Pressure Drop

by Peter Abrahams

  “Good girl. Good good girl.”

  Hands pulled at her body. “Come on, Nina. Get up. We’re going to walk.”

  “No,” she said, or tried to say.

  Thumbs, somehow strong enough to lift thousands of pounds, pushed open her eyelids. She saw Jason’s eyes, wet and wide open with fright. “Come on.”

  “No.”

  “Can you talk?”

  “No.”

  “Make a sound.”

  “No.”

  “Come on.” Jason pulled her to her feet. “Walk.” She slumped. He held her up. “Walk.”

  “No.”

  He dragged her across the room, back and forth.

  “No, no, no.”

  “Open your eyes, goddamn it. Walk. Say something. Oh my God. Why, Nina, why?”

  Nina vomited again, all over him.

  The Birdman had gorgeous red plumage and horn-rimmed glasses. He soared over the forest primeval with a blue-wrapped bundle clutched in his talons. Nina strained to see what was in that bundle. All at once she was soaring too, until she made the mistake of taking a peek at the greenness far below and immediately began spinning down, down, down.

  “Nurse. I think she’s waking up.”

  Nina opened her eyes. She was in a hospital room: far from the forest primeval.

  “Nurse. Her eyes are open.”

  A blinding light shone in one open eye, then the other. Nina blinked a few times. Two faces came into focus. She could see every pore, every hair, every mole on those faces. One face had coarse skin, rough and dry. That was the nurse’s. The other had smooth, beautiful skin. That was Jason’s.

  “Nina,” Jason said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you feel?”

  Her mouth was dry, her tongue crusty. She tried to swallow. “Like shit,” she said.

  “But at least you’re …” Jason stopped himself. He exchanged a glance with the nurse; a glance Nina didn’t like.

  “What is it? Is something wrong with me?” She tried to sit up, but couldn’t. Her muscles were slack and feeble, that was part of the reason. The other part was that her arms and legs were strapped to the sides of the bed with leather restraints. “What the hell is going on?”

  “It’s just a precaution,” Jason said. “In case no one was around when you woke up.”

  “A precaution against what?”

  “Well,” said Jason, not meeting her gaze, “not against, exactly, more like just to be extra-safe.”

  “What are you talking about, Jason?” Nina had started to raise her voice, but reined it in when she felt the rawness in her throat.

  “You’re on suicide watch,” the nurse said. “Frankly.”

  Nina shouted, a wordless howl that ripped through her throat. The sound, even to her own ears, sprang from the margins of human emotion; from Bedlam and Bellevue and the mouths of those mad wanderers in the streets who sometimes had to be strapped down. That realization didn’t prevent her from uttering it again. She struggled to sit up, jerking her body on the bed, to no effect.

  “Oh God, Nina, please,” Jason put a hand on her shoulder. She tried to writhe away from his touch. “Please,” he said.

  Nina stopped writhing, forced her body to be calm. She lay quietly for what seemed like a long time, but was probably no more than half a minute. Then she took a deep breath and spoke in an even tone. “Untie me.”

  Jason turned to the nurse. The nurse said: “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Nina said, starting at once to lose her even tone.

  “Because, like I told you,” said the nurse, perhaps tiring of her dramatics, “you’re on suicide watch, that’s why not. Or don’t you remember downing a bottle of Seconal?”

  “Seconal? I didn’t take any fuck—” Nina froze in mid-sentence.

  “We pumped it out of you downstairs,” the nurse told her, a little more gently.

  “I—I didn’t …” It all began coming back: the note in her typewriter, her signature, the liver-spotted hand. “I didn’t do it,” she said.

  “Denial, huh?” said the nurse.

  “You must have gone to school with Hal Palmeteer.”

  “What’s that suppose—” said the nurse.

  “Nina,” Jason interrupted, “what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying someone must have done it to me.”

  “Who?”

