30 Pieces of a Novel (37 page)

He wheels her along Central Park West on the park side for two blocks. “I think we should cross here,” she says, when they reach the side street before hers. “The next block doesn't have a curb cut on this side to get the chair down.” He says, “I can get it down without the curb cut, but okay, why not make it easier on myself and less bumpy for you?” He waits for the light to change, starts pushing her across the street. “Look both ways,” she says. “Even though there's a crosswalk, the cars making a left out of that side street never seem to stop for pedestrians. I can't see them well, so if one is coming I'm dependent on you to get me safely across.”

SOMEONE'S
BANGING
ON
Gould's door. Time, what, who could it be? “Hey, what's going on?” he yells from his bed. Banging continues, harder thumps, and someone screams, then gags. He jumps out of bed—his shorts, where'd he put them? Fumbles for the light switch on the night table, turns it on, light blinding him, squeezes his eyes shut to adjust, opens them, can see now, and runs to the door. “Yes, who is it?” Nothing, and hasn't been anything last half minute. “Who's there? The banging and screaming. Who was it? Anybody still there?” “Help,” a voice says, man's, weak, “help me, help.” “What's wrong?” Nothing. “Just a second; I got to get my pants on.” The man bangs on the door. “I said I got to get my pants on; hold your horses.” “Help me, help me.” What am I doing? Gould thinks. Opening the door before I see who's there? Looks through the peephole. No one. Door's banged from below the hole. “Listen, I'm sorry, this is New York and not the best of neighborhoods. You'll have to stand up, show yourself. I got to see who it is first before I open up.” Door's banged from even lower than before. Guy must be sitting there, lying, crouching, something, maybe ready to pounce on him. And where are my neighbors? Certainly by now, even at 2 A.M., a few of them must be looking through their peepholes. “Who is it out there? Your name? Someone I know from this floor?” “Help, I'm dying.” “Excuse me, but dying how? From what? Literally?” “Please.” Sounded too real. “Just a second, I'm getting my pants on.” Banging, lighter, the guy saying, “Hurry, dying, help me.” Gets his pants on. No undershorts or shirt but doesn't matter. With his hand on the door lock he thinks, Should I? But has to be someone hurt. Make sure not to lock yourself out—and takes his keys off the hook on the doorjamb and puts them in his pocket—am I ready to look if it's something real bad? Suppose it's from a knife, razor, in the face, neck, and the guy looks awful, bleeding everywhere, what do I do? Just shout for your neighbors if they're not out, that's all. Unlocks the door and man sort of falls over the threshold on his face. “Jesus, what happened?” Terrible smell, doesn't know what it is, chemical, not shit or vomit or anything like it. “I said what's happened to you?”—standing over him—“I can't help if I don't know.” “Poison,” the man mumbles into the floor, and Gould says, “What, poison? You took some? Stuff that can kill you?” “I'm dying. Wanted to when I took it. Get me help now.” Still nobody else around. “If anyone's in their apartment looking,” he shouts, “please help me with this guy. He took poison, says he's dying.” Gets on one knee, steels himself, and turns him over by his shoulder: Roland, fellow from down the hall and someone he went to college with. Eyes clenched in pain, mouth open, that terrible stink; black inside and his tongue, for a moment making motions to speak, also black, and some foamlike dark stuff coming up and making him choke. Gould quickly puts him on his side and holds him there so he can throw up. “What can I do for you, what can I do?” Gould says, holding his breath. “Help me,” Roland says, opening his eyes to slits. “I don't want to die.” Couple of doors open; maybe they saw it was Roland and Gould on the floor beside him and thought it safe. Someone yells up the stairway, “Hello, you with the noise up there. This is Aaron Wallenstien from 6-H: what's happening, need any help?” “Call the police,” Gould yells. “An ambulance, emergency! Guy here—Roland from seven something, end apartment—took poison and he's in very bad shape.” Woman in a trench coat leaning over Gould at Roland says, “I'll call them, I'm closer,” and runs into her apartment and slams the door. “Ask him what he took,” a man says from a few feet away; doesn't recognize him but could be a tenant on the floor. “What'd you take, Roland, my friend?” the man says. “We should know that if we're to help. Pills?” “Arsenic. In soda.” “A sweet soda?” Gould says. “Baking soda? What kind? Club soda?” and the man says, “Why you asking, what's the difference what with?” and Roland says, “Coke.” “Then you got to throw it all up, my friend,” the man says, and Roland says, “I did, did,
