Jill Ciment Page 6

  “May I take your number?” the nurse says.

  “My wife just spoke to him.”

  “He’s attending to an emergency,” she says.

  “He’s calling back?” Ruth asks.

  “After his break,” Alex says.

  This time of year, at nine-thirty on the dot, the sun disappears behind the new twelve-story elevator building on the corner and, for seven minutes, their bedroom becomes a cave.

  Ruth remains on the mattress’s edge; Alex joins her. She’s more shadow than mass. They don’t speak. What is there to say? When the sun finally reappears, it’s like a second sunrise.

  They stand once again and open the door. While they were holed up in their cave, the apartment has been invaded. A woman wanders down the hall counting electrical outlets. A little boy stands at one end, flicking the light switch on and off. In the kitchen, a middle-aged couple, florid-faced and breathing hard from the climb, are helping themselves to glasses of water. Lily fields their questions as best she can. “The co-op has no plans to put in an elevator.” “There is a washing machine and dryer; it’s in the basement.”

  Others arrive: a man wanting to know if their apartment is wired for high-speed (Alex doesn’t even know what that means); a woman wondering if she can keep plants on the fire escape because where she now lives, they don’t allow plants on the fire escapes, and she’s adamant about growing her own tomatoes for medical reasons; the couple upset about the pigeons in the air shaft. “Are they permanent?” they ask Lily. “I don’t think they’re migratory,” she says.

  Another assault ensues: the pianist trying to calculate if the century-old floor joists can bear the weight of his baby grand, never mind that it won’t fit through the door; two men curious to know if the co-op would prevent them from tearing down the kitchen wall to open up the space; the horse-faced woman in sweatpants and yellow rubbers asking if the co-op would allow her to see clients, though she never once mentions what she does; the harried couple in matching red parkas who never take off their hoods. She strides around the apartment, while he watches the news on his cell phone.

  “Have they found Pamir?” Alex asks.

  The hood shakes no.

  “We have a million-dollar decision to make,” the other hood says. “Turn off the goddamn news.”

  Alex and Ruth slip back into their bedroom to try Dr. Rush again, but a young woman in high-heel boots is sitting on their bed. “Would you mind if I lie down for a sec? I’ll take off my shoes. I want to see what the view looks like from here.”

  Ruth is appalled, but Alex shrugs.

  The woman unzips her knee-high boots, places them next to Ruth’s slippers, and stretches out on the mattress; she doesn’t get up for ten minutes. Then a man leaves the window open in Alex’s studio, and they and Lily have to rush around gathering up all the FBI memos and sketches blowing across the floor.

  Finally, the window’s shut; the art is picked up; the woman’s risen from their bed. Ruth dials the hospital, while Alex shuts the bedroom door.

  “Dr. Rush was supposed to call us back,” Ruth tells the recovery room nurse.

  “He’s still attending to the emergency,” she says.

  Why didn’t Alex tell her? She braces herself for the worse. “How’s Dorothy?”

  “Sleeping. We’re trying to wake her every fifteen minutes, but she hasn’t yet responded. We’ll keep trying.”

  Someone taps on the door. Alex answers it. “Excuse me,” says a man sporting glasses thicker than Ruth’s, “but do you know where I could buy a replacement knob for the stove?”

  • • •

  “I think it went very well,” Lily tells them as she gathers up the leftover fliers in the living room. She’s showing another apartment at one and is running late. “The two ladies and Harold are interested, and the couple in the matching parkas asked about the building’s finances, but I doubt anyone’s going to make a firm offer as long as Pamir’s out there. Let’s hope they catch him soon. Good luck with your little dog.” She closes the door behind her. A small lake remains in the hall from the runoff of so many dripping boots.

  DOROTHY’S EYELID IS PRIED OPEN. A WAND OF light pierces her sleep. “Time to get up, little mama.”

  “Try rolling her.”

  A force stronger than gravity shovels her over.

  “No response. Should I call Rush?”

  “He’s still on duty? Where’s the surgeon?”

  “Gone back to the Hamptons. The horse lady called. I took the message. I guess he wants to be the second car through the tunnel, after the mayor’s.”

  “She’s got to be thirsty. Wet her lips and see if you can get her to lick them.”

