The Animal Hour (12 page)

Perkins crossed to the far sidewalk. Went down MacDougal Street. His thoughts had come full circle now. He was thinking about Nana, about how frail she was. He was thinking about Nana dying—and then about his mother dying and how he had found her. That's just what he'd been thinking about when he left Nana's. When he walked past the blonde: that day when he found his mother, when he was fourteen years old. He remembered how he had come in from playing baseball. They had been in the house on Long Island then. He had strode through the kitchen, his bat on his shoulder. The minute he stepped through the door into the living room, he'd seen his mother on the floor. She was stretched out on her side between the sofa and the coffee table. Her short hair spilled over her cheek. Her thin arm was flung out over her head. The saucer was upside down on the rug and the cup was on its side. There was a small spurt-stain of tea on the white shag.

He remembered how that had bothered him: that stain of tea. His mother had been such a meticulous housewife. Fluttering around with her nervous hands, her frightened smile. Setting everything straight all the time. Flitting from room to room like a household spirit. Oliver had run to her where she lay. After that, after he saw she was dead, he must have gone into shock. He had simply stood up and wandered away, back into the kitchen. He had brought a sponge in from the sink. He had knelt down on the rug and washed that tea stain right out. He had rubbed it away thoroughly, his hand braced against the floor, his mother's soft hair brushing his forearm. Then, very carefully, he had sponged off the coffee table too. He had carried the teacup and saucer in to the sink. He had rinsed them out and put them in the dishwasher. He did not snap out of it until he returned to the living room. Then, he saw his little brother standing in the doorway. That brought him around. The skinny ten-year-old was staring down at their mother with his big, dark eyes. After a while, he lifted those eyes up to Ollie.

“Don't worry, Zach-man,” Oliver had said. His voice was toneless. “Go upstairs now, buddy. Don't worry.”

Zach had turned away. He had gone upstairs to his room. Oliver had knelt down next to his mother. She was a small woman, but he was only fourteen: he did not think he could lift her onto the sofa in a dignified manner. He turned her onto her back instead, right there on the rug. He arranged her arms by her side. He brushed the hair off her cheeks and forehead. Her mousy little face was turned up to him now, the eyes closed, the lips parted.

“Don't worry, Mom,” he told her softly. He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. “Don't worry anymore.”

And then he had returned to the kitchen to phone for his father and the ambulance …

That was what he had been thinking about when he came out of Nana's place, when he saw the blonde come toward him from Sixth Avenue. And he was thinking about it now again as he reached MacDougal Alley.

He paused for a moment there, at the black iron gate that barred the way. He saw the little lane stretched beyond the bars. It was a queer, quaint private alley, sealed at the far end by a high-rise wall. Cottages faced one another over the pavement, ruffled with rose ivy, shaded with red maples and yellowing ash. The sun came through the trees in patches, dappling the cottage walls.

Perkins pulled the black gate open and went in. Nana's mews was on the left. A small one, two low stories. It was brick, painted white, but there were chips in the paint where the red brick showed through. Black shutters and doors. Reddening ivy climbing up one side to the flat roof.

Nana had lived here with her husband when he was alive. And with the two boys after Mom died, after Dad declared he couldn't raise them. She had not moved out to West Twelfth until after Zachie went to college. Then she had decided she could not handle the stairs anymore, and that she wanted a doorman for deliveries and so forth. But she hung on to the mews. She'd let Zach and Oliver stay there when they came to town on visits. And after Zach's first breakdown, she let him move in and live there by himself. She was trying to sell the place now though. She felt certain that Zach was getting better. And she sure enough needed the money, with Zach's expenses and his shrink and all. Too bad the market was so lousy, Perkins thought.

He reached the front door. Knocked with his fist. It made the sidelights rattle. In the silence that followed, he could feel the emptiness of the place. He cursed Tiffany. Why had she insisted Zach was here? She must have known it would scare Nana senseless. He rooted in his pocket for his keys.

Idiot broad
, Perkins thought. He brought the key out. Unlocked the door. Pushed it open. Stepped inside.

“Christ!”

The smell hit him first. The shutters were closed downstairs and the place was in shadow. But the smell was thick; like liquid air; miasma. Wet and rotten as a sick old dog. Perkins gasped as it caught him. He took another step, came away from the door. Then the light slanted in from the alley behind him.

“Christ. Oh Christ.”

He saw the place, the big room downstairs. He saw the wooden pillars rising to the ceiling beams. The shape of them came out of the dark. Then the rest of it.

“Oh no. Oh man.”

It was a shambles. The studded leather chairs lay on their sides. The sofa was upended. The marble coffee table had been knocked off its stand, hammered to pieces on the Mexican rug.

With a curse, Perkins stepped to his left. He felt his way along the wall. Found the light switch, hit it. There was a loud pop. A spray of white sparks shot from a nearby lamp-stand, drifted to the floor. Only the chandelier went on; only one of its flame-shaped bulbs. The other lamps were all shattered, the jagged necks of the bulbs sticking up out of their sockets. The shattered glass was sprinkled among the broken marble on the rug. The rug beneath, he could see now, was burned. There were round black bits in it. One fringed corner of it had just been torn away.

Zach
, he thought. His brain had seized up for just a second, but now he remembered his brother.
Jesus.

“Zach?” he tried to call. His voice caught in his throat. He cleared it. “Zachie!” He kept walking farther and farther into the room. In past the kitchen alcove. In under the low crossbeams that went from the pillars to the ceiling. Glass crunched under his sneakers. “Hey, Zach!” This time, he managed to raise his voice. “You here? Don't fuck around, man.” He stopped to listen for an answer. He heard his heart beating. There was nothing else. The old cottage sat broken and silent. Perkins's eyes trailed over the wreckage. Over the shuttered windows. Over the littered floor to the foot of the stairs and there …

“Oh … Oh no.”

