The Animal Hour (30 page)

T
he gray-haired man with the folded
Times
would go home tonight and tell his wife that he had seen a monster. He was a stocky, staunch old Wall Street crusader. Florid skin, pulpy nose. Planted on the subway platform like an oak, waiting for the next train. He would chuckle as he said it: “So I'm just standing there waiting for my train when this … this
creature
came crawling up onto the platform. The way it looked, it must've been living in the tunnels for years! I've read about that sort of thing …”

That's how Nancy imagined it anyway as she climbed up the ladder off the tracks. The way the old guy was staring at her made her want to shrivel up to nothing. She was painfully aware of what a mess she was. Her blouse in shreds, her bra sticking out of it. Her face and arms streaked with dirt and blood. And then, when she got a whiff of herself … Climbing onto the platform on her hands and knees, her head hung down. She smelled her urine and her vomit. Her rank sweat. The traces of that juicy garbage in the alcove. This guy, this Wall Street guy, made a face at the very sight of her; and who could blame him?

She pushed herself to her feet. Felt the weight shifting at her groin and smoothed her skirt down nervously. She had the gun hidden in the front of her panties now. She'd lost the letter opener in her fight with the madman, and she couldn't find her purse, but she had hung on to the gun. She could feel it, heavy against her pubic hair, warm and somehow vital against her flesh. She looked around to see if anyone noticed it bulging through her skirt. But only the stalwart businessman was looking at her at all, and he was staring at her grimy cleavage. The rest of the crowd was gazing off to the left, watching the oncoming lights of the next train.

She turned her profile to the businessman, ignored him. She shuffled to the edge of the platform. She was on the uptown side now. She had crossed over in the tunnel. As she was limping back toward the light, she had seen the train—the one that had nearly crushed her. It had been stopped before the downtown platform. She had seen the transit police pouring into the station there. Blue uniforms weaving between the gray suits and the tweed skirts and jackets. They were searching for her. They had seen her and the madman on the tracks. She had scurried away from them, across the tunnel, between the columns, to the other side. She was going uptown anyway. She was going to Gramercy Park.

She had decided to head for home. To see her mother. She didn't know where else to go. Her address was the only clue to her life that she had. And if her mother didn't know her, if her mother didn't know who she was,
what
she was … Well, then she was lost for sure, forever.

The uptown train sliced smoothly into the station. Clean silver cars flashing by, slowing to a stop. The doors slid open and Nancy limped wearily into the car. Several of the passengers glanced up at her. When she sat down, the woman in the seat next to her got up, moved away.

The train took off. Nancy stared straight ahead. Clasped her hands between her knees, hunched her shoulders. Clutched her misery to herself. She felt like crying. Her mind kept showing her a movie of the subway tunnel. The glare of the train lights. The glare in the wild, agonized eyes above her. The bore of that gun, the sudden death ready to explode out of that gun …

That man, she thought, shuddering. That madman. She began to tremble as she remembered his dull face caught in the subway lights, pinned on the tracks. His arm raised uselessly before the onrushing train.

You are experiencing an episode of schizophrenia …

She had to hug herself to get the trembling to stop. That's what he was, she thought. That man. He was a schizophrenic. Just like me.

At the end, in the darkest place of all …
She remembered the merry gaze, the quiet, merry voice of Billy Joe Campbell, the crazy man who had accosted her at Bellevue.
In the darkest place of all, there is a fearsome creature
, he had said.
The Other; the self whom, above everything, you wish not to be.

Well, that was him, all right, she thought. That nut case with the gun. That was definitely a self she would prefer to avoid. Living in the dark like that. Drooling in the dark. Screaming out fantasies about federal agents from Mars; extraterrestrial brain snatchers; murder at eight o'clock; at the Animal Hour … Oh yes, she too could have a career as a Crazy Subway Guy.

