I mean, I'd better keep it for him.'

She took the envelope, thanked the woman again, and called Honey to heel. They left the park, using the shortest route to Riverside Drive, Loretta hurrying the dog along at an unusually fast pace which Honey seemed to enjoy, as she glanced up at Loretta from time to time and let out excited barks. It was not until they turned into 73 rd Street, yards from home, that a thought occurred to Loretta: at no point, even when she believed she was being mugged, had she entertained the idea that her attacker might be Michael Lindsay. At some point during their recent confrontation, her fear of him had entirely evaporated.

She pushed open the door into the apartment block, ushered Honey inside and headed for the lift, bracing herself for a difficult conversation with Toni.

A woman moved about a vast, empty apartment overlooking the Hudson river, preparing an elaborate meal for someone who had so far failed to arrive. From time to time she looked out at the lights on the rippling black water, reflections from the New Jersey shore, saying nothing, revealing nothing. There was no phone, very little furniture, none of the habitual detritus of everyday life — magazines, books, CDs, discarded clothes — but the apartment was described in minute detail: hairline cracks in the high ceiling, every crevice in the old-fashioned kitchen, the monstrous dead roach on the stark white bathroom floor. Dale Martineau's prose was unadorned, without rhetorical flourishes, cinematic in its method of setting a scene; more like a director, Loretta thought, closing the book and remembering that he taught film studies, than a novelist. At first the style had reminded her of Bret Easton Ellis, without the trademark violence, but as she turned the pages and nothing happened another comparison came to mind, those Sixties art movies in which someone set up a camera and left it rolling, regardless of whether there was anything to record.

The bus juddered to a halt and Loretta looked up from the novel in her lap. From Central Park West, where she got on, it had turned on to Broadway and was passing through the Theater District, familiar territory to her by now. Loretta fidgeted, wincing as her sore shoulder came into contact with the seat back, and thought how awkward it was going to be if she turned out not to like Dale's book. It wasn't holding her attention as she had hoped and she could hardly send him a note via his publisher saying how much she liked the cover — a detail of Leonardo's
cenacolo
with Jesus and two of the disciples
blanked out — without mentioning the novel itself. Loretta had begun reading it in a little Moroccan café with outdoor tables on Amsterdam Avenue, not far from the book shop where she'd bought it, propping it up against the salt cellar while she ate a plate of couscous and
merguez
sausages. She felt guilty about going out without speaking to Toni, passing on the shocking news that her son had turned up, but she had hung around in the flat for well over an hour after leaving a very insistent message on the Minister's answering-machine in Sag Harbor. Perhaps Toni and Jay were staying at his grandmother's for lunch, in which case they might not return for hours; bruised and a little faint, dreading the uncomfortable night ahead of her on the plane, Loretta had finally decided she needed a meal herself and the last thing she felt like was rooting about in Toni's fridge. Before leaving the flat she had phoned the hospital to inquire after Frank Ryan but he was still in the emergency room, pushed to the back of the queue by a serious road accident; he had been given painkillers, she was told, but a dog bite, no matter how nasty, would have to wait until the survivors — that was the word the woman used — had been attended to.