Angry Candy Page 20

  Instinctively, Annie made herself larger, more expansive, her raggedy arms away from her body, the dirty overcoats billowing, her gait more erratic: opening the way for her flight. Fastidious shoppers and suited businessmen shied away, gave a start as the dirty old black bag lady bore down on them, turned sidewise praying she would not brush a recently Martinized shoulder. The Red Sea parted miraculously permitting flight, then closed over instantly to impede navy blue cashmere. But the Olds came on quickly.

  Annie turned left onto Madison, heading downtown. There was construction around 48th. There were good alleys on 46th. She knew a basement entrance just three doors off Madison on 47th. But the Olds came on quickly.

  Behind her, the light changed. The Olds tried to rush the intersection, but this was Madison. Crowds were already crossing. The Olds stopped, the driver's window rolled down and a face peered out. Eyes tracked Annie's progress.

  Then it began to rain.

  Like black mushrooms sprouting instantly from concrete, Totes blossomed on the sidewalk. The speed of the flowing river of pedestrians increased; and in an instant Annie was gone. Cashmere rounded the corner, looked at the Olds, a frantic arm motioned to the left, and the man pulled up his collar and elbowed his way through the crowd, rushing down Madison.

  Low places in the sidewalk had already filled with water. His wingtip cordovans were quickly soaked.

  He saw her turn into the alley behind the novelty sales shop (Nothing over $1.10!!!); he saw her; turned right and ducked in fast; saw her, even through the rain and the crowd and half a block between them; saw it!

  So where was she?

  The alley was empty.

  It was a short space, all brick, only deep enough for a big Dempsey Dumpster and a couple of dozen trash cans; the usual mounds of rubbish in the corners; no fire escape ladders low enough for an old bag lady to grab; no loading docks, no doorways that looked even remotely accessible, everything cemented over or faced with sheet steel; no basement entrances with concrete steps leading down; no manholes in the middle of the passage; no open windows or even broken windows at jumping height; no stacks of crates to hide behind.

  The alley was empty.

  Saw her come in here. Knew she had come in here, and couldn't get out. He'd been watching closely as he ran to the mouth of the alley. She was in here somewhere. Not too hard figuring out where. He took out the. 38 Police Positive he liked to carry because he lived with the delusion that if he had to dump it, if it were used in the commission of a sort of kind of felony he couldn't get snowed on, and if it were traced, it would trace back to the cop in Teaneck, New Jersey from whom it had been lifted as he lay drunk in the back room of a Polish social club three years earlier.

  He swore he would take his time with her, this filthy old porch monkey. His navy blue cashmere already smelled like soaked dog. And the rain was not about to let up; it now came sheeting down, traveling in a curtain through the alley.

  He moved deeper into the darkness, kicking the piles of trash, making sure the refuse bins were full. She was in here somewhere. Not too hard figuring out where.

  Warm. Annie felt warm. With the ruined baby doll under her chin, and her eyes closed, it was almost like the apartment at 101st and First Avenue, when the Human Resources lady came and tried to tell her strange things about Alan. Annie had not understood what the woman meant when she kept repeating soft monkey, soft monkey, a thing some scientist knew. It had made no sense to Annie, and she had continued rocking the baby.

  Annie remained very still where she had hidden. Basking in the warmth. Is it nice, Alan? Are we toasty; yes, we are. Will we be very still and the lady from the City will go away? Yes, we will. She heard the crash of a garbage can being kicked over. No one will find us. Shh, my baby.

  There was a pile of wooden slats that had been leaned against a wall. As he approached, the gun leveled, he realized they obscured a doorway. She was back in there, he knew it. Had to be. Not too hard figuring that out. It was the only place she could have hidden.

  He moved in quickly, slammed the boards aside, and threw down on the dark opening. It was empty. Steel-plate door, locked.

  Rain ran down his face, plastering his hair to his forehead. He could smell his coat, and his shoes, oh god, don't ask. He turned and looked. All that remained was the huge dumpster.

  He approached it carefully, and noticed: the lid was still dry near the back side closest to the wall. The lid had been open just a short time ago. Someone had just lowered it.