He caught his breath. He lifted his eyes from stair to stair. He gazed up toward the second story, his stomach clutching, his hands balled into fists.

“Zachie?”

It was only a whisper this time. His lips parting, he looked down at the stairs again. He looked down at the worn tan runner. At the stains on it.

The blood.

S
he was too exhausted now to think. She drove herself deeper into the subway tunnel. Deeper into the dark. The walls fell away from her. The tunnel fanned out. There were four sets of tracks before her, each curling off in a different direction. Shiny patches of steel gleamed in the light from bare bulbs overhead. Concrete pillars hulked in the shadows like giants, motionless, watching.

She stumbled on, her arms flailing. She couldn't believe herself. Could not believe she was doing this. She felt at any moment she must stop, turn around, turn herself in. The rails, the ties, the white flecks of garbage in the gravel—they blurred and blended under her feet. It all seemed unreal to her. Faraway, foggy. Even the shouts of the officers on the platform behind her seemed part of a dream. They didn't shoot or anything, there were no bullets zinging around her. Their voices just got farther and farther away, fainter and fainter.

Ahead of her now, the tunnel narrowed again. Two of the tracks peeled off to the right. The walls closed in on her. They were cement walls. They were washed in a swirl of graffiti. Writhing signatures and profanities covered every inch of stone; a snake's nest of spray paint colors. She saw it through tears as she staggered on. She saw a glow pass over the face of it, making the letters seem to twist and coil. She panted hoarsely, her tongue hanging out. The glow on the walls spread. A wind began to rise behind her, cold on her neck. It blew her hair over her cheeks.

A train …

The tracks began to quake beneath her feet. The tunnel began to rumble. The glow grew brighter now. It glared on the walls. The coiling letters danced frantically.

Train, a train is coming
…

For another second, she couldn't get her mind to take it in. It was coming. Coming from behind her. Hammering the tracks, making everything shake. Making everything glare and tilt.

My God!

She spun around. It was right on top of her. A world of thunder. A wall of wind. Two lanterns like wild eyes burning her blind. The horn screamed. Screamed in her head. She screamed back. Tried to throw herself to the side, throw herself clear. She fell. Down onto the track. Her shoulder hit the rail. She rolled onto her face, screaming, pissing, covering her head with her hands.

“No no no!”

And then it was on her. As if the sky were on stampede. That long explosion of deafening noise. The track bouncing under her. The hot sting of urine on her legs. The wind like a wave crashing onto her back.

The express.

She could feel it. It was passing. Passing to the side of her, a flashing white line. A blue spark lanced the dark above her head. She felt a sharp, sizzling burn on the back of her hand. She looked up.

And it was past. The express train. The express train on the express track, which was the track next to the local track, which was the track she was lying on. She rolled over in time to see the train's red taillights shivering off into the tunnel. The yellow rectangle of the rear window growing smaller as it pulled out of sight. The rumbling ground subsided beneath her. The noise grew distant. She lay gasping for air, giddy to be alive. The dark was quiet around her.

Gee, kids, don't try this at home.

Now she could hear the footsteps. Hard shoes on gravel. The cops had come in the tunnel. They were moving toward her. She could hear their voices growing closer.

“Jesus Christ!”

“Are you all right in there, lady?”

“They're supposed to stop the trains. These fucking people.”

“Lady?”

A moment later, she saw their flashlights. Beams sweeping back and forth, crossing each other. She saw the silhouettes behind the beams, moving forward among the pillars.

She tried to move, to stand up. Her body felt limp. Her face felt numb, as if she'd been shot with novocaine. She moved her legs and felt the damp.

Oh shit!

Oh, mortification! She'd wet herself! The idea that these cops—these men—were going to see … Oh, she wanted to shrink down to nothing.

Nancy, you …! Damn it!

She managed to climb to her feet. Stood unsteadily. She hoisted her purse strap over her shoulder. Rubbed the back of her hand. The spark had burned her there; there was a purple line in the flesh.

The cops came closer. Their flashlights picked out portions of brown tracks and white pillars. She looked around herself. She felt dizzy and weak, but her mind was clear.

She saw she was in an abandoned station. A ghost station. A platform above the tracks. Unused coils of electrical wires, bags of plaster. Those graffitied walls. Kids must have climbed in here to spray-paint the place.

“You see her?” one cop called to another. His voice echoed in the distance.

“I don't know. Hold on. I hear something.”

Right under the platform, Nancy saw, in the wall down there, at track level, there were alcoves. Low arching entranceways cut into the cement. Lightless nooks beyond them. Hiding places for subway workers, she thought. For when trains came.

Her hand went to the leather purse at her side.

“Come on out now, lady,” one of the cops called wearily. “We don't want to hurt you.”

“We want to kill you,” another cop muttered.

“Shut up.”

“Just kidding. Just kidding, lady. Come on out.”

One of the silhouettes was moving away from the others now. He was coming toward the ghost station, toward her. His flashlight beam swept the track. It stretched out toward her feet.

If I could hide the gun
…, she thought.

She touched the leather purse. Stared at the alcove in the wall.

If I could hide my purse and the gun …

Then they could not prove anything, she thought vaguely. Then they would have to let her go. She could go home. She could go see Dr. Bloom for a checkup. She could …

come back for the gun later.

Yes. She could come back for the gun when she needed it. When the time was right.