"Turn at the corner," said Johanna, raising her eyes to the younger woman's face. "The vermin aren't your worst problem." She pointed toward the ragged man standing in the center of the sidewalk on the next block.
And now that the beggar had an audience, his arms raised slowly, then flapped up and down in the manner of demented pump handles. Bunny was what he called himself, but Johanna knew him by all his street names: Bum, Fool, and You Crazy Son of a Bitch. He was waiting for his tribute money, but first – a little fun, another fright night.
The office girl obediently turned at the corner to take another route to the subway station. Johanna did not. As she closed the distance between herself and the homeless man, she raised her face once more and sighed, resigned to the trial ahead.
Behind a fringe of matted hair was the pug nose of a boy and a grin that insisted on innocence. Bunny's face belied the adage that the homeless life aged people well beyond their years. Though he was in his thirties, she always saw him as a child. Closer now, Johanna stared at one blackened ankle. It was too late to save his foot. Soon the skin would slough away, and he would die from massive infection. Ah, but his shoes said more – the cold wind leaking in, life leaking out, tired leather parting with the sole and showing a peek at sockless, gangrenous toes. By the shoes alone, she knew that he had been defeated in two great themes of the ancient Greeks: man against nature, and man against himself. He stank of disease and soiled underwear.
Bunny's hand struck out and batted the air an inch from her face. She had dodged the first shot and neatly evaded the second, yet she was falling, her feet slip-sliding on marbles that crashed to the sidewalk from Bunny's outstretched hand. She hit the ground and felt the searing pain of her elbow smashing into cement. The agitated man stood over her, waving his arms, though this was hardly frightening. His hands were arthritic claws after too many winters without the protection of gloves. He could barely make a fist, and any damage he might do unto others would hurt Bunny more. Nevertheless, she raised her hands in surrender. "I've got money," she said, and these ritual words appeased him, as they always did.
She rose to her feet, careful to avoid the other marbles around her work boots. And now she must keep Bunny still, or he might fall and break a bone. Such an injury could mean death for a man in his shape and circumstance. She handed him the same ten-dollar toll she paid each time they met. "Well, Bunny, you learned a new trick tonight. The marbles. That was very smart."
He had finally found a means to keep people from running away at the first sign of madness. But she knew this trick was well beyond his reasoning ability. It was also a bad joke, the cliche: of lost marbles, lost mind. And whose sick bit of humor was this? Had some neighborhood child taught him the new stunt? It hardly mattered. He would forget it in a few hours' time. Short-term memory also had a way of outrunning Bunny.
"You're quick. That's what he says." Bunny tapped his head in a knowing way and made a sly face as he looked down at the fallen marbles. "He gave me those. Says I gotta play it smart to catch – Oh, oh, ooooh." He laughed and shifted his weight from foot to foot in a bob and a weave, so excited. "I got a message for you." His eyes closed and his teeth clenched in fierce concentration. And now he had it, and his eyes opened wide. "It's a message from Timothy Kidd. He says it's real cold in hell, and ain't that a surprise."
Johanna's mouth rounded in a silent No!
"Where did you hear that name?" Was there a siren of alarm in her voice? Yes, but it was well beyond the pitch of Bunny's impaired perception. He had no empathy with the fears of others. "Tell me – where did you hear that name?"
Bunny kept tapping his skull. "In here. He lives with me."
It was useless to pursue this little horror, impossible to distinguish between Bunny's real and imagined people, though she knew the messenger was a living human being, someone who had spent a great deal of time with the homeless man. Only constant repetition over days and days would have made that sentence remain in his mind; it was so crowded in Bunny's head, where so many people talked to him all the time.
Johanna pulled a newspaper from one of the trash cans and used it to sweep the marbles off the sidewalk so he would not trip and hurt himself. Should she call the police? And tell them what? From NYPD's point of view, it was the rest of the citizenry who needed protection from Bunny. She shook her head, giving up on the idea of asking them to look after the homeless man. From now on, she would take a different route home from work, and perhaps that would keep Bunny from harm. As the last marble rolled off the curb, her injured elbow throbbed with pain, and this was only the first leg of her gauntlet. There was still the cat to deal with at the other end of her odyssey.
At the West Fourth Street station, she boarded a subway car crammed with passengers who made space to accommodate her. Johanna was that rare straphanger who was offered a seat by men, women and, most humiliating – children. During the short ride home, she observed the egalitarian meeting of the city's shoes, real leather and faux, sneakers and oxfords.
Out of the subway, tired and sore, she made her way down Twenty-third Street, heading toward her hotel. The Chelsea was a bastard castle, Victorian and Gothic, striped with long rows of wrought-iron balconies and crowned on the twelfth floor with tall chimneys and dormer windows set into a pitched gray roof. All told, the redbrick giant had two hundred windows overlooking the street. It was not the tallest building in this neighborhood of lesser architecture, but certainly the grandest.
Grandeur ended as Johanna passed through the front door.
The lobby was rimmed with nineteen-sixties track lights surrounding the crystal chandelier of a more distant period, and the statue of a fat pink girl perched upon a swing was also suspended from the high ceiling. Abstract pieces of sculpture sat on the marble floor beside contemporary and antique furniture, and the walls were covered with the large canvases of an ever-changing art show. The eclecticism was so extreme that nothing – not a live elephant – nothing would seem out of place here. And then there were the tenants, permanent and transient: the Chelsea was a haven for certifiable creative types, artists and the like, and proudly advertised itself as haunted by a history of suicide and murder. In the past four months of residence, Johanna had encountered no earthbound spirits other than the ghosts she had checked in with, ten of them, including Timothy Kidd.
She crossed the dark carpet, eyes fixed on a parade of luggage on wheels and the out-of-town shoes of visitors. Only one pair was familiar, spit-shine black and memorable for the broken laces and the knotty repairs. They were ten steps in front of her, when she raised her head to see the FBI agent, Marvin Argus, approach the front desk. Johanna waved at the clerk, begging him in dumb show not to give her away as she rounded the corner and pushed the elevator button. The door slid open, and she slipped inside.
Moving through the Chelsea in any direction was like a trip through time and other places. She rode upward in a small box with midcentury gas station decor. Its doors opened onto the seventh-floor foyer and an ornate staircase from her exchange-student days in Paris. Turning left, she opened a fire door of wood and glass and passed into a silent corridor leading to her rear apartment and its tall windows with southern plantation shutters. The last skirmish of the day lay before her as she fitted a key into her lock. The moment she cracked the door open, a white furry paw appeared, claws extended and swatting air, so anxious to get at all comers and rake them till they bled.