The Animal Hour

by Andrew Klavan

  And no one—none of the pedestrians—noticed that the face she was staring at—the nine faces on the nine TVs—was her own.

  But it was. Nancy shook her head for a moment, unable to take it in. There she was, nine times, three on three on three, staring back out at herself. Another second and the truth of it got through to her. She broke from her trance. She bolted forward. She ran forward to the glass door with the worm-eaten skeleton. Pushed through into the store.

  And now, she was surrounded by herself. Everywhere—on both long side walls of the store—in the center shelves that ran from front to back—everywhere, her own face stared from screens of various sizes. It was a still photo, a color picture faintly out of focus. But she saw the broad cheeks, the strong jaw softened by the fall of curling hair. The direct, strong, honest eyes.

  There I am! she thought, turning from set to set, drinking in her old self. There I am! I found me! There …

  From somewhere, some speaker somewhere, a newsman’s voice was telling his story in short hammer strokes. She tried to concentrate, tried to listen, but then …

  “Miss?”

  At first she did not know where the voice was coming from. Soon enough, though, she saw. A store clerk. A tubby Indian in a sweat-stained white shirt, his red tie loosened at his throat. He was hurrying toward her down the aisle. Waddling between all her faces as they rose up the wall, as they ran along the shelves.

  “Miss …”He was shaking his finger at her angrily. “You cannot come here. Dressed like that. You must go.”

  “… as outraged law officers promise to work relentlessly,” the newsman was saying.

  The store clerk waddled toward her, belly first. “Excuse me. Excuse me, Miss.”

  “… sifting clues around the clock …”

  I have to listen to this, she thought.

  “You are not buying something,” said the store clerk like an angry hen.

  “… trying to solve the savage murder …”

  “Out, out, out, out.”

  “… of Nancy Kincaid …”

  “What?” said Nancy.

  But the store clerk was upon her. His round belly pushing her toward the door. His finger waggling in her face. “You are not buying something dressed in this way. You must go.”

  She staggered back from him. Staring, open-mouthed, as her face—as all her faces—flicked away to nothing on the walls and the shelves. The coffee-skinned anchorwoman returned.

  “Elsewhere in the city tonight,” she said, “firefighters in Brooklyn are working to contain a blaze that …”

  “Brooklyn?” said Nancy. “But what …?”

  The savage murder of Nancy Kincaid?

  “You must go!” the store clerk screeched in his high-pitched Indian accent.

  You mean I’m not the murderer? I’m the goddamned victim?

  “What’s happening?” Nancy cried out.

  “I will call the police!” said the store clerk.

  He came on hard, driving her back, sending her staggering back until she was at the door. She wanted to throw her hands up at him. She wanted to scream: For God’s sake! Leave me alone! Can’t you see I’m dead!

  But the store clerk reached out past her head. Shoved the door open behind her.

  “Out, out, out,” he said, bellying her backward.

  The pedestrians passing on the sidewalk glanced up briefly as Nancy was forced out among them. She stood still in their scurrying midst, staring at the store door as it swung shut with a pneumatic hiss.

  But what the hell …? she thought. What the hell is happening?

  She stared at the glass door; at the new evening reflected there; the televisions glowing and flickering within; the skeleton hanging before her. That skeleton, worm-infested, crawling with rats: It was staring out at her. Grinning and staring with his yellow eyes, out from behind the reflection of her own terrified face.

  Perkins bolted from the balustrade. Shouldered his way through the bar crowd, then short-stepped down the sweep of marble stairs to the concourse. His first thought was to run straight across the floor. To grab her arm. Spin her toward him, shouting in her face. Tiffany, what the fuck is going on?

  But he hung back. He watched as she ran ahead of him. Weaving her way through the streams of commuters. Across the vaulted canyon, by the marble arches along the walls. She clutched her red bag tightly. Kept her head ducked down, her face hidden by the baseball cap, her hair tucked up under it. She ploughed grimly through the gaps in the crowd. Moving urgently, by all the looks of it. Heading toward some definite destination.

