The Animal Hour (42 page)

“Whoa,” Nancy murmured. She shook her head. It made her feel tired. All those cops. Coming to get her. She hurt so much. Too much to run for it. And what would happen, anyway, if they caught her now? What would be so bad about it, really? They'd probably just take her back to the hospital. Pump her full of tranquilizers again. Maybe they'd even let her have more therapy sessions with what's-his-name. Dr. Schweitzer, whatever. That sweet man she'd kneed in the balls. Then, of an evening, she could sit around with Billy Joe. Chat about her heroic journey to find the magic word, about sending dead Jews to the moon …

Nancy's eyes drooped closed. She swayed back and forth, her mouth open. What would be so bad? she thought. She was tired. So tired …

Oliver …

She snapped awake. She straightened at the parapet, her fingernails scraping the concrete. Her heart beat fast as her eyes came wide open, as she stared down at the police below. The blue men, gripping their holsters, ran toward the building under the flashing red lights.

And she thought: Oliver. Oliver Perkins. She had to find him. That was the thing. The urgent thing. The one thing she really knew. She remembered him. No. She remembered the feel of his book. The slick feel of his book's white cover in her fingers.

He gave it to me. He said I had to carry it for identification.

She remembered the rough texture of the pages, their corners between her finger and her thumb. And the black print of the words beneath her eyes.

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 …

She remembered the rhythm, the music of the words. She had not even understood them all exactly. Poetry. Christ. What did she know about poetry? But the
feel
of it. She had gotten that, she remembered that. The sweet-natured melancholy. The sense of life and death creeping down out of the woods at night to the lonesome man watching. She remembered his eyes, his lonesome eyes: the picture of the poet on the back cover. She had sat there, hadn't she? All girlish and dreamy for a few minutes. Her feet up on her desk, the book against her thighs. Thinking back to what it was like when a boy said things to you, so-deep things, leaning toward you with his earnest eyes and you still believed him. She had sat dreaming about the garret where she'd lie, her uptight Catholic body skinny and naked under the single sheet. And him hunched grimly at his desk, his pen moving over the pad in the lamplight …

This is the Animal Hour.

She swayed, gripping the parapet, nauseous, weak. The Animal Hour. Yes. Yes. She had to be there. She had to. It could already be too late. She did not even know what time it was anymore. It could already have happened.

Oliver.

They were going to kill him. She had to get there. She had to get to him in time.

Without thinking, she began to climb onto the parapet. She cried out with the effort, cried out in pain. Her back, her knees, her head—the ache everywhere blended into a single hot sting through her entire body. Still, she worked her leg over the concrete parapet. Looked down. A long drop to the sidewalk. She could break her legs easily. She could break her neck …

But there was a window below her, halfway between her and the sidewalk. If she could lower herself to the window ledge, if she could get her feet on it …

She glanced up. Looked to the corner. More cops were rushing toward the entrance now. Others stood poised at their cars, standing at the open doors, their radio mikes in their hands. None of them was looking her way. She brought her other leg over the parapet, grunting with the pain. Slowly, she lowered herself. Clinging to the parapet with her hands, she let her legs hang down.

She dangled there. Her face tapped against the brick. Her muscles burned as her arms stretched above her. Her head pounded. Her feet sought for purchase on the ledge below. A car horn blasted. Nancy gasped. Her fingers began to slip away. Someone yelled at her from a passing car. She heard their laughter fading as the car went by.

Panting, she lowered her feet to the windowsill. Tears of pain made her nearly blind. Red pain, all through her. The tips of her sneakers touched the sill. Her fingers slipped to the edge of the parapet.

And then they slipped off. She dropped to the window ledge. She clutched at the face of the building. For an instant, she balanced there. But only for an instant. Then, twisting, she half-fell half-jumped to the sidewalk below.

It was a light landing. Not that far to fall. She came down on her feet, but her legs gave under her. She collapsed to her knees. The sidewalk slapped against her raw knees. She gave a muted cry and pitched forward. Sprawled on her face on the concrete.

She tasted grime. Felt the gritty stone against cheek and nose. “I hope you appreciate this, Oliver,” she muttered. Then she pushed herself to her hands and knees.

“You okay, lady?”

She cried out. Her head snapped back. She saw a werewolf. A werewolf was standing over her. A werewolf wearing a high school letter jacket.

He bared his fangs. His red eyes peered through a mask of bristling fur. His hairy paw was reaching down at her. “Need a hand?”

“Aaah!” she said. She stared at him. “Aaa-aaa-ah!” She scrambled away from him on her hands and knees, ignoring the pain. She found the wall and clawed her way quickly to her feet, her breath rasping. The wolfman stood where he was and stared at her with his red-streaked eyes. She staggered away from him. Staggered up Lexington, toward Twenty-second Street. She cast looks back over her shoulder at him. Held her hands up to ward him off.

The werewolf shrugged, finally. Stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and ambled off toward Twenty-first Street, where the cops were gathered. Nancy stopped to watch him go. She stood at the corner. Her head throbbed, her heart pounded hard. She watched as the wolfman joined a mummy and Frankenstein monster. All of them walked off together under the canopy of flashing lights.

Nancy let out her breath. She lifted her head. She looked up at the building above her. She saw the open window through which she had come. The lace curtains blowing out through it, fluttering in the cool October breeze. Her father had his head poking out. She saw his silver hair. He had his arm raised and was pointing along the ledge where she had gone. He pointed along the face of the building toward the connecting roof where she had fallen.