still
. Help me. Doctor. Someone for the pain. Hospital on Amsterdam,” and Gould says, “Of course, that's the one that lady should have called. Ring her bell, Mrs. D,” to a woman he's spoken to from the eighth floor, “and tell her—that one, that one, 7-K—to get the emergency from St. Luke's,” and Mrs. D rings the woman's bell. “And you should drink water and throw up some more”—to Roland—“with salt in it or whatever you're supposed to take to make you heave. Isn't that what they say to do, salt?” to the man, and the man says, “Any fluid should do. Stick a finger down his throat would be faster,” and Gould says, “I couldn't, could you?” “Roland, my friend,” the man says, still from a few feet away, “why would you want to kill yourself with arsenic? Of all poisons, the worst and most painful. Oh, my poor boy, what a mistake.” Lots of other people are at their doors, by the elevator and the stairs, hands over their mouths, in clothes they must have quickly put on, zippers unzipped, buttons and belts undone, one with a suspender hanging off his shoulder, most in coats and bathrobes, and one pretty young woman in leotards under a man's boxer shorts. “Listen,” Gould says, letting Roland go when he starts screaming and shaking violently and makes throwing-up sounds but nothing comes out, “doesn't anyone know what to do to help this guy? He took arsenic. And the woman who phoned. What'd she say?” to Mrs. D, and she says, “She said she knew herself to call St. Luke's.” “Bread,” someone says. “Get him to swallow bread, doughier the better. Absorbs it and then it regurgitates out.” “Then get some soft bread and salt water,” he says to him. “Others of you. Hurry. Bread and glasses of water mixed with salt. And someone go downstairs and wait out front in case the hospital people and cops go to the wrong building.” Roland's screaming, stands, bangs his fists against the wall, doubles up clutching his stomach, and yells, “My insides … on fire! Don't let me. … Get me there yourself.” Woman comes out of her apartment. “They're on the way. Ambulance from the one right up here, and police. The dispatchers for both said minutes, a few, and that was more than two minutes ago—I had something very important to do.” “Did they say what to do about the poison?” Gould says. “I didn't ask; you didn't say to.” “Call the hospital back and say we just found out it was arsenic and what should we do in the meantime?” She runs into her apartment and locks the door. A man's standing beside Gould with a glass of water. “I mixed in plenty of salt and made it not too cold. I'm sorry but all my bread was grainy or stale.” Gould holds the glass out to Roland. “Drink this. You have to keep throwing up to get rid of that crap.” “No more,” Roland says, reaching for the glass, then falls back to the wall as if thrown there—people clear away from him—and flops to the floor and holds his stomach and screams. “Please, drink the water,” Gould says, holding it to his mouth. “I don't want to force it down you.” Roland's just screaming now, tongue out, eyes bulging, grabbing his stomach, then his throat, gags and coughs and spits but nothing comes up. “That's why we want you to take the water. So there'll be something to mix with the poison.” He gets the glass near Roland's lips but his teeth are chomping at nothing, and Gould thinks he'll bite the rim off and pulls it away. “What do we do?” he says, looking around. Nobody's near them. The man who called Roland his friend is by the stairs, one foot starting down. “Come on, you, you got to help me think of something,” Gould says. The man throws up his hands. Then someone yells, “They're here!” just as the woman comes out of her apartment and says, “Detergent and water, they said. Or bicarbonate and water, or soda water, but really any liquid and lots of it to wash it out of his system,” and two policemen rush out of the elevator and say, “Where is he? Which one is it?” because Roland's lying on the floor, quiet except for some dry vomiting, and people standing around are blocking the police from seeing him. Several of them point, and the policemen get on the floor next to Roland and one says, “What happened, kid, some bad dope?” and a couple of people say, “Arsenic.” “Holy shit, by accident?” and one says, “On purpose, suicide.” “That's hospital emergency business; I never had one that took arsenic. You, Mark?” and the other policeman says, “I guess we do like we do with all poison swallowings till Emergency comes—an emetic. God, I never smelled such a smell from anyone; it's like paint remover. He's gotta throw up bad,” and Gould says, “He's been doing it all the time; there's nothing in him to throw up anymore. I've been trying to get this salt