The Animal Hour (27 page)

“Zach's not feeling well. He's gonna catch some z's,” Perkins said. He wagged the drumstick at her. “Just do me a favor, okay? If the cops come, call down there. Two rings then hang up, then call back, that's our signal. And watch what you say on the phone.”

“Okay, okay,” she said quickly. She blinked across the counter at the poet's haggard, angular face. She felt worried and excited and warm for him all at once. Already, racing through her mind, were half-acknowledged, jumbled scenarios. Handsome Zachary. Persecuted. Brave. Or frightened. Loved her, his head buried in her breast, and she was prettier. She was Jessica Lange in
Country.
Or Oliver loved her for helping Zach … Avis was eager to be more involved in this. “I'll go down when he wakes up,” she said. “I'll check on him.”

“I should be back by then,” said Perkins. He tore into the drumstick as he headed back toward the window. “Thanks, Avis.”

“The baby goes down for an hour at six,” Avis called after him, working it out. “I'll come down then and bring you guys some food.”

“Yeah, forget the food.” Perkins had one leg out the window. “He's got the quickstep.”

“Ooh, poor guy,” said Avis. (Zach was lying in bed, gazing up at her weakly. She was hovering over him wearing a nurse's cap.) “I'll bring chicken soup with rice then. That's good for that.”

“Avis …” said Perkins. But then he only shook his head. He blew her a kiss and was gone, the fire escape rattling behind him.

Avis stood alone, watching after him, her baby wriggling in her arms.

T
he bus pulled away from the curb. The police sirens whooped and bayed. The sound seemed to spread out over the low-flung avenues. Dart up over the sidestreets. Echo down off the blue sky. The hounds seemed to be everywhere.

Then the bus gave a roar of its own. It rumbled downtown, smaller cars clinging to its wheels. Nancy looked out the rear window at the traffic scuttling along behind. She saw the shopping center falling away. And not a police car in sight. The sirens grew fainter under the bus's grumble. They grew fainter still as the bus gunned and picked up speed. Nancy faced front in her seat, the corner seat against the rear wall. She leaned her head back, her crown to the window. She gazed up dully at the emergency exit in the bus's ceiling. “Push up to open for ventilation.”

I'm the one who's going to kill him
, she thought blankly. She closed her eyes.
I'm going to kill someone. I'm a Murderer! Murderer! And you said you were nice!

But her inner voices were growing dim too, as if the bus were also leaving them behind. After a few moments, she became aware that her mouth was open. She ought to close it, she thought. But she just sat there, head back, eyes shut. Not even hearing the engine anymore. Not knowing what to think about or daydream. She felt herself floating in a strange, pulpy element: the blackness of not knowing who she was—or really, not knowing what she was
like.
Because she was still sure she was Nancy Kincaid. She just didn't know what that meant anymore. She didn't know what Nancy Kincaid was going to
do
from one moment to the next. What decisions she would make. What cruelties she was capable of, what kindnesses. How were you supposed to know that? How were you supposed to find it out?

I'm twenty-two years old. I work for Fernando Woodlawn. I live on Gramercy Park with my mom and dad …

The words dropped away, down into this pliant interior mass. Down and down and down, as if into a well, and she waited for the splash and it didn't come. And she slumped now in the corner, her mouth hanging open. The bus jostled her gently.
So sorry
, she thought. She felt the soft mother breasts against her. White sheets. Soft mother lips against her cheek and the smell of dishwater.
I was a teenager and I was angry and crazy and I'm so sorry.
The reassuring weight of her mother sitting on the end of her bed as she lay with the covers pulled up to her chin. The reassuring rhythm of her mother's voice, like lapping water. Storybook in her frail, red hands. White cover, black letters.
The Animal Hour. And Other Poems.

What if we went off together into the hills
and on into the hills beyond the hills where the

leaves are changing?

Where the first remark of gray among the branches
is insinuated in me now like something one

learned before youth

and has, in consciousness, forgotten.

Her mother's voice like water. Water bearing Nancy away. Carrying her away in waves from the night bedroom. From the shadowed, half-visible hall threatening beyond the door. From the half-open closet and the monster's eye pressed to the crack. From the mutterings in the street and all the chill emptiness around her since her father fell in … fell in … Wait—there he was.
Oh, I was so angry about it.
She could see him falling. Down into the dark well where the words had gone. Daddy … Daddy fell in … Tumbling backward, his arms pinwheeling, his mouth agape …

Daddy!

Nancy started in her seat, her eyes coming open. She lifted her head and looked around her. Licked her dry lips. Tasted her dry mouth. A woman in a nearby seat cocked an apathetic eye at her. The other passengers—there weren't many—huddled over themselves, backs to her. Without thinking, she glanced at her wrist. No watch. Right. She remembered. They had taken her watch.

What you're experiencing is an episode of schizophrenia.

She glanced out the window. A suggestion of dark coming on over a low, drab, brick landscape. It got dark early this time of year, but still … She did not know how much time she had left.

Eight o'clock. Eight o'clock.

The bus pulled to the curb. The doors gave a whoosh and opened. Nancy got up quickly. Grabbed seat backs, went hand over hand up the aisle to the rear door. She pushed out, tumbled down the steps to the sidewalk. With a blast of exhaust behind her, the bus pulled away, left her alone.

She was standing on the shore of a desolate territory. Low buildings. Curtained windows. The first slate-blue of evening in the air. A few cars moving back and forth but no other pedestrians. Just a cluster of unshaven men at a tavern a few doors down. Black and white men, five of them, all smashed beyond comprehension. Gesturing at one another with great conviction. “Anudder ting: fauben at bish in sunight. Ha!” one of them said.

They turned when Nancy got off the bus: She was something to look at anyway.

