Tracking Time

by Leslie Glass

  They entered the park in their usual place, walked north, watching for homos, the homeless, and the place where the lights ended and the Ramble began. Across the water, near the spot where the tracking dog had lost the missing man's scent, was the same girl who'd been hanging around last night. She was sitting alone on a bench under the light where the police call box was.

  Brandy shuddered. "That girl has a death wish," she said.

  At least she didn't turn to look at them as they turned east and went deeper into the park. David didn't hear the remark. He was thinking about the bum who always bothered them, who'd seen them last night and happened to be a piece of scum no one in the world would miss. He was excited by his plan to rid the earth of a troublesome cancer.

  Twenty-seven

  Pee Wee James had no watch and didn't look at the clock in the precinct when he was released by the police. All he knew was that the sun was high in a sky so blue it hurt his eyes. He looked down at his feet as he shuffled out onto the sidewalk. He was trying to figure things out. He had no actual memory of how long he had been at the station or what he had told the Chinese cop or the other guy-maybe it was two guys-who talked to him before letting him go.

  He was sure he hadn't told them anything about the game with the two kids-a twenty a day for a long time. Pee Wee wanted a dog, and that was enough to take care of a dog for sure. He thought about that twenty a lot. He was torn between getting the twenty from the kids, or dealing separately with the guy in the cave. If he helped the guy, maybe he'd get a bigger reward, enough to go down south where it was warmer.

  Pee Wee wondered if the man was still there. Those kids were so high they didn't even think to gag him, didn't tie him up. He'd watched the whole thing and knew if the jogger came to, he might be able to crawl out. Pee Wee had slept in that cave out of the rain himself, more than once. In AA they always said it was important to have a goal. Pee Wee James had a goal. He was going to check to see if the guy was still there, make sure he was okay.

  Central Park was a strange place. The paths were black at night, and not even Captain Reginald knew everything. The boss of the park traveled off-road in his Jeep three, four times a day, making the rounds. When he saw Pee Wee in the playgrounds, looking through the garbage cans for the leftovers the nannies left behind, the captain always moved him along. But not even the captain knew he didn't leave the park to sleep somewhere else as he was supposed to.

  And no one knew about the cave that used to be a runoff for water from the rowboat lake a hundred years ago when the park was built and the lake was higher, covering everything that was now swamp. It had been several hundred feet larger at this end, and at least six feet higher. But Pee Wee was a historian. He knew about the iron gate over the cave and the foliage that covered it.

  When he left the police station, he made his way to Eighth Avenue. During the morning, he'd eaten two sandwiches and drunk several cups of coffee. He'd washed up in the public men's room of the precinct, and all in all he was pretty pleased with himself-happy with his new clothes, the pair of sneaks that fit him pretty well, the socks, khaki pants, black T-shirt, and white sweatshirt with a green palm tree on it and " Florida " spread wide across the front. Best of all, he'd gotten a quilted maroon jacket that looked waterproof and would prove useful when the season changed. But he had a mother of a hangover, was not entirely clear about what was going on. He was getting the shakes, too.

  The weather was warm and dry. Pee Wee was not surprised that no one from the cops offered to drive him back to his home in the park. In fact, the plainclothes officer who let him go gave him five dollars and discouraged him from returning there. He was used to it. Words had no impact on him. Cops had been accusing him of everything under the sun for decades now, and they were always wrong. He'd heard it all a hundred times, but he was one of the good guys.

  In the last fifteen years he'd lost his job, his wife, his home, his children, and everything else that had kept him going since his war days. He'd been in police custody more times than he could count. For several years, he'd lived in flophouses and a mission down on the Bowery. After that he'd scrounged around the Port Authority bus station over on the West Side, sleeping intermittently in shelters and on the street. He didn't like the shelters. Too many bad people, too much AIDS, too many rules. After ten years, he'd drifted back down to Alphabet City on the Lower East Side.

