Caleb looked up again, first at Jessie, then at their mother.
Molly sat perfectly still, as calm as stone, watching the men at her feet. Her hands were locked in her lap, her left hand gripping her guilty right hand.
There was a blink of bright light, a camera flash. Cameron Ditchley stood across the room with a pocket-size digital camera.
Toby laid the man on his back. He pulled off the man’s jacket and passed it to Caleb. The man wore a white shirt. Suddenly his blood was bright red like paint. Toby took a deep breath—he was sure he would faint—but the swoony nausea passed. The moment took over, the action continued. He applied pressure to the flat of the arm with both hands, one on top of the other, like they’d taught him in the Boy Scouts in Milwaukee. The blood felt hot on his hands, then sticky. Then he was using towels, white terry cloth, and the blood became squishy.
“You’ll be okay,” he told the man. “You’ll be fine.”
The man had turned away, unable to look at his own blood. His face was candle-wax white. His five o’clock shadow looked like black pepper on his white skin. His head was raised. Caleb had rolled up the man’s jacket and set it under his neck.
Toby didn’t know if he was helping the man or hurting him. Maybe the wound was minor and would stop bleeding on its own. Or the man would bleed to death anyway. Toby didn’t know, yet there was nothing else for him to do but continue. He could only go through the motions and hope they were the right motions.
Here was Caleb beside him. What did Caleb think? But he was not doing this for Caleb. No. Caleb no longer counted. And here was Henry too, but Henry didn’t count either. His dick in Toby’s mouth was nothing compared to a gunshot wound. No, Toby was taking action solely for the sake of this poor man, this stranger. And for the experience. Toby was able to hold himself together, keep his panic under control by thinking, Remember this. Every sensory memory, thought, and emotion. You can use them all one day.
70
Nobody fled the party, but people knew to get out of the way. Half of the guests were on the terrace watching through the French doors when the police and paramedics arrived.
The two paramedics went straight to Prager and knelt beside him. A cop with a dense mustache stood over them, talking to Caleb.
“It was an accident,” Caleb told the cop. “My mother was showing this man her gun and—”
“She shot me!” cried Prager from the floor. “I gave him a bad review and his mother shot me!” The critic had not said a word since the “accident,” and his anger startled everyone. He was furious, but he sounded panicked too, his voice breaking. There was more fear than righteousness in his bugged-out eyes.
“Chill, buddy,” said a medic. “Relax.”
Molly still sat on the sofa, Jessie beside her, holding her mother’s hand. “I don’t know how it happened,” said Molly. “I was just talking to the man and the next thing I knew I was waving my gun to make a point.”
“Where is the gun?” said the cop.
Jessie passed him the large sandwich Baggie in which she had put the revolver and loose bullets.
The cop examined it. “Why’s a nice lady like you carrying?”
Toby remained with the medics, watching them, studying their movements, gently whispering to Prager, “You’re gonna be fine, you’re gonna be fine.”
The bloody shirtsleeve was torn away, the forearm swaddled in a blue bandage, the arm locked in a clear plastic tube. A third paramedic appeared with a stretcher. Toby helped them lift Prager onto it. They strapped him in. He grew calmer, hugged by the straps, but he was still angry.
“Is there anyone we should call?” asked Caleb. “So we can tell them where you are?”
“Your mother shot me and you want to be nice?”
“Sir,” said Henry. “She was following her instincts. Like a mama lion.” He spoke with only the faintest hint of a smirk.
Prager looked left and right in a panic when the medics lifted the stretcher. They swung him out the door and down the stairs to the elevator. Toby went with them, carrying Prager’s jacket.
A detective arrived, a thirtyish fellow named Plecha. He had two-toned bleached hair, which looked odd on a cop, and a gym body, which looked odder still. Even cops changed with the times. He conferred with the patrolman, then spoke to Molly, then Caleb. He spoke to Henry too, but only because Henry radiated a certain authority. “I know you from somewhere. Like TV or movies.”