  Nina had no answer. Jason and the nurse looked at each other again. Nina could see that the nurse didn’t believe her. A handy diagnosis stuck to people who made Bedlam sounds and blamed their problems on “someone”: paranoia. That hurt, but nothing like seeing that Jason didn’t believe her either. He was worried; he felt sorry for her; but he didn’t believe her. Nina began to cry. She cried like never before in her life, a wail that accompanied bad emotions: rage, bitterness, self-pity. This wasn’t weeping: there was nothing pretty about it, nothing sympathetic, nothing feminine. It was the sound of unrestrained and unmannered female pain.

  “Nina, please. Please, Nina.”

  “Go away,” Nina cried. “Just go away.”

  “Nina, I—”

  “Go away.”

  “I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

  “Go.”

  They went. Nina’s crying became sobbing, slowly diminished to nothing except the occasional sudden and involuntary gasp, like a crying baby’s.

  Like a baby. That set her off again.

  Later she slept.

  It was a dreamless sleep until the end. Then bright red wings fluttered in her subconscious. The Birdman was coming with his little bundle. Nina opened her eyes before he arrived.

  Jason was gone. So was the nurse. They had been replaced by a thickset woman with frosted hair and a fresh suntan. The woman resembled someone Nina had seen in the past, but seemed much more rested and relaxed than before. It was only because they were occupying the same positions as they had on their previous meeting—Nina in a hospital bed, the woman on a chair beside it—that she recognized her visitor: Detective Delgado of the NYPD.

  “You’re back,” Nina said.

  “Yup.”

  “With a tan.”

  “Cancún.”

  Nina’s mind began to clear. She uttered the first thought that came to it. “You’ve found him?”

  “Found who?”

  “Who? The—my baby.”

  “Oh no. Nothing like that.” Detective Delgado was watching her closely. The whites of her eyes were white; the blue bruises under them were gone. “You don’t look so good,” Detective Delgado said.

  “I feel fine.” Nina started to sit up; the restraints held her in place. “For Christ’s sake. Why are they doing this?”

  “To protect you. And them, from liability.”

  “Who’s going to sue them if I jump out the window? My ghost?”

  Detective Delgado didn’t smile. Her face sagged a little. Cancún was speeding away from her, like another galaxy in an expanding universe. “It’s just routine,” she said.

  “But I didn’t try to kill myself.”

  “That’s what your partner says you said. Which is why I’m here.”

  “Jason called you?”

  Detective Delgado pulled out her notebook and plucked a ballpoint from behind her ear. “Yup,” she replied, and flipped through the pages. “He’s your business partner, right?”

  “Right.”

  Detective Delgado’s eyes moved back and forth across the page. “Jason,” she said. “Came up to your apartment with some take-out. Got worried when you didn’t answer. Couldn’t find the doorman to let him in so he broke down the door. He found you on the floor, found the note and the empty bottle of pills, and called nine-one-one. He also induced vomiting, which is probably why you’re alive now.”

  “Jason broke down the door?”

  Delgado turned the page. “Only knocked the lock loose, actually. But it was good enough.” Delgado picked up a metal evidence case, opened it and approached th
e bed. She held up a sheet of Kitchener and Best stationery. Nina read: “I cannot live without my precious baby. Please, please don’t think too badly of me.”

  “Is that your letterhead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your signature?”

  “Yes. But I didn’t write that note and I didn’t sign it.”

  “Who did?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Delgado reached into the case and took out an empty brown pharmaceutical bottle labeled “Seconal: 100 milligrams x 36.” “This was on your kitchen table. Is it yours?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you have a bottle of Seconal in the apartment?”

  “Yes, but I only took one, and it wasn’t last night.”

  “Then how did the other thirty-five get into your stomach?”

  Nina didn’t reply right away. From the hall came sounds: squeaking wheels, a man whistling “Memories.” Then there was quiet, and Nina said: “Someone tried to kill me.”

  “Who?” asked Detective Delgado.

