The Animal Hour Read online

  But she snatched her wallet out of her purse. She had to see her own ID. It was ridiculous, but she had to be sure. I mean, a person ought to remember where she went to elementary school.

  She took a quick check of the beggar again. He was standing now, making a great show of ignoring her. Muttering to himself importantly. Examining the green bench he’d been sitting on. Fingering some of the newspapers he’d been using as blankets, as if he might’ve left something behind. As if he had anything to leave behind. I’m just standing up, he seemed to be saying. Nothing to do with you, Miss. But even now, she could tell, he was edging across the gray path. He was edging toward her.

  It made Nancy nervous. But she couldn’t wait. Something was wrong, after all. Something weird was going on. It wasn’t just the people in her office. There was the gargoyle, her elementary school …

  Why don’t you just shoot him?

  Yeah, and that: the voice. There was some kind of glitch in her brain this morning. A fever or something probably. Maybe she’d eaten some bad mayonnaise—her mother had always warned her about that. Whatever it was, she wanted to see her ID now. She wanted to make sure she wasn’t completely nutso.

  She opened her wallet. Again, she looked up quickly to check the beggar. He was on his way, all right. Casual as could be. His hands in the back pockets of his dusty black slacks. His black coat flapping in the breeze over his rag of a shirt. The yellow leaves showered down around him. The red oaks behind him set off his dark shape. He kicked the leaves at his feet idly as he shuffled toward her across the path.

  Damn it, she thought again. She looked to her right, toward City Hall. There was still a cop in the parking lot, pacing along the line of government cars. And under the branches of the trees, she could see the legs of the cop on the Hall’s steps too. They were definitely within screaming distance.

  She went back to her wallet, angry at the bum for frightening her like this. Just because she opened her purse didn’t mean he had to get some money from her. I mean, cripes.

  She unsnapped the wallet’s card pouch. She felt her heart speed up a little. An accordion of plastic holders spilled out onto her lap. Immediately, she saw her mother’s picture. Tubby little mom, laughing, waving the camera away: “Don’t point that silly thing at me.” And there was her father, all silver haired and red faced; his crinkle-eyed grin.

  Yes, yes, yes, she thought. A bus surged loudly on Broadway. Then, as the rumble of it died, she heard the beggar’s footsteps coming closer on the path. She went through the plastic holders quickly, searching for her driver’s license.

  There was her MasterCard. Her name was on it, at least—Nancy Kincaid—right there at the bottom. And there was her Visa: same name, same girl. And then: bingo. The license. She closed her eyes for a second with relief after she saw it. Her picture. Her face. With its strong chin and the broad cheeks and the clear, honest eyes. The same old familiar face she had just seen reflected in the deli window. And there was her name—her own name—Nancy Kincaid—right there by its side. Proof positive. She was who she was.

  Well, who the hell else would I be? she thought. She gave another exasperated shake of her head. But she smiled too. The knots inside her were starting to loosen.

  Then she remembered the beggar. She glanced up. She caught him midway across the path. He stopped beside a garbage can. Studied its contents, muttering darkly. Just checking out the garbage, lady. Don’t mind me.

  I better get out of here, she thought.

  She folded up the plastic accordion. Popped it back into her wallet. Snapped the wallet shut. All she needed to do now was to go back to her office. Talk to someone who knew her. Someone who was willing to listen.

  And don’t hear any more voices.

  And nix those voices, right. But she wasn’t worried about that anymore now. She felt sure it was going to be all right. Just a flu or something. A fever. That bad, bad mayo. She put her wallet back in her purse. She pushed it down deep, as if to protect it from the oncoming beggar. Just as soon as she could go back and speak to Henry Goldstein, as soon as she got everything straightened out, it would be …

  On the instant, she went cold again. Her heart went cold. Her skin prickled with it.

  Something …

  Her fingers had touched something. Something in her purse. Something hard. Something black and chilly.

  What the hell …? she thought—but somehow she already knew.

  The sounds of Broadway traffic seemed to recede from her. The plash of the fountain, the rattle of the sycamore leaves above. Even the sweetly cool autumn breeze that stirred her hair on her brow seemed to be blowing far away.