Only if you have the courage to embrace that self can you learn the magic word …

“Ugh.” She let out a little moan, shivering. And then caught herself. Huddled into her stink. Muttering. Shuddering. She stole a glance around the crowded subway car. All those faces against the wall. The people standing at their silver poles. Why, to them, she already
was
the Horrid Thing. The Creature from the Subway Tunnel. They were probably all staring at her really, secretly. Peeking secretly at the bulge of the gun in her panties. They were probably all just waiting for the next stop to start shouting for the police …

Suspicious, her eyes traveled over the crowd. The Black Secretary. The Warehouseman in the plaid shirt. The two Businesswomen. And then, also, here and there, mingled with the others, strange beasts. The white-skinned Vampire between the secretary and a clerk. A furry Wolfman behind the businesswomen. A ghoulish Monk at the warehouseman's shoulder.
Hey, wait a minute
, she thought. What was going on here, anyway? Everyone was secretly watching
her
but did anyone else even
see
these monstrosities?

She had forgotten it was Halloween.

Twenty-third Street. She saw it with a start, as if coming awake. This was her station. She stood up quickly and joined the small gush through the doors to the platform. She kept her eyes turned down as she shuffled behind the crowd. A policeman stood at the stairs, scanning faces. She looked away as she shuffled past him.

She came up onto Park Avenue South. She was surprised to see how dark it was. It must be after five already. At least. The clear autumn blue of the sky was gone. A violet dusk hung over the broad double avenue. The string of traffic lights at each corner to the north burned green in the darkling air, all the way up to the bright facade of Grand Central. Then the lights changed and burned bright yellow; then bright red. The thick rush hour traffic halted. Great buses grumbled, and white headlights glowed in the deep blue air.

Three hours left, she thought. She stood on the corner, looking around, looking for a clock. But something else caught her eye. She turned and found herself peering into the broad display window of an electronics store. A Newmark and Lewis right there on the corner. “Halloween Deals!” declared orange cardboard letters pasted to the glass.

Oh, she thought dully. That explained the monsters in the subway car. There were monsters here too. A nearly life-sized cardboard Frankenstein, his arms outstretched. A witch stirring her brew. A cardboard skeleton on the glass door with yellow eyes and an evil grin and worms and rats squirming in his rib cage.

But that's not what had caught her attention. What had made her turn was something in the display itself. Nine television sets glowing in the center of the window. Twenty-inch Sonys, stacked together on shelves, three on top of three on top of three. Each had the same picture. A pretty coffee-skinned newswoman peering out earnestly. Must be the five o'clock news, Nancy thought.

She gazed at the TVs absently. Hadn't there been something else? Something on the screen just a moment ago? She had caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of her eye, hadn't she? Something familiar, something that had stirred her memory …

For another moment, she gazed through the window at the nine newswomen. All the same, all surrounded by cardboard bats and ghoulies, draped with Halloween crepe. Then she shook her head. No. It had just been a sensation. A glitch. Like déjà vu. She began to turn away.

And the picture changed. She hesitated. She stood there on the sidewalk, this ragamuffin in her tattered blouse. She forgot, for a moment, her filth-streaked skin. The weight in her underpants. The rank smells coming off her. And she gazed through the store window at the nine television sets, the nine pictures. They were pictures now of a young woman's face.

Do I know her?

She was a pretty girl, wearing one of those graduation hats with the tassel. High rosy cheeks and a shy smile. Glistening brown hair to her shoulders. Blue eyes.

I know her …

The sight of her made Nancy's stomach contract with fear.

The Other; the self whom, above all, you wish not to be.

And now the picture—all nine pictures—had changed again. There was a video shot of a house now. A small house. White brick fringed with red ivy. Shaded by a maple tree on a small tree-lined lane. And it made the fear worsen: It was like a memory, a threatening memory, just out of reach. The ragged, smelly young woman stood there, gazing at it, licking her lips.
What. What is it?

And again, the picture changed. A quick cut, almost simultaneous on all nine sets. On all nine sets, men carried a stretcher out of the house. A stretcher with a black shape on it. A black body bag.

I know this. I know this. Damn it.
Her stomach was sloshing around now like a washing machine. Her breath was quickening, her pulse was like a drum. And yet she felt at the same time as if she were floating away. Drifting off above her own body, this physical cauldron, its weird, unthinking fear.