  “I—I don’t know who. I only saw his hand.”

  “Why do you say ‘his’?”

  “Because it was a big hand, old, with big veins.”

  “There are big women.”

  “Yes, but …”

  “But what?”

  “I think I saw that hand before. Earlier yesterday. He was a man, an old man. But powerful looking.”

  “What man?”

  “The appraiser.”

  “What appraiser?”

  “I don’t remember his name. I’m not sure he even said it.”

  “Why do you call him an appraiser?”

  “That’s what he said he was.”

  Detective Delgado rubbed her forehead, on the spot between the eyes. When she stopped there were two vertical furrows in her forehead that hadn’t been there when Nina opened her eyes, but which she remembered from their first meeting. “What was he appraising? Where was this?”

  “In Dedham.” Nina said.

  “Dedham?”

  “A suburb of Boston. It’s about—”

  “I know where Dedham is,” Delgado interrupted. “What were you doing there?”

  Nina told her about Laura Bain. She told her about Clea in her carriage in the backyard, and the Cambridge Reproductive Research Center that was now an electronics store; she told her about Laura’s hopeful last conversation with her; she told her about Laura’s suicide note and Laura’s Seconal; she told her about the real estate agent and the appraiser in Laura’s study.

  Detective Delgado watched her the whole time. The whites of her eyes weren’t quite so pure now. There was a long silence after Nina finished. Then she said: “Seconal?”

  “Yes. That’s suspicious, isn’t it?”

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No one takes Seconal anymore. Not as a sleeping pill. Too easy to abuse. They’ve got safer drugs now.”

  “Therefore?”

  “Your friend left a note, you left a note. She took Seconal, you took Seconal.”

  “I’m not sure I’m following you.”

  Delgado opened her mouth as though to speak, then stopped herself.

  “Go on.”

  “I don’t want to give you a hard time. You’ve already had a hard time.” Delgado reached into her pocket and took out a pack of Marlboros. “Do you think it’s all right to smoke in here?”

  “I don’t know. Where are we?”

  Delgado laughed. “Shit,” she said. “Mount Sinai.” She lit a cigarette, sucked the smoke in deeply, blew it out slowly. “First smoke since I got on the plane at Kennedy. Except for some weed down there.”

  “You still haven’t told me what you’re getting at.”

  Delgado took another drag. “I’m just saying it would be understandable in your case.”

  “What would be?”

  “Don’t make me say it.” “Say it.”

  “Okay. Ever heard of copycat suicide? It happens all the time.”

  “But I told you,” Nina said, her voice rising; she tried to rise with it, but the restraints kept her down. “I didn’t take those pills. I didn’t write that note.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “Nevertheless? What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means this, Nina—you just had a baby. Your hormones are all messed up. Then this kidnapping happened, and that messed you up more. Then you had the bad luck to meet up with this woman in Boston. You fed each other’s anxieties. You identified with each other. You said yourself she reminded you of you, although you sound a little more together to me. Then she did what she did and you … you did it too.” Delgado paused, waiting for Nina to say something.

  Nina said: “Have you got a penis under that trenchcoat?”

  Detective Delgado’s face reddened. “You’re in bad shape,” she said. “And I feel sorry for you. But you’re a bitch just the same.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t need to hear the hormone theory from you.”

  Delgado took a last deep drag, then dropped her cigarette on the floor and ground it under her heel. “All right,” she said. “We’re a couple of assholes. Tell me about this appraiser.”

  “I told you,” Nina said. “I don’t know his name.”

  “Who was he working for?”

  Nina thought. He had told her the name of a law firm. Or had the real estate woman mentioned the name of the firm? She tried to remember the name: Mullin, Somebody and Somebody? “I’m not sure. But there’s a woman from a real estate company up there who will know. Her card’s in my bag.” Nina glanced around the room. “Where’s my bag?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you check my place?”

  “Yeah,” Detective Delgado said. She rose heavily: her thick legs stretched the seams of her trousers, the skin under her eyes sagged. She was her old self. “I can do that,” she said.