“It’s possible,” said Henry. “I am an actor.”
But Plecha didn’t pursue it. He addressed the room. “That’s all, folks. You don’t have to stay. You can go home. Just don’t walk through the blood on your way out, okay?”
People began to leave. A few spoke to Caleb as they passed, saying such things as “Good luck” or “Sorry” or “If you need help, call.” Nobody said anything clever or sarcastic, which surprised Caleb. But people prefer to be kind, even theater people. They saved the smart, cool jokes—and there must be jokes—for later.
Plecha put the Baggie with the gun and bullets into a black rubber evidence bag and began to take down addresses and phone numbers.
“So our mom’s not under arrest?” said Caleb.
“Of course she’s under arrest. There’s firearms involved.” He looked down at Molly. “I hereby inform you that you have the right to remain silent. Until you are with counsel of your own choosing or assigned by the state.”
Molly nodded and offered him her wrists.
“Please,” said Plecha. “What kind of asshole do you think I am?”
“You’re a reasonable man,” purred Henry in his most English accent. “This is a good woman. She’s old enough to be a grandmother. You can’t possibly arrest her for what was clearly an accident?”
“Sorry, pal. That’s for a judge to decide. I’d book my own granny under these circumstances.” He helped Molly to her feet.
Molly straightened her dress and picked up her purse. She seemed terribly reasonable herself, disturbingly reasonable, like a robot. “This is why I don’t like to come into the city,” she declared.
“I’ll talk to Irene,” Caleb told her. “We’ll get a lawyer tonight. You won’t be there long.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Jessie. “I’m going too,” she told Plecha.
“Sorry, miss. You can’t ride with us. Procedure. You can meet us there. We’re taking her to the Sixth Precinct. Over on Tenth Street.”
The cop with the mustache pulled Henry aside. “You’re not just any actor. You’re the star of Tom and Gerry.” The mustache brushed Henry’s ear. “How can I get tickets?” he whispered. “My wife’d love me forever if I got us into that show.”
Henry told him he’d see what he could do.
The cop rejoined Plecha, and they escorted Molly down the stairs to the elevator. The others followed.
“I’ll meet you over there,” Jessie called out.
“I’ll be there too,” said Caleb. “With the lawyer.”
Their mother looked so strange stepping into an elevator between a detective and a uniformed cop. She tried to smile at her son and daughter, but the smile looked broken, almost psychotic. Then the elevator door closed and she was gone.
Everyone else started down the stairs. Caleb ran back up to the apartment. “We have to go to the police station,” he told Jack. “You can lock up after you finish, can’t you?”
“Sure thing, friend. What a night. What can I say? Hey.” And his caterer gave him a warm, brotherly hug.
Caleb did not use the elevator but walked down the five flights, worrying about his mother, wondering about Prager, finding the unreality of tonight so, well, unreal. But if a flesh wound isn’t real, what is?
Outside there were no police cars or ambulance, no sign that anything extraordinary had happened. It was a soft, mild spring night with herds of people still strolling the street.
The others were waiting for him, not just Jessie, but Frank and Henry.
“Does anyone know wh
at happened to Toby?” said Henry.
Caleb had forgotten about Toby.
“My guess is he went to St. Vincent’s with the ambulance,” said Frank. “The police station’s over this way.” He pointed toward Seventh Avenue, and they all started walking.
Caleb saw no point in everyone’s going, but they had already started, so he said nothing. He needed other people right now, no matter how superfluous. He felt terribly superfluous himself.
The apartment upstairs was nearly empty. There was nobody on the terrace. A light breeze fluttered the canvas umbrella and blew empty plastic cups off the table, one by one.
Inside the only people left were the two caterers, Jack and Michael, and the cast of 2B.
“Crazy party,” said Dwight. “Psycho party.”
“Poor guy,” said Jack. “Even if he is a critic. Poor Molly too.”