  Until the drops of water are painted on her lips, Dorothy doesn’t even know she’s thirsty. Now all she craves is to slake her cruel thirst. She licks Death’s sweet-tasting fingers.

  “Don’t give her too much.”

  His fingers withdraw, but not before the restorative water has worked its miracle. Dorothy opens her eyes and releases a high-pitched sigh of such gratitude that even Death, who’s heading out the door to find Dr. Rush, turns around.

  “Welcome back, Dorothy.”

  Saturday Afternoon

  THE WAR

  ALEX GOES TO SAHARA’S FOR TAKEOUT, WHILE Ruth carries the mop and pail back into the kitchen, then airs out the rooms. The horse-faced lady had smoked in the bathroom; the tomato-lady had been doused in noxious perfume; even Harold’s lingering smell is offensive. She wants these alien odors out of her house. While the windows are open and the rooms chilly with drafts, she sits before of the glow of the television set, as one sits before a fire on a cold afternoon.

  The basset-eyed newscaster looks as exhausted as Ruth feels. He’s interviewing a pretty woman with bad teeth. They face each other in comfortable wingback chairs. A red, white, and blue lightshow plays on the gigantic plasma screen behind them. The caption reads, Hostage in Her Own Home. “We have an exclusive with Debbie Twitchell, the twenty-six-year-old bartender who spent two harrowing hours with Pamir yesterday evening. Twitchell lives in a basement apartment in Midtown, less than four blocks from the tunnel’s entrance.”

  The camera closes in on Debbie’s face; she looks as if she’s been holding her breath the whole time the news-caster spoke; she looks like she’s going to explode if she doesn’t get her story out, now. “I was very scared. I knew something was wrong when I saw him on the stairs. Please don’t hurt me, I say. He says, If you don’t scream I won’t hurt you. He has an accent but it never dawns on me he’s a terrorist. I don’t know what Muslim sounds like. He pushes me inside and looks to see no one else is home. I think for sure he’s going to rape me, but instead, he asks me to turn on the TV.”

  “Did he show any anger at this point?”

  “No, he wants me to switch to the news. The thing about the tunnel and the suicide bomber is on; I can see him get fidgety. He’s sweating and he won’t take off his coat. I start to put two and two together; he must have a bomb under the coat.”

  The basset-eyed newscaster looks directly at Ruth and anyone else watching. “What Pamir does next will shock you. We’re talking with Debbie Twitchell, hostage in her own home.”

  “He says, What kind of pills do you keep in this house? I say, What kind do you want?”

  “You say that?”

  “He has a bomb. I don’t want to die. I didn’t know terrorists take drugs. He forces me into the bathroom and makes me get in the tub. He’s looking everywhere for my pills.”

  “Does he find anything he wants?”

  “All I have are antidepressants. He’s getting really jittery. He keeps asking if I have anything stronger. I keep thinking he’s going to press the button on his bomb.”

  “Did you see the bomb?”

  “No, like I say, he keeps his coat on. He says he’s going to kill me if I’m lying. I think maybe if I do everything he asks, he’ll let me live. So I say I have some crystal meth.”

  R
uth isn’t sure she heard Debbie right. The basset-eyed newscaster isn’t sure he did either. “You offered Pamir methamphetamine? A man you believe has a bomb under his coat?”

  “Soon as I say it, I think, what have you done, Debbie? You’re going to give a terrorist the thing that made you crash your car and steal from your mama. I think you’ve just killed yourself. But I try to stay cool. I say, Have you ever done ice? He says he hasn’t. He wants me to show him how to do it. I make him two lines. I say, Here you go. He says, Aren’t you going to do it with me? I didn’t want to, I’ve been clean for three months. I only keep a little bit in the house as a test from God. But I don’t want to die either. So I do a quarter of a line.”

  “And he does the rest?”

  “Yes. I ask him if he minds if I pray. I don’t know if God will even listen to my prayers because I’m high. He says no, so I ask him if he wants to pray with me.”

  “Did Pamir pray?”

  “I think so. He mumbles something in Muslim, then jumps up and runs out the door. God heard me even though I was high.”