  He pocketed the gun, dragged two crates from the heap thrown down beside the Dempsey, and crawled up onto them. Now he stood above the dumpster, balancing on the crates with his knees at the level of the lid. With both hands bracing him, he leaned over to get his fingertips under the heavy lid. He flung the lid open, yanked out the gun, and leaned over. The dumpster was nearly full. Rain had turned the muck and garbage into a swimming porridge. He leaned over precariously to see what floated there in the murk. He leaned in to see. Fuckin porch monk —

  As a pair of redolent, dripping arms came up out of the muck, grasped his navy blue cashmere lapels, and dragged him headfirst into the metal bin. He went down, into the slime, the gun going off, the shot spanging off the raised metal lid. The coat filled with garbage and water.

  Annie felt him struggling beneath her. She held him down, her feet on his neck and back, pressing him face first deeper into the goo that filled the bin. She could hear him breathing garbage and fetid water. He thrashed, a big man, struggling to get out from under. She slipped, and braced herself against the side of the dumpster, regained her footing, and drove him deeper. A hand clawed out of the refuse, dripping lettuce and black slime. The hand was empty. The gun lay at the bottom of the bin. The thrashing intensified, his feet hitting the metal side of the container. Annie rose up and dropped her feet heavily on the back of his neck. He went flat beneath her, trying to swim up, unable to find purchase.

  He grabbed her foot as an explosion of breath from down below forced a bubble of air to break on the surface. Annie stomped as hard as she could. Something snapped beneath her shoe, but she heard nothing.

  It went on for a long time, for a time longer than Annie could think about. The rain filled the bin to overflowing. Movement under her feet lessened, then there was hysterical movement for an instant, then it was calm. She stood there for an even longer time, trembling and trying to remember other, warmer times.

  Finally, she closed herself off, buttoned up tightly, climbed out dripping and went away from there, thinking of Alan, thinking of a time after this was done. After that long time standing there, no movement, no movement at all in the bog beneath her waist. She did not close the lid.

  When she emerged from the alley, after hiding in the shadows and watching, the Oldsmobile was nowhere in sight. The foot traffic parted for her. The smell, the dripping filth, the frightened face, the ruined thing she held close to her.

  She stumbled out onto the sidewalk, lost for a moment, then turned the right way and shuffled off.

  The rain continued its march across the city.

  No one tried to stop her as she gathered together her goods on 51st Street. The police thought she was a scavenger, the gawkers tried to avoid being brushed by her, the owner of the document copying center was relieved to see the filth cleaned up. Annie rescued everything she could, and hobbled away, hoping to be able to sell her aluminum for a place to dry out. It was not true that she was dirty; she had always been fastidious, even in the streets. A certain level of dishevelment was acceptable, but this was unclean.

  And the blasted baby doll needed to be dried and brushed clean. There was a woman on East 60th, near Second Avenue; a vegetarian who spoke with an accent; a white lady who sometimes let Annie sleep in the basement. She would ask her for a favor.

  It was not a very big favor, but the white woman was not home; and that night Annie slept in the construction of the new Zeckendorf Towers, where S. Klein-On-The-Square used to be, down on 14th a
nd Broadway.

  The men from the stretch limo didn't find her again for almost a week.

  She was salvaging newspapers from a wire basket on Madison near 44th when he grabbed her from behind. It was the one who had poured the liquor into Beaddie, and then made him drink the Drano. He threw an arm around her, pulled her around to face him, and she reacted instantly, the way she did when the kids tried to take her snap-purse.

  She butted him full in the face with the top of her head, and drove him backward with both filthy hands. He stumbled into the street, and a cab swerved at the last instant to avoid running him down. He stood in the street, shaking his head, as Annie careened down 44th, looking for a place to hide. She was sorry she had left her cart again. This time, she knew, her goods weren't going to be there.

  It was the day before Thanksgiving.

  Four more black women had been found dead in midtown doorways.