  Why did she come back? Perkins thought. He slipped through the lines and crowds behind her. Moved after her steadily, keeping her in view. His whole body seemed to be pulsing and tightening, anxiety and excitement making him jittery, breathless. His thoughts pulsed too, little electric bursts of them: Where did she go? What was she doing? Why did she come back? Damn her, why did she have to come back? “Excuse me,” he said softly, as he worked his way around the shoulders of a rushing businessman. He was not even trying to get close to Tiffany anymore. He was following her, plain and simple.

  He slid around an elderly woman, pushed between a pair of backpacking kids. He watched her over the heads of the crowd, through the spaces between their bodies. He kept moving after her. Tiffany had now reached a subway entrance. She stopped there. Perkins pulled up short, about fifteen yards behind. He let the crowd converge in front of him. Ducked down, hoping to hide behind them, but catching glimpses of her still. He saw her turn, slowly; turn her head to scan the vast terminal with big, hunted eyes. Did she know she was being followed? Could she pick him out? He couldn’t tell. He saw her ashen cheeks, the thin line of her white lips.

  You don’t understand anything, Oliver.

  And then he saw her take a breath—and she darted into the entranceway.

  He moved forward quickly, afraid of losing her in the crowd. But when he came into the entrance, he spotted her at once. That colorful quilt shirt was easy to see. He tailed it down the stairs into the station. Through the turnstiles. Across the low-ceilinged underground plain of columns and signs and stairwells. She moved with the other travelers, with their quick, synchronized steps. He kept her in view: the movement of her hips, the way her arm went out at the elbow as she hurried down another flight of stairs to the train platform …

  She had worn black that night, he remembered. The night he had found Zach drugged and loony at the mews. He had taken his brother to St. Vincent’s Hospital and called Tiffany from there and she had shown up wearing black. Black jeans, a black turtleneck. Her black hair pulled tight behind her with the silver streak woven into the ponytail. Her face had been drawn and very pinched and white. She had looked tired to Perkins, cross and unattractive.

  She got on a number 7 train now, crosstown, and he got on, one car behind her. He worked his way to the storm door, where he could see through the glass panels from his car into hers. He leaned his shoulder against the door and watched her. Sitting there with the red bag on her lap. Staring into space, miserable and pale. Perkins wiped his mouth nervously.

  The doctors had kept Zach at the hospital overnight. Perkins had taken Tiffany back to her apartment: the railroad flat in the East Village, hers and Zach’s. She had sat on her bed with her hands hanging down between her knees. Looking straight ahead of her. He had seen her in the dresser mirror as he turned to go. He had wanted to scream at her. He had wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. All her mystical horseshit. Why hadn’t she taken better care of his brother?

  The train pulled to a stop at Forty-second Street. She got off there, and so did he. Once again, he followed her through the wide, low underground caverns. She was going faster now. Casting little glances side to side at the men and women walking around her. Did she sense him there? Did she know somehow he was behind her? His nerves throbbed in him to the rhythm of his footsteps. His footsteps echoed in the broad underground passage, the echo lost in the echoing
footsteps of the crowd.

  “Well …” he had said, and moved toward the door.

  “Don’t go.” Tiffany had not even looked up at him. She had sat on the bed, stared straight ahead, and her pale face had begun to tremble. And then she buckled forward, covering her face with her hand. He had gone to her, sat next to her on the bed. Put his arm around her, thinking, Well, why didn’t you watch out for him, damn it? But he hated to see a woman cry. She had pressed her cheek against his shoulder. He had felt her tears dampening his shirt and stroked her hair. She had looked up at him desperately. “Oh God, Oliver, oh God,” she’d said. And then he had kissed her.