They all knew one another. Dwight, Chris, and Allegra sometimes worked for Jack as cater waiters. Chris and Dwight now helped clean up. Allegra sat cross-legged on a table, eating a piece of Caleb’s cake.
“Wow, wow, wow,” she said. “Kenneth Prager was at our show. And Caleb’s mom shot him? He’s not gonna think well of tonight.”
“Oh well,” said Jack. “Maybe next time.”
“Just when the fun was starting,” sang Chris in a low sweet contralto. “Comes the time for parting.”
Jack laughed and sang with her:
Oh well.
We’ll catch up
Some other time.
“What do we do about this blood on the carpet?” said Dwight. “Do the police want us to save it? Should we put salt on it?”
“That works only for wine,” said Michael. “Look at this. Yuck.” He held up the bloody shirtsleeve the paramedics had torn off.
“Bring me the arm of the Buzzard of Off-Broadway,” said Allegra. “Maybe we can sell it on eBay.”
Meanwhile Jack and Chris continued with the song from On the Town, a wry, sad, sweet number with a slippery, difficult tune:
This day was just a token.
Too many words are still unspoken.
Oh well,
We’ll catch up
Some other time.
SATURDAY
71
Three-thirteen. The clock on the precinct station wall was like the plain white wall clocks of elementary school. The whole station reminded Jessie of elementary school: bulletin boards, plate-glass partitions, yellow cinder-block walls, fluorescent lights.
She sat with the others in the plastic scoop chairs along the wall, Frank and Henry on her left, Caleb on her right.
“I see,” said Caleb. “And what time will that be? You’re kidding? You mean nothing could happen until morning?”
He was using Jessie’s cell phone to talk to Irene.
“Yes. I know it’s Friday night. Or Saturday morning or whatever you want to name it. But don’t you think—?”
The station on West Tenth Street was nothing like the police stations their father described in his war stories. A regular Friday Night Fight Club, he told his golf buddies, and the Saturday Night Knife and Gun Club was even wilder. But that was the Bronx in the 1970s. Here cops wandered in and out, and there were occasional arrests—an angry black drag queen, a drunk white college kid with a bloody nose—but things seemed relatively quiet. Jessie couldn’t tell if it was just the neighborhood that was different or the decade.
“Right back,” she told the others and walked over to the desk sergeant. “Our mother’s still here, right? They wouldn’t load her into a paddy wagon and send her downtown without telling us, right?”
The sergeant assured her their mother was still here. Jessie returned to her seat.
It’d be different if they could see Mom, but she was out of sight, tucked away in an office down the hall or maybe in a cell.
Jessie’s common sense continued to argue with her imagination of disaster. Kenneth Prager couldn’t die. Her mother couldn’t be charged with murder. But he could sue. Or Mom could be charged with attempted murder. Or carrying a gun without a permit. Or something that would mean they’d spend the rest of their lives in court. There were so many awful things to imagine.
But more confusing was that Molly Doyle had done such a thing in the first place. She pulled out a gun and shot a man. Maybe not deliberately, but the emotion was real, the anger. Jessie was frightened not only for her, but by her. Who was this lady?
Around the corner, an older man called out, “Molly? Molly Doyle? What in blazes are you doing here?”
Jessie leaned to the left but could see nothing down the hall.
“Jimmy Murtagh,” the voice declared. “I used to work with Bobby, rest his soul. So what’s this I hear about you and…”
The voice disappeared as a door was closed.
Jessie looked at Caleb. He had heard the man too. He paused for a moment, then resumed his talk with Irene.
“I know you’re an entertainment lawyer. But if you can’t reach that guy, you’ll come, right? You promise? Thank you.”
He snapped the phone shut and passed it back to Jessie.
“She knows a good defense attorney,” he said. “Who she’ll try to wake up and get here. If she can’t get him, she’ll come herself. But we can’t expect anyone before six.”
Jessie let out a groan. “I can’t leave while Mom’s still here. I’m afraid they’ll move her. Send her elsewhere and then we’ll never find her again. I know it’s neurotic, but it’s how I feel.”