  In each location, he'd cycled through his days getting drunk, being drunk, sleeping it off, begging, drinking more. From time to time he was disorderly and bellicose. When he was sober and when he was drunk, he saw himself as a helper, the only one who'd pull a knife on a raper or mediate a brawl. He'd been a killer of Cong in ' Nam, knew how to fight. And like then, he was still one of the good guys, misunderstood and a little down on his luck.

  In his war days and the early years afterward, Pee Wee had gone through periods where he'd do weed and alcohol, cocaine, and whatever substances were popular on the street. But that was back when he was trying to keep up with life. After he lost his home, he went for the cheapest thing. He'd become a pure old wino, too broke and disorganized for anything else. He'd long since completed his descent.

  Now he was thinking about the five in his hands and the twenty on the come. For several hours he wandered around the Disneyland of the new Times Square, looking for haunts that no longer existed. He bought some Thunderbird with the five the cop had given him, drank it, then walked north toward the park. He didn't get very far and lost track of time early on.

  By nine at night he was dozing pleasantly among acquaintances on the corner of Ninth and Fifty-seventh Street. There, a wide, three-foot brick garden wall provided good seating and a place to sleep it off. In winter in the wide open space of the almost park someone always made a fire in an old oil drum. In summer, spring, and fall there were farmers' markets. In all seasons there was a gathering of homeless right across the street from the D'Agostino supermarket.

  Pee Wee was roused from a comfortable drunk by a fight going on around him. Guys were arguing, yelling. He was lying on the brick wall when one of them wanted his space, or something. One minute he was sleeping and the next he was picked up. He was punched, knocked down, and his head smashed hard into the pavement. It happened in a few seconds, and he went out cold for a while. When he woke up there were cops standing around. One of them was trying to wake him up.

  "Hey, fellow, you okay?"

  "Course, ah'm okay. Whadya think?" Cops were talking the way cops always talked. Through bleary eyes, Pee Wee saw people standing around. A girl cop stood over him, big as a trailer in her uniform. An even bigger guy was talking to another cop.

  "This gentleman here says you hit him," the woman said.

  "Hit a cop, are you crazy?" Pee Wee had no idea what was going on.

  "No, no, you and your pals here were fighting."

  "Not me, no." Pee Wee realized he was flat on his back.

  "He says you took his sandwich. He tried to get it back and you slugged him."

  Pee Wee had no memory of any such thing. That was a ridiculous, an outrageous accusation. He sat up and began the struggle to get to his feet.

  "Hey, wait a minute. Looks like you got quite a crack on the head there." The cop tried to restrain him.

  "Nahh, thash crazy." Pee Wee didn't like being restrained. He brushed the hands away and stumbled to his feet. The cops were having a conference, a regular convention there with a crowd around him. Everybody was pretty quiet now. It almost made him laugh.

  Yeah, now he remembered. Two guys were fighting, but not him. Yelling. He had nothing to do with it. He took off, dizzy and a little disoriented, a common enough condition for him. The convention was over. Nobody stopped him. He walked north on Ninth, then east on Sixtieth, didn't want to run into Lincoln Center. He felt pretty good, almost high as he headed slowly toward the park. It took him more than two hours to go a mile to the place where he lived between two boulders by the lake. He kept his possessions there, including se
veral quilts, and a tarp that he pulled over his head when it rained or snowed. People were talking to him in his head. Different stories were playing there from different times in his life. Over the years the social workers and church people had encouraged him to have goals. He'd gone to AA at more than one point in his life.

  "You have to have goals to maintain sober living," they all said.

  He had goals. Plenty of them. And could maintain sober living anytime he wanted. In fact, he was sober a lot of the time. Almost all the time. His goal was he wanted a dog to help him beg, to protect him, and to keep him warm in winter. That was his first goal. He had others.