  “And can you get them to untie me? You know I’m not a suicide risk.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “Because you know I haven’t given up. And I’m not going to. Never.”

  Detective Delgado looked down at her. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said.

  Delgado left. Nina thought: But what if I don’t get him back, and what if I do give up? What kind of a suicide risk will I be then? Never was just a word. Nina was still thinking about that when an orderly walked in and freed her arms and legs. A man with a stethoscope around his neck watched from the doorway.

  “You all right?” he said.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Don’t let me down, now.”

  “I’ll make that my first priority,” Nina told him.

  He frowned, but his beeper sounded and he left within seconds, the orderly following. Nina got up. She discovered that her legs had forgotten how to walk. They still knew how to stagger. She staggered to the window and held on to the sill. Her view was a brick wall, pockmarked with environmental disease. She stared at it for a long time, unthinking, almost detached. Then it occurred to her that she was no longer following Laura Bain through the time machine. Laura’s path had led to death, while she had escaped. That must mean she had a chance. No longer staggering, Nina went out into the hall, looking for food.

  She was fed, dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed when Delgado returned. “Well, well,” said the detective.

  “You got it?” Nina said, rising.

  “I got it,” Delgado replied, tossing her the bag.

  Nina looked inside. Something was missing. It wasn’t the real estate woman’s card; that was in the zippered pocket where Nina had left it. A moment or two passed before she realized what it was: Laura’s suicide note.

  “Something wrong?” said Delgado.

  “No.” Nina dialed the real estate woman. She answered on the first ring.

  “Sure I remember you,” the woman said when Nina began explaining who she was. “I don’t want to alarm yo
u, but if you’re thinking of making an offer it better be soon. And significant. I’ve already got two highly interested parties. Not counting yourself.”

  “Before I make an offer,” Nina replied, “I’d like to talk to someone at the law firm.”

  “What law firm?”

  “The one you mentioned. Acting for the vendor’s estate, I think you said.”

  “What do you want to talk to them about?”

  “The appraiser’s report.”

  “What about it?”

  Nina was conscious of Delgado’s gaze as she replied, “I’m a little concerned about that elm tree.”

  “Elm tree?”

  “In the backyard. It didn’t look too healthy to me. If it’s got Dutch elm disease, I’d like to know beforehand. There’s a possibility of liability, to say nothing of the expense of having it removed.”

  “Liability?”

  “Vis-à-vis the neighbors. There have been a number of cases lately. It doesn’t lessen my interest in the house. I’d just like to know.”

  There was a pause. “I see,” the real estate woman said.

  “So if you’ll just give the number of the law firm—Mullin and something, wasn’t it?”

  “Mullins, Smithson and O’Leary,” the woman said. “In Newton Center.” Another pause. “I guess it’s all right,” the woman said, giving her the number. Nina wrote it down, again feeling Delgado’s eyes on her. “But don’t waste any time. This one’s hot.”

  “I won’t. Thanks.”

  “Wait,” said the real estate woman. “How can I reach you?”

  “I’m out of town,” Nina said. “I’ll get back to you.”

  “But—”

  Nina hung up, turned to Detective Delgado, who was smiling slightly; something green was stuck between her incisors. “You’re not a bad liar,” Delgado said. “And that’s my area of expertise.”

  “I’m an ordinary businesswoman,” Nina replied.

  Delgado laughed. Nina almost laughed too, but she was already dialing Mullins, Smithson and O’Leary. The receptionist put her through to Mr. O’Leary’s secretary. Mr. O’Leary’s secretary put her through to Mr. O’Leary’s paralegal. Mr. O’Leary’s paralegal got Mr. O’Leary.

  “Appraiser?” he said. He had the kind of accent you might hear in Fenway Park, way down the right field line.

  “For Laura Bain’s house. She was a friend of mine. I thought you were handling her estate.”