  Alex and Mr. Rahim watch the interview on a small set shelved in a corner of Sahara’s. Alex sits on a counter stool, while Rahim stands over a vat of boiling oil, waiting for Ruth and Alex’s falafels to bob to the surface. Without taking his eyes off the set, Mr. Rahim opens a fresh package of pita and tosses two onto the grill. He blindly reaches for a knife, and dices lettuce, tomato, and onions by feel alone. The falafels rise and gyrate in the bubbling heat. With tongs, he plucks out the sizzling balls and drops them into the hot bread pockets. He slathers hot sauce on Ruth’s, tahini on Alex’s, then wraps them in old-fashioned waxed paper.

  “Who would give an intruder methamphetamine?” Alex asks.

  “The stupid girl thinks Muslim is a language,” Mr. Rahim says.

  Tonight’s polling question fills the screen: Do you think terrorists take drugs?

  Alex pays, while Mr. Rahim settles the sandwiches in a paper bag and adds napkins and pepper, but remembers not to add salt. Alex can’t have salt these days; he and Mr. Rahim often compare their high blood pressure medicines.

  “Tell me, Alex,” Mr. Rahim says, “do you think terrorists take drugs?”

  Alex isn’t sure if he’s joking or not.

  Mr. Rahim smiles. “I know if I was going to blow myself up, I’d definitely take something.” He slides the bag over to Alex. “My prayers are with your little dog.”

  At the bottom of their staircase, Alex pauses to look up. It’s like climbing to the top of a lighthouse. He only takes two steps at a time when Ruth’s around, though if asked, he’d deny it. But today, even if she were cheering him on, he couldn’t sprint up. Between last night and this morning, he can barely make it to the third landing without using the handrail. The oxygen seems to be thinning as he ascends. He stops to let his heart slow down when he sees Ruth’s face hanging over the rail.

  “Dorothy’s opened her eyes, Alex! She’s taken water!”

  Ruth pours them each a glass of wine in celebration of Dorothy’s turn for the better, while Alex sits down. The kitchen table is already set with silverware and cloth napkins. She arranges the falafel sandwiches on plates, and then throws away the bag, but not before salvaging the paper napkins and pepper. She squirrels those away in a drawer already crammed with enough take-out napkins and free pepper to outlast them both. The television is off. After the hospital called, she didn’t want the news droning in the background.

  “Drinking water must mean she’s fighting,” Alex says, biting into his sandwich.

  Ruth has no appetite. Only now is it dawning on her that she forgot to ask, yet again, how successful, or not, Dorothy’s operation was. Maybe she doesn’t want to know the answer?

  “Dorothy’s telling us she wants to live, Ruth.”

  The phone rings. Alex answers, while Ruth braces for what she’s sure is coming next: the nurse taking back the good news.

  He shakes his head in wonder. “Harold’s Ladies have made an offer,” he tells her.

  “With Pamir still on the loose?” She picks up the cordless extension. “Did they catch him, Lily?”

  “I don’t know any more than you do,” she says.

  “How much?” Alex asks.

  “Eight hundred and fifty thousand.”

  “So low?” Ruth says.

  “They’re gambling on you and Alex panicking and selling while you think you still can. Let’s face it, if Pamir turns out to be a suicide bomber, prices could drop even lower. What should I tell them?”

  Ruth and Alex exchange looks. “It might be our only chance to sell,” she says.

  “Maybe we should take it.”

  “What if Pamir turns out not to be a suicide bomber? If we sell now, and everything returns to normal, we’ll have priced ourselves out of the city, let alone an elevator building. I’m scared, Alex. What if he turns out to be a suicide bomber? We might not get another offer for months, maybe years.”

  “What would you do?” they ask Lily.

  “Stall. But not for too long.”

  They finish their lunch in front of the television. A press conference is taking place on City Hall’s steps. Behind a thicket of microphones, the mayor solemnly lowers his head and waits for the dozens of reporters to grow pin-drop silent. When he finally looks up, his expression is that of a father about to tell his children there’s no money for Christmas.

  “If it’s bad news,” Ruth says, “maybe we should grab the offer.”

  “If it’s bad news, there might not be an offer.”