  He hit the park. He remembered the cops there looking for somebody. He couldn't remember who. Then after a while he remembered. He couldn't remember when the cops had been there. He forgot he was looking for the girl and the kids with the twenties. The park was quiet now. Even the birds had settled down for the night. Inside the park, he stumbled along the path toward his place. He saw a large rat and some guys in an unmarked car who might be cops. Where was the kid with the money? The cops drove by and were gone. Pee Wee stopped behind a leafy shrub to take a piss, still thinking about getting another twenty.

  He remembered the guy in the cave. Pee Wee was a responsible member of society. He didn't want the guy to be hungry or uncomfortable. He'd take him some water from the lake, give him a blanket. What the hell. He felt a little dizzy and sat down in the dirt for a moment. He forgot what he was doing, blacked out. Sometime later, he got up and stumbled on, the twenty back in his mind. He knew he had to do something, but he'd forgotten what.

  Twenty-eight

  With each rumble of the subway a fine dusting of sand loosened from the crumbling rock above Maslow's face and rained down on him. It felt as if the earth itself were alive and trying to entomb him. When Maslow became fully aware of it, the feeling had returned to his hands and arms in stinging tingles. But his legs were still numb.

  Dirt was in his eyes and mouth. "Oh God!" He raised his hand and smacked it on the ceiling only inches from his face. It jumped to the right and hit a wall of gravel. Panic-stricken, he felt around him and discovered another wall to his left. Whimpering, he realized that he was buried alive. The only thing between him and death was a thin pocket of foul air.

  "Oh God, save me," he whispered. He closed his flooding eyes and saw nothing. He was alone in his grave. All he heard was the pounding of his heart and the rasp of his breath, louder than any thunder he'd ever known. He struggled to breathe, and terror became the animal that consumed him.

  If he could have moved his legs, he would have thrashed in agony. If he could have yelled, he would have shrieked his protest. But he could not move, could not utter more than soft moans. He was able to raise his wrist to his face but could not see well enough to read the dial of his watch. Nor could he estimate the time that had passed by the condition of his body.

  He felt weak. He felt sick. He felt cold, then hot. He'd been hungry earlier, but was not so hungry now. As a doctor, he knew that loss of appetite always occurred after the first day of fasting but returned with a fierce vengeance very soon thereafter. He also knew a healthy person could live in moderate temperatures without food or water for a long time. Earthquake victims trapped in the rubble had been known to live four, five, even six days. But Maslow was no victim of a natural disaster.

  His whole situation seemed to come directly from his own childhood dreams. To be paralyzed and unable to escape an enemy. To be trapped in the dark, cold and hungry. To be all alone with his terror. Everything that was happening to him now had been common features of his own private nightmares. Except for one thing, to have a patient capture and kill him. That scenario had never occurred to him.

  Maslow felt as if he had been dreaming all his life. Wake up. A patient had done this to him, and he could not let her win. Slowly Maslow organized his thoughts. He had made a promise to help his patients. In return they were supposed to respect his body and space. They didn't always, but on psychiatric wards he had never found it terrifying to deal with persons acting on orders from Venus to rape him, to get his sperm and plant it inside themselves just for a while so they could take it back and propagate the moon. Once a highly educated young man who had reminded Maslow of himself had become upset in the hospital and suddenly erupted in a rage. He picked Maslow up, and threw him across the room. Maslow grabbed a chair and held the man off like a matador until a male nurse arrived to subdue him.

  He'd felt like a jerk for not being more careful then. Now he felt like a monumental fool. He had no chair, no weapon, nothing. He could hardly breathe, let alone sit up. Maslow was furious at himself. How could he have let this happen?

  As he lay on his back, buried, terrified that he would die, he kept thinking, If I were a more experienced doctor this wouldn't have happened. He blamed himself for everything. It was obvious to him that Allegra had a psychotic transference and wanted to possess him. His memory of the day stopped at meeting her outside the park. He was certain that somehow she had overpowered and gotten him here, but he had no idea how she might have accomplished that. Allegra was a small girl. She might have been able to surprise and knock him down but not move him. He would not have come in here on his own. He was packed into the ground. She could not have done that alone.