  What …?

  Her fingers were groping over the object in her purse. Feeling out its shape. Tracing it along its cold black surface.

  Then, almost without meaning to—without wanting to—she took hold of it. She brought it up. Up from the bottom of the purse on her lap. Past her compact, past her Kleenex, past her lipstick, past her keys. All her relief was gone. The sickly chill of her fear, the tight twist of her fear, had come back redoubled. The sweat dropped off her as she looked down, onto her hands. She stared at what she held.

  A pistol?

  It was a .38 caliber revolver. A nasty-looking little piece. Snub-nosed, black, ugly. Its compact shape seemed coiled on her palm somehow. As if it were ready to spring out, to strike. Her hand shook as she held it. Her lips moved silently as she stared at it.

  What the hell …? A pistol?

  Why don’t you just shoot him?

  She shook her head slowly. She raised her eyes.

  The beggar stood there before her, blotting out the sky. His large, dark shape hung over her. His hot white eyes burned down into her. The smell of him, the gutter smell, the sour, living smell, snaked its way into the freshness of the October air and turned it rancid.

  Nancy stared up at him, clutching the gun just inside her purse. The beggar smiled. His lips cracked open. His teeth showed, yellow and skewed. He held his hand out to her. Nancy caught her breath. She wanted to call out, but couldn’t. The cry stuck in her throat.

  “Don’t forget now,” the beggar said. His voice was a long, slow screak. He leaned down toward her. “Don’t forget: eight o’clock.” He winked. “That’s the Animal Hour.”

  “I find it very discouraging,” said the old woman slowly.

  “When I was a little girl, I was always such a nervous Nell. Always worrying about this and that. About getting sick, about growing old. I used to wish I was old. So I could stop worrying about it. So I would be calmer. And look at me.”

  Perkins looked away from the window. Smiled at his grandmother over his shoulder. She sat slack and shapeless in her satin bergère. Her hands—all twigs and blue veins—trembled atop the pink blanket on her knees. Her watery eyes were lifted to him.

  “I’m a catastrophe,” she complained.

  “Hey,” Perkins said. “Am I gonna have to throw you down the stairs again?”

  “Oh, just hush.” Nana’s voice was soft and quaky. “You know it’s true. A little crisis and I’m crumbling practically in front of our very eyes.”

  “There’s no crisis. And you’ll still be here crumbling when I’ve died of old age.” He turned back to the window. Elegant in its walnut frame, wide and ceiling-high. He gazed through it at a broad view of West Twelfth Street. “Who will you complain to then?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Nana murmured behind him. “It is going to be a problem.”

  Perkins laughed—then grimaced. A bolt of pain had shot up his temple. He touched the spot with his fingertips. Avis’s breakfast of scrambled eggs and coffee had settled his stomach somewhat. Woken him up a little. But his hangover was still beating at his forehead, a living pulse inside his skull. O for a draught of vintage! he thought, that hath been cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth. Or maybe just a really cold beer and a babe with a soapy washcloth … He massaged his head, squinting out the window.

&nbs
p; Out there, five stories below, a woman pushed a stroller under the frail elms that lined the sidewalk. A student in a sweatshirt hauled his books past the brick apartments. And there was another mother, Perkins noticed, tugging her son along by the hand. The dawdling boy was dressed in a black cape. His face was whitened with makeup. Red droplets were painted around his lips. And Perkins thought: That’s right. Today is Halloween …

  “Why are you rubbing your temple, dear? Do you have a hangover?” Nana asked him.

  “That depends,” he said. “Are you gonna nag me about it?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Then I feel great.”

  “Well, I ought to nag you. Drinking all the time. And Zachary with … all his things. And now this … this disappearing. I just don’t know.”

  Shaking his head, he turned from the window and faced her. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Propped his butt on the windowsill. He smiled down at the old woman with her old room around her. Fading into her faded delicacies, he thought. Becoming one with her chairs and their scrolls and cabrioles and palmettes. The lampstand statuary. The Persian rug. The silver candles on the carved mantelpiece of the fireplace. Bathed all of it in the sad autumn gold of the light through the elegant windows.