“Hey, mama,” one muttered.

She walked by them quickly, her back primly erect. When she figured she was safely past, she stole a quick look at them. They had gone back to their conversation, but a ghostly figure was watching her now from inside the tavern. A disheveled specter under the neon sign for Coors. A woman. Just as seedy as the men. Clothes torn, hair in tangles. Nancy met her eyes a moment. And then her guts plummeted as she realized it was …

Murderer!

Herself. Reflected in the dark tavern window.

Oh boy. Terrific.

It brought the whole muddle crashing back on top of her.
It's me! I'm the one. Look at me. I'm the one who's going to kill him! Jesus, just look!
She was past the tavern now. Facing forward again. Walking on. But that spectral stare, that glassy, baleful stare from the window … It walked with her, beside her.
I'm you. I'm who you are.
She was beginning to take a sort of grim satisfaction in torturing herself with it. Remembering the sweet doctor staring at her as the pain flooded up from his crushed testicles. The terror in Nurse Anderson's eyes as she yanked her head back. And then that poor rich lady—whom she had mugged, for Christ's sake.
Mugged! That's what you're like, Nancy
, she told herself, hurting herself, glad to hurt herself.
That's the sort of thing you do. You're bad, you're not nice, you're bad. Bad Nancy.

The next thing she knew, she was heading downstairs. Moving down through the dank concrete of a subway entrance. She hadn't even been thinking about it. It had just taken care of itself. Now, she was slipping her stolen bill out of the waistband of her skirt. Out from under her famous letter opener. She was buying a token, pushing through the turnstile. And, she realized, she knew exactly where she was headed. She had known all along, in fact: that was part of the hurt, part of the misery of it. She knew where she was going and she hated it but it didn't matter. She couldn't make it stop.

I wanted to be a dancer!
she thought, waiting for the train. But she had taken the job with Fernando. She had stopped looking for an apartment, even though she had wanted a place of her own. Her own actions had seemed to just happen to her. She had not seemed to do them herself. She made fatalistic little wisecracks and she complained to her friends—and then she went ahead and did exactly what she didn't want to do. She was not in control of things.

I wanted to be a dancer.

But somehow—she could not even remember how—she had turned into this instead.

Now, she was on the subway. Sitting in her corner seat, pressed into the corner, almost cowering there. There were nine or ten other passengers in the car, and they were all sort of ignoring her and keeping tabs on her at the same time. Just another bum on the train. Nothing dangerous, but peep over there now and then to make sure. She peeped back at them sullenly. The subway was getting closer to her destination. With every stop, she felt heavier inside. Sicker with herself. And the others just sat there. Reading newspapers. Stroking their children's hair. Why didn't they stop her? Why didn't anyone stop her?

City Hall. Her heart was beating harder now. Her tongue kept going to her lips to keep them wet. She couldn't be doing this again. It was crazy. She couldn't. But when the doors slid open—sure enough, she got out of her seat. She joined the small crowd exiting. She stepped out onto the platform. She couldn't make it stop.

A thin line of passengers were on the platform, waiting for the train, pressing in on it as the doors opened. She slipped through the line to the center of the station. She scouted out the long cavern. Scoped its pillars, behind its stairways. Two black men lounged on a bench. A woman hugged her briefcase to her chest, gazing off dreamily. No cops. Not a cop in sight. She started moving. Casually as she could. Sidling away from the exiting crowd toward the far end of the platform.

Nobody watched her go. She swallowed hard, turned and walked faster. She saw the station wall ahead. The white sign with its red lettering. “All persons forbidden to enter or cross tracks.” And there the concrete ended and the blackness began. Blackness like the sludge inside her, and she thought:
Not again. I can't. Really.

And then she had reached the end of the platform, the metal ladder there. She looked back once. Saw a beatnik-type near the stairs, watching her with wan interest. She ignored him. Took hold of the ladder. And lowered herself down onto the tracks.

She did not look back again. She walked quickly into the tunnel, hanging between the track and the wall. She tried to keep her eyes straight ahead, her mind straight ahead, like a laser, narrowed to a beam. But boy oh boy was her heart going now. Her pulse at her temple was like one of those small steel hammers: In case of emergency, take hammer and break glass. Her senses were heightened. Every aspect of the tunnel grew sharper as she went in deeper. The underground pillars loomed out of the murk. Bare bulbs burned like eyes amid pipes and wiring. The click of switches in the distance sounded like rifle shots. And every time she thought she had the mind-laser going, something scuttled suddenly: a rat? Something worse? Her eyes flicked swiftly over the four tracks as they fanned off into nothingness. Her breath trembled. But she kept walking. Fast. Straight ahead.

And there it was. A few yards away. That spot where the tunnel narrowed. Oh, she thought. Oh no. But she kept walking. And then the walls were rising up around her. The high corridor of snaking graffiti. Coiling letters. Tendrils of sprayed paint. She could hardly breathe at all now with her heart in her throat this way. She was in the ghost station again. The platform took shape, and the shapes of the abandoned bags and wiring on it. The smoky shapes of the graffiti on the wall above. And the shape, the silhouette, under the platform's ledge, of the little arched alcoves. The place where she had hidden her purse. Her gun.

I'm the one. I'm the one who is going to kill him.

She stopped. She felt her throat tighten as the smell wafted up to her. It stung her nostrils: that damp, living tang of decay. She glanced up: She'd heard a snap. Another switch on the tracks going over. She felt the first faint breeze. Saw the first creeping glow in the far tunnel. A train was coming. She had to get to work.

She ducked under the edge of the platform. Knelt down at the entrance to the alcove. Already, she could feel the ground shivering as the train came on. And that stench grew denser. It was a cloud around her. She swallowed thickly. Her stomach began to churn.