  He swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth as he watched her moving ahead of him. Why the hell had he had to kiss her? Why the hell did it have to happen at all? He watched her vanish and reappear in the hurrying crowd. Caught glimpses of her hips switching and remembered Mulligan’s photograph and her white, naked ass. The nape of her neck looked bare and delicate with her hair all piled up under the baseball cap … Christ. Christ, he had known Zach loved her. Even when it was happening, he had known she was the only woman Zach had ever loved. He had told himself that it was nothing; just this one urgent moment with her. He had told himself that they both just needed comfort on a rotten, lonesome night when things had gone wrong. And then, oh Jesus, how he had ploughed into her. How he had pistoned into her, crying out as she cried out, as she tore at his shoulders with her frantic fingers. Her body had felt soft under the cotton turtleneck, but when she stripped the shirt away she was sinewy and hard. Her skin was dark, her breasts were small and sharp, her thighs clamped him and he could not stop touching her, nipping at her, driving into her soft mouth with his tongue. He had come with his powerful arms wrapped around her, holding her tightly to him and moaning her name in a way he did not like to remember.

  Tiffany boarded the West Side train. Perkins pulled up a second, still trying to swallow that taste that would not go down. Then he went in, one car behind her. Dashed through the doors as they were sliding closed. Snaked swiftly through the jam of workers, secretaries, execs. Pushed to the storm door, so as not to lose her as the train pulled out, as it picked up speed.

  He pressed against the door and peered through its glass panel into Tiffany’s car. He saw her, sitting against the right wall around the center. And then the undulating movement in the car caught his eye and he saw the rest of it. He saw the celebration.

  It was a party of freaks. All through the car. Human hybrids, mutant beasts. Dancing in the aisle, arms raised, hips swaying. Standing on the seats, their heads thrown back, their chests forward: howling at the ceiling till they lost their balance and tumbled into the arms of the creatures below. Cowled, chalk-faced ghouls; zombies in pinstripe suits; cadavers in lacy slips dry-humping top-hatted Mr. Hydes. And every centaurlike combination of the sexes—women with padded jockstraps, bearded men with padded bras, indefinable assemblages of curves and bulges and body hair—fandangoing with one another, bottom to bottom, crotch to crotch, in the swaying, jam-packed car.

  Perkins peered through the glass. Turned and glanced at his own car: the sedate gathering of workers crushed against one another, wriggling to find space to read their evening tabloids. He turned back to the glass panel and peered through at the bizarre celebration. And then he noticed Tiffany again, and caught his breath. She was gazing right at him.

  She was gazing desperately up at the glass panel from her seat. Smiling an unhappy, mendicant, despairing little smile. Gazing right at him. Or was she? A second later, she had turned away again and was staring blankly into the wild scene before her. He wasn’t sure if she had seen him or not.

  The train pulled into the West Fourth Street station. The creatures in the next car howled in unison: “Halloweeeeen!” They poured out the doors. Perkins pressed his face to the glass, his view obscured by the mob of them.

  Then the car was clear. He could see again. Tiffany was gone. And the subway doors were closing.

  He leapt to them. Caught them as they shut. Grunted as he forced them ajar. They retracted a moment and he slipped through. He stood on the platform, looking this way and that until he caught sight of her quilted shirt again. She was in the midst of a huddle of monstrosities, moving toward the stairs. He followed, rising up after them into the blue evening.

  As he stepped out into the chill air, he checked his watch. It was nearly six. The parade wouldn’t start for an hour, but Sixth Avenue was already lined with spectators. Some were in costumes, some in street clothes. Some had taken up their viewing posts by the police barricades along the sidewalks. Others, most, strolled in a heavy flow past the broad display windows of the low malls. Vendors were setting up their tables before the windows. They were hawking noisemakers to the passersby, and domino masks bordered with flashing colored lights.

  The avenue itself was cleared of traffic. Policemen patrolled freely on it, pacing up and down. Perkins clutched a little at the sight of so many of them, so close to home, so close to Zach. But he couldn’t do anything about it now. Tiffany was getting away from him. Heading uptown, quicksilver, slipping through the dense crowd, zig and zag. Perkins had to lift up on tiptoe to watch her Mets cap weaving ahead of him.