  “You make me feel like a terrible old failure,” she said.

  “I’m warning you,” he told her. “I go through grandmothers like gravy.”

  “Oh.” She waved him off feebly. “I’m sorry I ever took you two in.”

  “Yeah, well … you’ve got that right.”

  “Hmph.” She turned her head to one side and shot him a flirty moue. He snorted. The fleshy pouches around her eye sagged heavily. The skin of her cheek hung slack on the high bones. There was wild hair sprouting from her upper lip. The hair on her head was thin and yellow.

  She was old even then, he thought. Even sixteen/seventeen years ago. When his mother died, when he and Zach had gone to live with her. She must’ve been over seventy already. A quivery dowager, a doctor’s widow. He could remember her hands fluttering in the air before her face. These two grandsons she had suddenly acquired crashing and tumbling through the MacDougal Alley mews, and her voice trilling: “Oh boys! Oh! Boys! Boys!”

  “You are sure he’s all right, Ollie, aren’t you?” she said suddenly.

  “Positive, kiddo.” He pushed off the window and went to her. “I saw him Friday. He was happy as a clam.”

  “And that’s happy.”

  “What, clams? It’s one laugh with them after another.”

  She reached a hand up to him for comfort. He pressed it between his two palms. Rubbed it to warm the cold, loose flesh. Bent to blow his hot breath over the brittle sticks of fingers.

  “Stop worrying so much,” he whispered. “You know it’s not good for you.”

  “Well, I can’t help it,” said Nana sadly. “I’m a nervous person. I’ve always been a nervous person. What am I supposed to do? Not be a nervous person? That’s not very good advice.”

  “There’s no talking to you, you wicked old witch.” He lay her hand gently back on the blanket. Hanging his own hands on his pockets again, he strolled farther into the room. “I’m telling you. He’s probably on assignment somewhere. Or maybe he’s off somewhere getting ready for the parade or something. He’s gonna be in that big parade tonight.”

  “What parade?”

  “Tonight. The Halloween parade.”

  “Oh. That.” She raised her eyebrows at the windows. “I thought that was only for … Well … You know.”

  “Butt fuckers.”

  “Yes. And those men who dress up as women.”

  “Well, it is mostly.” Perkins was behind her now, wandering toward the edge of the Persian rug. In his bulky sweater, with his long hair flopping around his eyes, with his hangover throbbing, he felt oversized and unkempt. All those appointments and furnishings, all petite and just-so around him. “But Zach’s magazine has a float this year or something. He’s gonna play King Death. He’s got a skull mask and everything.”

  “King Death?”

  “He was all excited about it when I saw him.” He circled past the low teakwood table. The framed portrait photos on it of himself and Zach. He glanced absently down the entrance to a long hallway. Nana’s bedroom was down there and, across from it, a back door that led to the freight elevator and the fire stairs. Staring down the hall, he was thinking about seeing Zach on Friday. Zach in his skull mask. And Tiffany. Goddamned Tiffany, he was thinking. Goddamned Tiffany.

  “And he’s seeing his doctor, his psychiatrist,” Nana said over her shoulder.

  “Well, I didn’t ask him but I guess so. He looked happy, Nana. He looked fine.”

  “Well, as long as he’s not taking those … horrible, horrible drugs …”

  He had wandered back along the sofa now to where he could see her from the side. He saw her shudder, her hands clasping each other. He saw her shake her head at those nasty old drugs, her lips pressed together tight. He smiled sadly with one corner of his mouth. Sometimes, some moments like that, she was just his mother to the life. The same birdlike tremolos. The same ardent, wide-eyed worries; her sacred fears. That wringing movement of the hands—he could remember his mom doing that. Oh, don’t let Zachary get too cold, Ollie. He wanted to throw his body around the old woman, to fend off the hovering archangel.