  Some hours after his discovery of the fanny pack, he realized he still had the granola bars and the water bottle. He lifted the bottle to his lips and wet his mouth. The taste of the water made him think that maybe Allegra never intended to kill him. His hands were not bound. He had air and water and food. Maybe this was a test of some kind.

  An analyst never stops analyzing. Slowly Maslow relived all of his sessions with Allegra, trying to find a clue in something she said that would help release him. So many times the humor or sadness in her remarks had resonated in him. He had felt as close to her as he had felt with anyone in his life. During the months they were together in therapy, he'd thought of her almost as if she were his friend, his sister.

  But some of the things she'd said never rang true. Something was wrong with her stories. He'd ignored his suspicions and believed her at the time, but now he saw what the clever young woman had done with him. She had given him a sense of ease. He'd felt comfortable with her and that feeling of comfort had eroded the boundaries between them. His own trust of her had encouraged the violation. He was a stupid jerk, a giant sap for trusting and believing a borderline patient.

  And now he was in a hostage situation with no one to help him get out. If he could talk with her now, he would tell her she was a good girl, that he understood and cared for her, that everything she'd done he could explain to her and others. He'd tell her that he would protect her and she'd be all right. And he'd ask her to tell him all that she wanted from their relationship. He'd assure her that he would give it to her as soon as he got home and had a bath.

  Don't ruin your life with this, Allegra, don't go a single step further. I'll give you whatever you want. He played it through in his mind. Maybe she'd show up.

  He took two tiny bites of granola bar and chewed them down to nothing before wetting his tongue with the water from his bottle. He consulted frequently with his body, praying for feeling to return to his legs. If he could move his legs, he could crawl out. He heard the rumble of the subway and the wind blowing in the trees. He heard honking horns. It was not hopeless. He was not on Mars or Venus. His city was all around him. Someone would find him. He prayed that someone would find him soon. He did not want to think about dying there.

  Twenty-nine

  Allegra Caldera was ashamed of herself for not telling the detectives her secret. She should have told them everything she knew the minute they said Maslow was missing. The whole city knew he was missing-everybody except her. This was all her fault. The whole thing. She could not forgive herself for continuing the lie.

  After the police locked her out of his office, she walked downtown, back to the building where he lived. There, she
wandered back and forth, waiting for him to return. When it started getting dark, she marched back uptown and hung around his office some more. She knew she was the most pathetic creature on earth.

  She kept thinking that wherever she looked for him she had a ninety percent chance of missing him. By eight o'clock she was on Eighty-second Street again, standing by the park entrance where she had seen him last. He'd looked very small in his shorts and white T-shirt, really slim, about the same size as her father. Her father had his disappearances, too. She should have gotten used to them, but she never did.

  When she was so dizzy with hunger that she could hardly stand up, she went to the coffee bar on Columbus and had a cup of espresso, no sugar. For her it was dinner. Finally at ten o'clock she entered the park once again.

  Allegra thought she must have walked miles going nowhere at all before she finally sank down on the bench and let her grief out in great heaving sobs. She couldn't lose the only person in the world she really loved. She couldn't lose him before he knew her.

  The Chinese cop had given Allegra her home number. Allegra still had it with her. The call box was right there, right near, where she was sitting. It was painted dark green and had a plaque that read "Gift of Central Park Conservancy" on it. She thought of calling the police on the phone. The detective had seemed very nice, understanding. Allegra wondered if she should call her and explain everything.

  But what could she say? If she hadn't spooked Maslow, he wouldn't have had to avoid her. He wouldn't have had to run away. He would just have jogged right back out of the park as he was supposed to. She didn't understand why he hadn't just jogged back. He was angry at her, but he would never run away.