  He followed her—and he wanted to stop following her. He felt she was leading him on now, taking him somewhere he did not want to go. He wanted to let her disappear, let the whole thing disappear …“Excuse me, excuse me,” he murmured as he worked his way around the strolling people. He could not stop himself. He felt powerless, as in a dream. As in a dream, he had a horrible sense of premonition. And it was building …

  He looked up. Ahead of him, darkening against the dusk, the spires and turrets, the brick and tracery of the Jefferson Market Library rose up out of its surrounding cluster of trees.

  “Oh hell, sister, that was wrong.” That’s what he’d said to her when they were finished. He had sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. Wishing he could wriggle out of his own skin. Get away from his own remorse.

  “Oliver. Don’t say that.” She had sat up, the sheet falling from her breasts. She had put her hand on his shoulder. He turned away from her. “I needed you,” she said softly. “I needed you. Really.” He wanted to tell her to shut up. He wanted to get the hell away from her. She leaned her head against his back, her soft cheek against his skin. “This has been getting me all so confused,” she said. “The way he’s been. What he’s been talking about.” He heard her sniff. He felt one of her tears roll down his spine. “I mean, he’s so wise, he sees so much, I don’t understand what … I mean, the things he makes me do now …” His skin crawled. Damn her. He felt like such a shit for doing this; goddamn her. He sat where he was, hunched and silent. And she said: “I just sometimes feel like I can’t stand it anymore, that’s all. I mean, I try to understand, but he’s, like, on such a whole other plain from me, from everyone … it’s just these things …”

  “Stop it,” he said. It came out a growl, harsher than he’d wanted. “What’re you talking about? Just stop it. Don’t put it all on him.”

  She pulled away. He glanced over his shoulder and saw her looking at him, baffled, teary eyed. “I didn’t … I didn’t mean … Well, you saw what he was …”

  “Stop.” Goddamn it. He ripped himself free of the sheets, stood naked off the bed. “The man’s on drugs, that’s all, that’s what I saw. He needs some help, for Christ’s sake. That’s all. A little less of your airy-fairy bulbhit.”

  “Oliver, don’t you understand what …?”

  “I mean, he wasn’t taking that garbage before he met you, Tiffany.” He only muttered it, but her face went slack, as if he’d stunned her with a blow. He felt bad; it made him angrier still. “All that—cosmic crap. All that expand your mind, purify your aura, raise your astro-level. What’d you expect?”

  “But I’m not the one …”

  “I mean, isn’t this what you wanted? Isn’t this what you wanted him to be like?”

  Sh
e stared at him. Slowly, she shook her head. Her chin began to quiver. “God, Oliver! God, why are you being so mean to me?” Then her face buckled and she began to cry in earnest. “Oh God!” She flung herself back on the bed. Buried her face in her arms, sobbing. “You don’t understand! You don’t understand anything, Oliver, not anything. Just get out, damn it. Just get out of here. Please.”

  Then he lost her. Right in the shadow of the library. He had looked up for only a second at the blackened patterns on its stained glass windows. He had thought, only for a second, about how he had planned to go up there tonight. Up to his workspace. To try to write a little, to watch the parade. And he had thought, without meaning to, without expecting to, without understanding why, he had thought suddenly that he could never go back. He could never write a poem again. He must keep silent. Must …

  And when he looked down over the thick currents of people going to and fro in the gloaming, the blue baseball cap was gone. Tiffany was gone.

  Perkins ran forward. Pushed forward through the crowd. He slid and shouldered his way up to the corner of West Twelfth. That’s where she’d been standing. That’s where he’d seen her last. He looked down the sidestreet. Along the brick facades, beneath the yellowing trees. Traffic had been stopped here too. People walked in the street, and along the sidewalk under street lamps and shadows. But there was no sign of Tiffany. Perkins stood there, looking for her, his heart pounding hard, his thoughts jumbling.

  And then, with a little coppery spurt of fear on the back of his tongue, he realized this was Nana’s block. There was Nana’s building right in front of him. She must have gone in there. She must have gone up to see Nana …

  He punched his fist into his palm as he charged forward again.

  “Bitch!” he whispered. He started running. “The bitch!”