  She had the same heart as his mother too. The same problem: That’s where Mom got it from. Normally, it can be kept fairly stable, the doctor had told him. But it’s unpredictable. The valve can close suddenly and … Perkins had to shut his eyes a moment to fight off that last image of his mother. The way he’d found her: stretched out on her side between the sofa and the coffee table. Her short hair spilled over her cheek. Her thin arm flung out over her head. The saucer upside down on the rug and the cup on its side and the small spurt-stain of tea on the white shag. A weak valve. The same damn thing.

  “Really, Nana,” he heard himself say. “Do me a favor: don’t get all upset over nothing.”

  “Well, but, Ollie, that’s what I always do.”

  “Well, but, Nana, it isn’t good for you. Jesus.”

  She tried to draw herself up, but sagged again almost at once under her anxieties. “Well, why did Tiffany say the mews? She said you had to go to the mews.”

  “Oh … Tiffany.”

  “Well, she’s worried about him, poor thing.”

  “Well, she should’ve waited. She shouldn’t’ve called you. I’d’ve plugged my phone in eventually.” He muttered this. He knew Nana liked Tiffany. The closest thing she had to a granddaughter-in-law. Still. “She should’ve kept trying,” he muttered again.

  “But she was very specific,” Nana insisted. “She said you had to go to the mews. She said she was sure he must be there.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “And that’s where he always went to take the drugs. So why would she say that, Ollie?”

  “Forget it, Nana, really.” God damn Tiffany, he thought. “He’s not on the drugs. I just saw him.”

  “I wish someone would buy that place,” she said, meaning the mews. She pressed her hands down on the blanket. The yellow strands of her hair trembled at her ears.

  He walked over to her. He crouched down by her chair. She turned her head to him. Her thin, shriveled face. The loose flesh on it quivering. The water in her eyes threatening to overflow.

  “I’m serious now,” he said to her. “You keep this up, I’m gonna have to start breaking some old lady bones. You’ve gotta calm down.”

  “He thinks too much,” Nana said. “That’s his problem. Your mother was just like that. He thinks and he worries about nothing at all. All those strange books he reads. And all that talk about … about God and salvation and I don’t know what else.” She reached out weakly, patted his hand where it held to the arm of her chair. “That’s why you were always such a comfort to me, Ollie. You never believed in anything.”

  He laughed again, ignor
ing the pain. “Yeah.” He pushed off her chair. Stood. “Maybe that’s why I don’t have anything to say.”

  “Oh now.”

  He reached out to her, smiling. Laid the back of his hand softly against her cheek. She leaned against the hand, closing her eyes. Perkins looked down at her. His smile fell away. She was so still like that. Her eyes closed. Her breathing barely visible. He could feel the fading furniture around her. The fading pictures. The fading gold in the light. It was pretty well close to unbearable.

  He took a deep breath, let it out unsteadily. “Don’t …” He had to clear his throat. “Don’t worry, Nana. Please. Okay? I promise. I’ll go right over there.”

  Nancy stared up from the bench. The beggar hovered over her. The blue sky, the yellow sycamores, the path, the other benches, the Hall, they were all erased. He filled her vision. His slack jowls, his glaring white eyes, pressed down on her.

  Eight o’clock. Don’t forget now. That’s the Animal Hour.

  Her pulse beat loudly in her head. It drowned the honk of horns, the Broadway buses. The rattle of leaves and the footsteps on the street were gone. There was just the tom-tom of her pulse in her head, all through her.

  Eight o’clock …

  “What?” She had to force the word out. “What did you say?”

  That’s the Animal Hour …

  The beggar held his hand out, grinning, glaring at her.

  “What?” she said again, more loudly; shrilly.

  He spoke in his thin cackle. “Can you spare a quarter, Miss? Just a quarter—fifty cents—for a cup of coffee.”

  Nancy tried to breathe. She tried to catch her breath. Jesus, am I going nuts? What did I hear, what did he say?

  “Please, Miss. A quarter. Just something for some coffee.”

  She became aware that her wrist was aching. The gun. She remembered all at once that she was still gripping the gun. Holding it just within the mouth of her leather purse.

  Christ!

  She made a small noise. Looked down, stared down. Saw the ugly black weapon in her hand.

  Christ! Christ!