She watched the TVs as if hypnotized. Another cut. More people in the narrow lane outside the little house. Policemen striding purposefully past the cameras. The camera shakily panning down to a plastic bucket in one cop's hand. The camera zoomed in. The bucket—nine times the bucket—filled the screen—one bucket on every screen. And Nancy's hand rose slowly, her dirty hand. She pressed it to her throat. She felt like she was strangling. She was so frightened …

“Oh!”

She gasped. Her hand flew from her throat to her mouth. A man was walking toward her, nine times, on nine screens. A man in jeans. Black hair, almost to his shoulders. Weary eyes. She knew him, yes. Those weary, lonesome, lovelorn eyes.

But I … I made him up!

She couldn't mistake him. The sharp planes of his face, the lived-in lines. It was her poet! The poet she had dreamed about. The suffering artist who had put his naked arms around her. She had fantasized him! She had wished for those sad eyes to turn to her. To look up from the pages on his desk to where she lay naked beneath the sheet in his garret … And there he was! Walking down the alley, his shoulders hunched. Holding up his hand to ward off the reporters' microphones. The microphones converging on him. Policemen flanking him, escorting him to their car. Nancy's fear had spread all through her, and yet she wondered at it too: She had fantasized him and there he was, right there, he was …

The pedestrians heard her cry out. There were a lot of pedestrians on the sidewalk around her—it was rush hour now. The pavement was rhythmic with their homeward foot-steps. The darkening air was alive with their vital eyes. She cried out and they heard her and glanced her way. Glanced at this pitiful, slack-jawed, staring thing, this filthy, muttering rag of a girl. They veered to go around her safely as she stood there, oblivious to them, gaping at the nine televisions in the Newmark and Lewis window. Gaping at the nine faces on the nine sets, all the same.

And no one—none of the pedestrians—noticed that the face she was staring at—the nine faces on the nine TVs—was her own.

But it was. Nancy shook her head for a moment, unable to take it in. There she was, nine times, three on three on three, staring back out at herself. Another second and the truth of it got through to her. She broke from her trance. She bolted forward. She ran forward to the glass door with the worm-eaten skeleton. Pushed through into the store.

And now, she was surrounded by herself. Everywhere—on both long side walls of the store—in the center shelves that ran from front to back—everywhere, her own face stared from screens of various sizes. It was a still photo, a color picture faintly out of focus. But she saw the broad cheeks, the strong jaw softened by the fall of curling hair. The direct, strong, honest eyes.

There I am!
she thought, turning from set to set, drinking in her old self.
There I am! I found me! There …

From somewhere, some speaker somewhere, a newsman's voice was telling his story in short hammer strokes. She tried to concentrate, tried to listen, but then …

“Miss?”

At first she did not know where the voice was coming from. Soon enough, though, she saw. A store clerk. A tubby Indian in a sweat-stained white shirt, his red tie loosened at his throat. He was hurrying toward her down the aisle. Waddling between all her faces as they rose up the wall, as they ran along the shelves.

“Miss …”He was shaking his finger at her angrily. “You cannot come here. Dressed like that. You must go.”

“… as outraged law officers promise to work relentlessly,” the newsman was saying.

The store clerk waddled toward her, belly first. “Excuse me. Excuse me, Miss.”

“… sifting clues around the clock …”

I have to listen to this
, she thought.

“You are not buying something,” said the store clerk like an angry hen.

“… trying to solve the savage murder …”

“Out, out, out, out.”

“… of Nancy Kincaid …”

“What?” said Nancy.

But the store clerk was upon her. His round belly pushing her toward the door. His finger waggling in her face. “You are not buying something dressed in this way. You must go.”

She staggered back from him. Staring, open-mouthed, as her face—as all her faces—flicked away to nothing on the walls and the shelves. The coffee-skinned anchorwoman returned.

“Elsewhere in the city tonight,” she said, “firefighters in Brooklyn are working to contain a blaze that …”