Jack covered his face with his hands. “God, Pop, she’s nothing but a God-damned vegetable now.”

He sat blinking across the desk at the top of Jack’s lowered head. He knew the question he had to ask; he had to force himself to ask it. “What do they want to do, then?”

Jack’s answer was a long time coming. Finally he lifted his face. His cheeks were gray; his eyes had gone opaque. “They want me to sign papers to commit her.”

It hit him in waves. His scalp shrank.

Jack said, “It’s my decision and I’ll make it, but I want your advice.”

“Is there an alternative?”

Jack spread his hands wide and waved them helplessly.

“What happens if you don’t sign the papers?”

“Nothing, I suppose. They’ll keep her in the hospital. The insurance is about to run out. When we run out of money the hospital will throw her out.” Jack’s head was swinging back and forth rhythmically—worn-out, dazed. “Pop, she can’t even feed herself.”

“And if she’s committed? What then?”

“I’ve checked. I have a policy that covers it, up to six hundred a month. Doctor Metz recommended a sanitarium out in New Jersey. They charge a little more than that but I can swing the difference. It’s not the money, Pop.”

“This commitment—is it a one-way thing?”

“Nobody can answer that. Sometimes after a few months of therapy they come out of it themselves. Sometimes they never do.”

“Then what are you asking me?”

He watched anguish change Jack’s features. “Look, I love her.”

“Yes,” very gentle.

“You don’t just throw somebody you love into an institution and turn your back. You just can’t.”

“No one seems to be asking us to turn our backs.”

“I could take her home,” Jack muttered. “I could feed her and wash her and carry her into the bathroom.”

“And how long could you last doing that?”

“I could hire a private nurse.”

“You still couldn’t live that way, Jack.”

“I know. Rosen and Metz keep saying the same thing.”

“Then we’ve got no alternative, really. Have we.”

When Jack left he took the gun out of his pocket. It was what had kept him from going to pieces. The refrain in his mind: the killers. So. Now they add this to their debts.

They’ve got no right to do this to us. To anybody. They’ve got to be stopped.

15

He took the Lexington Avenue line uptown to Sixty-eighth. Had dinner in a counter place, walked by dogleg blocks to Seventy-second and Fifth, and went into Central Park there, walking crosstown. It wasn’t fully dark yet—dusk, and a cool gray wind, leaves falling, people walking their dogs. The street lamps were lit but it was a poor light for vision.

He walked slowly as if exhausted by a long day’s hard work. This was the time of night when they came out from under their rocks to prey on tired home-bound pedestrians. All right, he thought, prey on me.

The anger in him was beyond containment. It was a chilly night and he wasn’t the only solitary pedestrian in the park with his hands rammed into his pockets. He didn’t look like an armed man. Come on. Come and get it.

Two youths: Levi’s, scraggy hair down to their shoulders, acned faces. Coming toward him with their thumbs hooked in their belts. Looking for trouble. Come get some, then.

They went right past without even glancing at him; he caught a waft of conversation: “… a bummer, man, a real down. Worst fucking movie ever made.…”

Two kids on their way home from a movie. Well, they shouldn’t dress like hoodlums; it was asking for trouble.

The twilight had gone completely, behind the high monoliths of Central Park West; the light was failing quickly. He walked along the path with a light traffic of theater-bound taxis sliding through the crosstown loop beside him. A blatant homosexual with two huge hairy dogs on leashes went past him with an arch petulant expression. Two elderly couples strolling, guarded by a leashed Doberman. Three young couples, smartly dressed, hurrying past him, obviously late for a curtain at Lincoln Center.

A cop on a scooter, his white helmet turning to indicate his interest in Paul: every solitary pedestrian was suspect. Paul gave the cop a straight look. The scooter buzzed away.

He stopped midway across the park and sat down on a bench and watched people walk by until it got to be wholly night-dark. In his pocket, sweat lubricated the handle of the gun in his fist. He got up and continued his walk.

Central Park West. He turned north a block and cut across on Seventy-third because you weren’t too likely to get mugged on Seventy-second, it was too crowded. Columbus Avenue. Now the dark long block to the Amsterdam-Broadway triangle.

Nothing. He crossed the square and glanced up Broadway. That was the bar where he’d listened to the beer-drinker complain about welfare-niggers. Seventy-fourth, a block from here—that was where the kid with the knife had come at him from behind. Try it again now.

Carol.… It was too much to bear.

*  *  *

Seventy-third and West End Avenue. He stood under the street light looking downtown toward his apartment building two blocks south. Nothing sinister between here and there. Damn. Where the hell are you?

Getting chilly.

But he turned uptown instead. Went up to Seventy-fourth and crossed back to Amsterdam Avenue. Midway along the block—he even recognized the flight of stone stairs where he’d half-collapsed after the kid had run away. He had the block to himself again tonight but no one came at him.

Amsterdam: he walked around the corner and uptown with longer strides. Up into the West Eighties. Mixed neighborhoods now, stately co-ops shouldering against tenements. He had never walked here at night before. The sense of urban ferment was too strong: dark kids on front steps, old people at windows.

Feet getting tired now. Colder too. He reached an intersection and checked the sign: Eighty-ninth and Columbus. He turned west.

Two youths on the curb—Puerto Ricans in thin windbreakers. Okay, come on. But they only watched him go past. Do I look too tough? What’s the matter with you, don’t I look like an easy mark? You only pick on women?

Now that’s unfair. Get hold of yourself. They’re probably as honest as you are.

Riverside Drive. A party was going on in one of the apartments overhead: the wind blew gusts of rock music to him; a paper cup came fluttering down from the open window—the excretum of civilized pleasures. Half a block farther down, three young men were loading suitcases into a Volkswagen—the standard stagger system: one carrying bags out, another going in for another load, the third guarding the car. It’s insane. No one should have to. He crossed the Drive and went along to the stairs.

Down into Riverside Park.

The trees were flimsy against the lights. Traffic rushed along the Henry Hudson. He moved through the paths, past the playground, along the slopes. A copse of ragged smog-stunted trees; here the darkness had the viscosity of syrup and he suddenly felt an atavistic twinge: You’re in here, I can feel you. Watching me, waiting for me. Come on then. But he penetrated the trees and no one was there. On along the path: the end of the park up ahead, the steps up to the Drive, Seventy-second Street not far beyond. He thought with savage sarcasm, All right, it’s a poor night for hunting. But you’ll come after me again, won’t you.

He was cold clear through; his feet were sore. He went straight for the steps. It was only a few blocks to the apartment.