The Animal Hour (22 page)

The phone shrieked wildly. She pulled her foot free. Grabbed hold of a chair for support as she stepped over him. She was at the door. With one hand on the knob, she palmed the letter opener in the other. Blade up along the wrist, handle hidden in the hand. Then she cracked the door open. Peeked her head out.

The hall was empty for the moment. She could see down it into the narrow room beyond. The slumped figures in the plastic chairs. Three nurses gathered at the far end. The cop—she couldn't see him from here, but she knew he was there: the cop and the metal detector at the entranceway.

“Someone help …,” Dr. Schoenfeld murmured. She heard him shift on the floor behind her.

Shit!

She had to get somebody's attention—fast. She peered feverishly at the cluster of nurses.

And a door opened. She brought her head around. It was one of the doors down the hall. It opened and someone came backing out. A broad white wall of a someone.

Mrs. Anderson.

“All right, Doctor,” Nancy heard her say. “I'll bring that right to you.”

The squat black woman backed into the hall, shutting the door as she came.

“Mrs. Anderson,” Nancy hissed.

But the nurse didn't hear her. She turned away from her. Started walking away, down to the end of the hall. Nancy watched helplessly: the wide stride of her elephant legs, the swing of her black-sausage arms.

“Mrs. Anderson!”

The nurse stopped.

The phone in the office breeped again. “Oh Jesus,” Dr. Schoenfeld said from the floor. His voice was getting louder.

Mrs. Anderson glanced over her shoulder, puzzled. Had someone called her? Yes: she spotted Nancy. Her big brown face went stony, her eyes narrowed.

“Mrs. Anderson! Hurry!” Nancy gestured toward the office with her head. “It's Dr. Schoenfeld. Hurry. Please.”

Mrs. Anderson didn't think twice. She came down the hall like a locomotive, her fat arms pistoning. In a moment, she was at Nancy's side, blotting out everything behind that monumental face.

“What's happening, honey? What's the matter?”

“I don't know. Dr. Schoenfeld …”

And right on cue, the doctor moaned loudly: “Oh God, somebody …”

Nancy jumped back out of the way as Mrs. Anderson charged across the threshold. The nurse stopped short as she saw the wounded doctor. She stood in all her massiveness, looking down at him.

Behind her, Nancy quietly shut the door.

The phone squealed. Mrs. Anderson knelt down beside Dr. Schoenfeld.

Nancy stepped up in back of her. She grabbed a handful of her hair.

“Ah …!” said Mrs. Anderson.

Nancy yanked her head back. She pressed the blade of the opener against her throat.

“I can kill you with this. Don't be stupid.” The words sounded strange in her small voice.

“Help me …” The doctor had rolled onto his side again. He was lifting his head. Trying to push himself up out of his own blood.

Mrs. Anderson's head was all the way back. Her face was toward the ceiling. Her mouth was forced open. Nancy felt her stiff, lacquered hair tugging against her fist. She was trying to nod, to acquiesce.

“Good,” Nancy whispered. The nurse winced as she tightened her grip.

Dr. Schoenfeld shifted again. He lifted his arm, reaching blindly for purchase. His hand fell on the overturned chair. He grabbed hold of it. Started to pull himself up.

“Phone,” he gasped. The phone answered shrilly.

“You're going to walk me out of here,” Nancy whispered to the nurse.

Mrs. Anderson tried to shake her head. Nancy held her hair tightly. “Can't do it,” Mrs. Anderson managed to say. “HP—the hospital police.”

“I don't care. You have to do it. You have to do it or you'll die. Now stand up.”

She yanked on Mrs. Anderson's hair. The big woman put her arms out for balance. She got hold of the edge of the desk. She braced herself as she worked her legs under her.

Right beside them in the tiny room, Dr. Schoenfeld was now trying to scale the overturned chair. Slowly, he was climbing over it toward his desk. The phone breeped, its light blinking. Schoenfeld forced his eyes open wider at the sound.