  “I just got off the phone with Baltimore’s police chief,” says the mayor. “Twelve minutes ago, an oil tanker truck collided with oncoming traffic and overturned on the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Eight people were killed, three others are in critical condition, including the driver, who remains trapped in the vehicle.”

  “Does the mayor think the two incidents are connected?”

  “Is the driver wearing an explosive device?”

  “Do you think it’s a new pattern of attack? Is the second driver from the Middle East? When can the police question him?”

  “When I have answers, you’ll have answers,” the mayor says.

  The phone rings.

  “What if we waited too long, Alex? What if they’re taking back their offer?”

  “What if it’s the hospital?” he says, reaching for his extension. She picks up hers.

  “We have a bidding war!” Lily tells them. “The Red Parkas just made a counteroffer, eight hundred and seventy-five.”

  “How can that be?” Ruth asks.

  “Are you watching the news?” Alex asks.

  “It’s what we realtors back in the nineties used to call the Mugging Principle. Someone’s mugged on your block and all the neighbors want to sell. Prices drop. But if muggings start happening on every block, regardless of neighborhood, then muggings no longer factor into the market price. If everywhere is equally dangerous, even Baltimore, you might as well live in New York. I put a call in to Harold’s Ladies.”

  • • •

  The Francis Scott Key Bridge now spans their screen: dead center, the tanker lies on its side. Its neck appears broken. The tractor cab, with the driver still inside, is dangling over the railing by a cable that looks, to Alex and Ruth, no thicker than a horse’s tail.

  Even before the phone finishes its first ring, they grab their respective extensions.

  “Harold’s Ladies are willing to go up to eight eighty,” Lily says, “but you have to decide now. They don’t want to get into a bidding war. They were emphatic about that, said the offer’s good for five minutes only.” Lily pauses. “Should I pretend I couldn’t reach you and call the Parkas?”

  “Where would we be? Who would go out today?” Ruth asks.

  “They asked about your little dog. I could tell them you went to the animal hospital.”

  “They must know we have a cell phone.”

  “Don’t animal hospitals forbid cell ph
ones? Human ones do”

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to say we’re at the hospital.”

  “Call the Parkas,” Alex says.

  Fire trucks, bomb squad vans, hovering helicopters, ambulances, squad cars, bulldozers, all bejeweled by whirling red lights, begin rolling across the bridge toward the truck.

  The screen splits in two. The results of this afternoon’s poll appear on the right:

  Do you think terrorists take drugs?

  78% yes

  20% no

  2% not sure

  with a margin error of 3%

  The phone rings.

  “Good news or bad? What would you like to hear first?” Lily asks them.

  “Good,” Ruth says.

  “Bad,” Alex says.

  “Harold’s Ladies are threatening to drop out, and the Parkas haven’t returned my call yet.”

  “What’s the good news?” Ruth asks.

  “A third party has entered the fray, the lady with the horsy face. You remember, she was wearing yellow rubbers and sweatpants.”

  “I don’t remember any yellow galoshes,” Alex says.

  “She talked about seeing clients of some sort. Do you think the co-op would object?”

  “Depends what kind of clients,” Ruth says.

  “How much?” Alex asks.

  “Eight eighty-five.”

  “Should we take it?” Ruth asks.

  “It’s hard to say. These days, once a bidding war starts, everyone loses reason. I’ve had couples practically offer their firstborn. Last week two got into a preemptive battle; the apartment wasn’t yet listed. But this isn’t your usual war. Let me do this: I’ll inform Harold’s Ladies and the Parkas about the new offer. All they can say is no. Meanwhile, I’ll call Yellow Rubbers and tell her you’re still at the animal hospital, incommunicado.”

  • • •

  While they wait for Lily to call back, Ruth switches to another news channel. This one is also broadcasting the spectacle of emergency vehicles, red lights whirling, rolling across the Francis Scott Key Bridge toward the truck with the broken neck. She tries a third news channel, but the rescue pageant is all that’s playing. Station by station, she keeps searching for the breaking story that will help her make the right decision. She holds the remote at arm’s length, like a pistol, and fires—bridge, rescue pageant, tanker truck, dangling cab, bridge again. Her arm grows weary, but she doesn’t lower her aim. The phone finally rings again. She grabs it with her free hand, beating Alex to the draw. “What did the Parkas say?”