water down.” “Good, that's one of them,” Mark says, and takes the glass and holds it out to Roland and says, “Wake up, kid, drink. It's good for you; it'll save your life. Come on, do what I say; this drink's all you need,” and Roland's shaking his head with his eyes shut tight, trying to speak, it seems, but no sounds coming out, then grabs his stomach and screams, “Help me, the pain!” “Where is it, can you point to it?” Mark says, and Roland's just screaming and beating his stomach, and Mark says to Gould, “You on this floor?” and Gould says yes and Mark says, “We can't do anything but hold him down. Let me use your phone to get the ambulance guys here sooner,” and Gould says, “I don't have one; she does—several of the others must,” when someone shouts, “The hospital people!” and the elevator door opens and the policemen clear a circle around Roland and the emergency team immediately gets busy on him, giving him something to swallow; when he won't take it one forces his mouth open by pressing the back of his jaw, keeps it open with a rubber tool while the other pours some stuff into it. Roland vomits real liquid in a few seconds and keeps vomiting till nothing comes up, and then they stick needles into his arms and a tube down his throat and work on him for about fifteen minutes; more emergency people have come with machines they carry and wheel in, and then they strap him to a stretcher and stand him up in it in the elevator and take him downstairs.

“He looked dead just now,” Gould says, after the elevator door closes, and a man says, “Couldn't be. I saw his heart going,
pump-pump, pump-pump;
he'll pull through and will be back here in a week as if nothing happened,” and Gould says, “I hope so, but he looked dead to me, I swear: his body limp, head just hanging. I bet that's why they took him out of here. There just wasn't any sense working on him any longer,” and someone else says, “If he was dead they would have kept him here to write up a report because there wouldn't have been any hurry to get him out. They must have thought they could do better on him in the ambulance to the hospital and of course even better than that in the hospital and that they got enough of the arsenic out of him now to get him to start surviving again. Believe me, though I didn't get a look at him the last few minutes, no hospital's about to waste the time and cost of one of its emergency units on a dead man,” and Gould says, “As I told this fellow, I certainly hope you're right. “Where can you buy that stuff anyway? You'd think it'd be outlawed, it's so lethal.” “Chemistry labs,” someone says, “and he was going for his Ph.D. in the area, wasn't he?” and someone says, “By area do you mean Columbia?” and the woman says, “Columbia, I knew he was a student there, in chemistry.” “I thought it was history or political science,” Gould says, “since that's all he seemed to talk about, politics and spheres of influence and such. And he knew everything about the subjects no matter what the era.” “And I thought ladykilling,” a man says, “because Jesus, if there ever was a guy in this building who scored well with the ladies, he was it. In fact, he had so many of them and at all hours that it'd be difficult to think he had time for anything else.” “So taking that into consideration,” another man says, “and his good looks, which is part of it, and the impressive way he spoke, and his intelligence and obvious charm, you have to think, Who had more to live for than Ronald?” and a woman says,
“Roland
. And always the last one to leave the elevator, always there to help you with your packages or say a nice word: things like that. A lovely person, an absolutely lovely person, with no sign of the slightest sadness or distress. That's why it's such a shock, what they say he did, and why I'd have to think he swallowed it accidentally.” “No, I'm sorry,” Gould says, “and really, shouldn't we all pitch in, or at least the ones who live on this floor, and clean up the mess he and the hospital people left? Anyway, Roland happened to bang on my door for help when he was in the worst throes of it and told me he took the arsenic because he at first wanted to die but that he now didn't want to, maybe because he found how painful it was or just getting so close to death he realized his mistake.” “He probably didn't think it'd be that slow, either,” a woman says. “But you have to admit that if he was a chemistry doctoral student—” “He was,” a man says. “I know his dissertation adviser, and Roland and I talked about her.” “Then he knew what he was getting into and how long it'd take, and at the time, as this man here stated, he must have meant it but then had a sudden about-face. Now I guess all we can do is pray for his poor soul, for I'm sure he took enough to kill several men.”