Nancy got Mrs. Anderson to her feet. She still had a grip on her hair, still had her head pulled back and the opener at her throat. She pressed her own back against the doctor's desk. Dr. Schoenfeld was next to her, pulling himself onto the desk, dragging himself toward the phone.

“Listen,” said Nancy breathlessly. She held her mouth close to Mrs. Anderson's ear. “Listen: I'm sick.”

“I know that, honey,” Mrs. Anderson said. “But we can help you, truly we can …”

“Shut up. Damn it. I don't mean that. I mean, we're going to pretend that I'm sick. You're going to hold me and help me walk. Put your arm around me. You're going to walk me out of here.”

“We can't just—”

“Shut up. Just shut up. I mean it.”

Bureep. Bureep.
Dr. Schoenfeld stretched out his arm. “Phone,” he gasped. He stretched his fingers toward the phone. He touched the base of it. “Phone …”

With a quick snap, trip-hammer hard, Nancy drove her fist down, drove the handle of the letter opener into Schoenfeld's temple.

Mrs. Anderson cried out. Dr. Schoenfeld dropped—a marionette with cut strings. Hands flailing, legs limp, he collapsed onto the overturned chair. Tumbled off it onto the floor again. He lay still, unconscious, wheezing quietly.

And the letter opener's blade was back at Mrs. Anderson's throat before she could blink. Her whole body had gone rigid. Any notion of escape was gone.

Good
, Nancy thought. “All right,” she said softly. She brought the opener down from Mrs. Anderson's throat to her side. She dug the point into her ribs. “There's your heart. You're a nurse. You know.”

“I know,” said Mrs. Anderson.

“I go in and twist and you're dead before you hit the floor.”

“Okay. I hear ya.”

Is this any way for Daddy's little button to …?

“Shut. Up!”
Nancy barked.

“I didn't say anything!”

“I'm not talking to you!”

“Oh. Okay.” Mrs. Anderson did not seem reassured.

Nancy shut her eyes, tried to steady herself. The phone—couldn't they call back later?—it sliced into her. She was busy, for Christ's sake!

Her voice came out in whispered spurts. “All right. You hold me. Okay? Hold me like this.” She let go of Mrs. Anderson's hair. She squeezed around in front of her, between her and the doctor's body. She pressed herself against the nurse's front, against her breasts. Clutched her uniform with her free hand. She kept the opener to Mrs. Anderson's ribs, hidden under her own body. “Hold me against you. Now!”

Slowly, cautiously, the nurse put her big right arm around Nancy's shoulder. She pressed Nancy's head into her bosom.

“Remember the knife,” Nancy said.

“It won't slip my mind, honey, believe me.”

“Good. Now we go out the door, down the hall to the exit. Right past the cop.”

“I gotcha.”

Mrs. Anderson started walking, holding Nancy to her breast. A step to the door.

“Open it.”

Nancy felt the nurse hesitate, only for a moment. Then she felt her shift, reach. Heard the door click open. She clung to the front of the big woman, held there securely by the powerful brown arm. They moved together out into the hall.

“Close the door.”

She heard the door click shut.

“Now move,” she said.

They started toward the narrow waiting room. Mrs. Anderson was no fool. She moved at a swift but stately pace. Nancy moaned into her shirtfront for effect.

“O-o-o-oh …”

“There, there, honey,” Mrs. Anderson said. She played it just right. Patted Nancy's shoulder. “We gonna get you up to the ER, you gonna be just fine.” It was perfect.

They came out of the corridor into the waiting room. A row of distorted faces stared from the white walls. Nancy pressed against the big nurse. She smelled her smell; a musty Negro smell. Sweat and laundry detergent and some smooth, flowery skin lotion—Jergens, possibly. Nancy closed her eyes. Such a deep liquid pool of breasts under the cool linen. She moaned again.