Caleb nodded. “I feel the same. But no point in us all waiting. Maybe I should walk over to St. Vincent’s and see how Prager is.”
Jessie screwed up her eyes at him.
“I won’t try to talk him out of pressing charges or anything like that,” he told her. “I’d just like to know how he’s doing.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Henry.
Caleb frowned. “That won’t be necessary.”
“But I’d enjoy the walk. And I might be able to reason with Mr. Prager. Better than you. After all, he admires me.”
Caleb looked at his sister, wondering if she could explain Henry’s motive.
She didn’t have a clue. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got Frank here. You’ll stay, won’t you, Frank?”
He nodded. “Definitely.”
Frank seemed pleased that she needed him, and she was glad to have him here. But things were not entirely right between them, were they?
“Fear not,” Henry assured her. “All will be fine.” And he followed Caleb out the door.
72
It’s nothing like the movies, thought Henry. After the big ado—the gunshots, blood, and cops—time stood still the way it does in hospitals. The police station was dull and awful like a hospital. So when Caleb Doyle announced that he was going to visit Prager, Henry seized the chance. “I’ll go with you.”
Out on the street it was still dark, pleasantly dark after the glare of tube lights. The air was cool and faintly damp like a summer night on Hampstead Heath. The narrow street was lined with scrappy trees like bottle brushes. Henry walked alongside Caleb in silence, content to maintain a stoic, manly peace, for a few minutes anyway.
“Extraordinary,” he finally said. “Utterly. And I have to say it: my mother never shot a critic for me.”
Caleb grimaced.
Henry quickly added, “She seems like a tough cookie. She can hold her own in there.”
“Maybe,” muttered Caleb, not looking at Henry.
Henry knew he should probably shut up, but he wanted to talk, he needed to talk. “So, Mr. Doyle. We finally meet. I’ve heard so much about you. First from your sister. Then from our, uh, friend, Toby.”
Caleb shot him a look, then faced forward again. “You can’t believe anything you hear from Toby.”
“Oh? Because he’s still in love with you?”
Caleb grimaced again. “No. He only thinks he’s in love with me.”
Henry laughed. “Isn’t that the same
thing? But no. I know exactly what you mean. Often it’s just love they love, or something else entirely, and we’re caught in the middle.”
Caleb looked at him now more kindly, almost friendly. “I don’t want to talk about Toby. Why does everyone always want to talk about Toby? What’s so special about him?”
Henry thought a moment. “He has a beautiful bottom.”
Caleb scowled, as if that were a crude insult. But then he sighed and said, “Yes. He has a beautiful bottom. And he’s a good actor. And there’s no malice in him. No meanness.”
“He’s a very good actor. You should see him in this show.”
Caleb didn’t seem to hear. “But there’s no there there with Toby. No core identity. No understanding of the difference between self and others.”
Henry smiled, recognizing the traits, pleased to have Caleb talking. “He thinks you can’t love him back because you’re still in love with a deceased partner.”
Caleb’s face shut down again. “He told you that, huh? What else did he tell you?”
“Very little. Except that he’s in love with you. Which seems to cancel out every other particular.” Henry almost asked Caleb if Toby had talked about him, but he already knew the answer. “Don’t you remember what first love is like? As solid and certain as rock. As stupid as rock too.” He laughed lightly. “I must say, I’m disappointed to learn you feel so little for him. I was hoping I’d get to play the Marschallin here and step aside for young love.”
Caleb shook his head. “I wanted to fall in love with him. But I couldn’t. I didn’t. So it was mostly sex. Which was nice. Except he wanted more. And I wanted more. Real conversation. Grown-up talk. Interest in something besides us.”
“Forgive me for asking, but—Did you find. That Toby. Liked. Sex.” The question was tougher to ask than he thought it’d be.
Caleb looked startled, confused, amused.
Lives of the Circus Animals Page 33