Only he's not my father
, Nancy thought.
My father is dead. My father died when I was little.

Now there was a policeman too. A young patrolman with a thin mustache. He was sticking his head out the window also. Leaning out next to the silver-haired man. He was looking along the ledge where the silver-haired man was pointing. Nancy stood on the sidewalk below and gazed up at them. In another moment, she thought, the policeman would look down. He would look down and spot her standing there. Still, she did not move. She did not want to move. She stood there, looking at the window, thinking of the bedroom inside. The soft, frilly canopy bed. The mirror. The photographs of laughing girls who were all friends together. She did not want to leave …

She shivered. Shook herself.
Oliver
, she thought.
Come on. Come on. The time …
She had to go.

The silver-haired man was pointing and pointing. And the cop beside him was starting to look down, scanning the face of the building with his sharp cop's eyes. He would look down at the sidewalk. He would see her.

Nancy hesitated only another second.
Well
, she thought.
Good-bye. Good-bye.

And then she turned. She hobbled off. As fast as she could. Around the corner. Into the night. To find Oliver.

N
ow the parade was about to begin. The thick crowd of people on Sixth Avenue had congealed into a solid mass. They packed the sidewalks. They pressed against the blue police barricades. Masked and hooded, smeared with makeup, sucking at sack-covered bottles of beer, they watched the street. They waited for the marchers. Behind them, on whatever thin strip of sidewalk was left, another crush of people pushed uptown: a gelatinous flow between the spectators on one side, and the vendors on the other. The vendors shouted above the shouts and murmurs of the crowd. They hawked their battery-powered domino masks fringed with blinking lights. They blew paper trumpets into the night air.

Perkins came out of Nana's building and saw what was happening. He stopped under the awning. He cursed under his breath. It had taken him several minutes to free himself from his grandmother's anxious hands. It was almost seven o'clock now. And that crowd—he was going to have to fight his way downtown.

But it didn't matter. He had to get back to Zach. He had left his brother alone too long. The police could have found him already. The FBI. Or Nancy Kincaid's murderer …

He started toward the avenue. He joined the rapid stream of costumed spectators as they flowed into the muddy human river.
They're going to kill him
, he thought, his mouth set, his eyes fixed.
They're going to kill him and set him up for the Kincaid murder.
He shouldered his way into the mass of people. He ignored the weight of blackness in his belly; the premonition floating around his mind like haze. He kept moving as the heavy tide of flesh closed over him.

He had to get back to his brother.

In the darkened room, amidst the mounds of books, the slanting towers and shelves of books, Zachary knelt on a spot of bare floor. The small, sinewy man was in deep shadow there, his hands clasped beneath his chin. His head was bowed. His eyes were closed. His lips were moving. Silently, he prayed to Jesus.

Let Ollie come home in time, he prayed. It would all come apart if Ollie didn't come home and save him. He would never take drugs again, if Ollie came. He swore it. He knew he'd promised before, but he really swore it now. Really.
Please
, he prayed,
don't let me go to prison. Dear God, please, not that. Just give me a chance to convince the police that I'm innocent. That it wasn't me. It wasn't me. Please …

He shut his eyes tighter. He peered into the blackness beneath his lids. He tried to clear his mind, even of supplication. He tried to go blank, to go empty. He wanted God to come into him. He wanted the power of God to fill him. He wanted to be one with God, a single force of desire.

But his mind … He couldn't get it clear. Even in the dark, even with his eyes closed, so many
little
things … They invaded him. They ate like termites at his concentration. The sound of voices through the open window. The touch of air, the fresh October air that smelled of leaves. Shouts and laughter from the street … And music now too: the music from the parade.

“Damn it!” Zachary whispered harshly.

And a baby crying. Somewhere. Eating at him, buzzing in his brain. Giving him no peace: a baby, somewhere, crying and crying.

The library's castlelike spires were silhouetted against the purple sky. Their silver steeples glistened in the city light and the white light of the gibbous moon. Below, the huge crowd pressed in from either side on the empty, waiting avenue. Masses of humanity coursed sluggishly: uptown on the east sidewalk, downtown on the west by some unspoken agreement. In the street, the police ambled back and forth along the barricades. Under the barricades, children sat on the curb. The children's faces were blackened by makeup or hidden by masks. Their eyes were big as they stared up at the passing cops.

Perkins had crossed over at Twelfth. He was on the west sidewalk now, directly beneath the library. He had shouldered his way into the downtown tide and the flowing mass had sucked him in. Bodies were pressed against him, back and front. Shoulders were pressed against his shoulders. The heat of breath, the smell of sweat, the stink of beer, swept up into his nostrils. He elbowed and twisted, trying to edge his way deeper into the flow. But the mass was unyielding. It carried him along. Under the library's lowering facade. Under a stand of yellowing sycamores. Under the awnings of stores and their dark windows with paper skulls and pumpkins and witches grinning out at him. He made his way downtown yard by sludgy yard. He felt the time passing, felt it like a pulse in the world outside him. Inside him, the black batlike thing crouched with its wings furled, waiting to rise.

Maybe he would find the apartment empty when he got there, he thought. Or maybe he would find Zach dead. His body sprawled on the bed. The blood everywhere. His head …

Look what they did to my head, Oliver.

With a grunt, he forced his way between two women. Forced himself to stop imagining things. He pushed against the mass. He craned his neck, looked over the solid carpet of heads leading downtown. There was his street. Cornelia Street. Just up ahead.