“There, there, honey,” Mrs. Anderson murmured. Her voice was warm and deep, like bathwater. Nancy gave a little whisper of pleasure as she pressed deeper into her softness.
I'm sorry
, she thought.
I was a teenager and I was angry and crazy and I'm so sorry.
It made no sense but the words came to her anyway.
So sorry, sorry …

“You got a problem there?”

A man's baritone, right beside them. Nancy's eyes snapped open. They had reached the wooden gateway, the metal detector. Nancy could see only the white field of the nurse's uniform. Blurry stares from the maniacs' gallery just beyond. But she sensed the cop was standing behind her. She dug the blade into Mama Anderson's side.

“Everything's fine,” the nurse said. Casual but authoritative. “Doctor wants her upstairs for tests.”

And the baritone of the cop: “You want me to call for escort?”

Nancy moaned.

“Yes, yes, there, there,” said Mrs. Anderson, patting her. “No thanks,” she said to the officer, “we'll be fine.”

And that was it. They were moving again. Under the wooden canopy. Into the …

The metal detector! Nancy tensed against the great bosom. The metal detector: Would it pick up the opener, the brass blade?

But they were already through. The metal detector had not made a sound and they were already out the doorway. Twisting her head a little, Nancy saw the white hall. They were in the long white entrance hall where she had been brought in. Dragged in, screaming.

Mrs. Anderson released her. “All right,” she said. “Go on then, if you're going.”

There was a pause—a moment before Nancy pulled herself away from the nurse's musty depths. Then she straightened. Looked down the corridor toward the door at the end. The door had a glass pane. She could see the daylight through it. The concrete bay where the cop car had parked. Oh, she could almost smell the cool, the free, the open autumn air.

She glanced back gratefully at Mrs. Anderson. At the granite dignity of the round brown face. “Go on,” the nurse said.

I'm not really like this!
Nancy wanted to cry it out to her. To fling herself back into her arms, back against her breast.
This is not who I am, Mrs. Anderson. I'm really nice! Really! Nice!

As if she had heard, Mrs. Anderson said quietly: “You sure you don't want to just come back in now? No one's gonna hurt you. I'll just walk you right back in.”

Nancy's lips parted. “I can't,” she whispered. “There's someplace I have to …” She shook her head. “I'm sorry. I can't.”

Quickly, she pivoted away from her. Without another glance, she started running down the hall, toward the door. Toward the light. Her hands moved at her side, right fist clutching the letter opener. She heard her feet flapping faster and faster against the floor.

What kind of person …?
She heard it in the rhythm of her own steps.
What kind of monster does these things?

Not me, she thought as she ran. Not me. Not really. Not really me.

Behind her, far away it seemed, she heard Mrs. Anderson shouting. The door ahead came closer to her. The light at its window brightened. The car bay—its concrete columns—loomed.

And then a police officer moved into the square of glass. The light went out. And it occurred to Nancy as she ran toward that square of shadow that Mrs. Anderson was shouting very loudly. She was sounding the alarm—to everyone—at the top of her lungs:

A madwoman has escaped!

B
efore Zach was born, Oliver and his dad had taken walks together. Hand in hand down tortuous streets. Mysterious jazzy Manhattan streets with slanted brownstones lowering. There had been the smell of garbage, he remembered, and no sun—the sun too low by three
P.M.
to crest the building tops. There had been old women leaning out of windows. Negroes at the corners slouched into question marks.

His father had been a graduate student then, at NYU. Reedy and somehow elegant in his rumpled black suits. He had chatted as they walked and then murmured and then fallen silent after a time. He had gazed off into the distance, absently holding Oliver's small hand. He had still been happy then. Before Zach was born.

They are going to kill him, Perkins. I know this for a fact.

Perkins glanced back over his shoulder. He was at the corner of Bleecker now. He glanced back down Tenth at the cop house, a concrete bunker hunkered amid quaint brick apartments. No one was following him; no one he could see anyway. He had to get away from here before they changed their minds. He had to find Zach. Before Mulligan did. Before the fucking feds …