  Annie ran, the only way she knew how, into stores that had exits on other streets. Somewhere behind her, though she could not figure it out properly, there was trouble coming for her and the baby. It was so cold in the apartment. It was always so cold. The landlord cut off the heat, he always did it in early November, till the snow came. And she sat with the child, rocking him, trying to comfort him, trying to keep him warm. And when they came from Human Resources, from the City, to evict her, they found her still holding the child. When they took it away from her, so still and blue, Annie ran from them, into the streets; and she ran, she knew how to run, to keep running so she could live out here where they couldn't reach her and Alan. But she knew there was trouble behind her.

  Now she came to an open place. She knew this. It was a new building they had put up, a new skyscraper, where there used to be shops that had good throwaway things in the cans and sometimes on the loading docks. It said Citicorp Mall and she ran inside. It was the day before Thanksgiving and there were many decorations. Annie rushed through into the central atrium, and looked around. There were escalators, and she dashed for one, climbing to a second storey, and then a third. She kept moving. They would arrest her or throw her out if she slowed down.

  At the railing, looking over, she saw the man in the court below. He didn't see her. He was standing, looking around.

  Stories of mothers who lift wrecked cars off their children are legion.

  When the police arrived, eyewitnesses swore it had been a stout, old black woman who had lifted the heavy potted tree in its terracotta urn, who had manhandled it up onto the railing and slid it along till she was standing above the poor dead man, and who had dropped it three storeys to crush his skull. They swore it was true, but beyond a vague description of old, and black, and dissolute looking, they could not be of assistance. Annie was gone.

  On the front page of the Post she wore as lining in her right shoe, was a photo of four men who had been arraigned for the senseless murders of more than a dozen bag ladies over a period of several months. Annie did not read the article.

  It was close to Christmas, and the weather had turned bitter, too bitter to believe. She lay propped in the doorway alcove of the Post Office on 43rd and Lexington. Her rug was drawn around her, the stocking cap pulled down to the bridge of her nose, the goods in the string bags around and under her. Snow was just beginning to come down.

  A man in a Burberry and an elegant woman in a mink approached from 42nd Street, on their way to dinner. They were staying at the New York Helmsley. They were from Connecticut, in for three days to catch the shows and to celebrate their eleventh wedding anniversary.

  As they came abreast of her, the man stopped and stared down into the doorway. "Oh, Christ, that's awful," he said to his wife. "On a night like this, Christ, that's just awful."

  "Dennis, please!" the woman said.

  "I can't just pass her by," he said. He pulled off a kid glove and reached into his pocket for his money clip.

  "Dennis, they don't like to be bothered," the woman said, trying to pull him away. "They're very self-sufficient. Don't you remember that piece in the Times?"

  "It's damned near Christmas, Lori," he said, taking a twenty dollar bill from the folded sheaf held by its clip. "It'll get her a bed for the night, at least. They can't make it out here by themselves. God knows, it's little enough to do." He pulled free of his wife's grasp and walked to the alcove.

  He looked down at the woman swathed in the rug, and he could not see her face. Small puffs of breath were all that told him she was alive. "Ma'am," he said, leaning forward. "Ma'am, please take this." He held out the twenty.

  Annie did not move. She never spoke on the street.

  "Ma'am, please, let me do this. Go somewhere warm for the night, won't you . . . please?"

  He stood for another minute, seeking to rouse her, at least for a go away that would free him, but the old woman did not move. Finally, he placed the twenty on what he presumed to be her lap, there in that shapeless mass, and allowed himself to be dragged away by his wife.

  Three hours later, having completed a lovely dinner, and having decided it would be romantic to walk back to the Helmsley through the six inches of snow that had fallen, they passed the Post Office and saw the old woman had not moved. Nor had she taken the twenty dollars. He could not bring himself to look beneath the wrappings to see if she had frozen to death, and he had no intention of taking back the money. They walked on.

  In her warm place, Annie held Alan close up under her chin, stroking him and feeling his tiny black fingers warm at her throat and cheeks. It's all right, baby, it's all right. Were safe. Shhh, my baby. No one can hurt you.

  BECAUSE HE REALIZED he had been responsible for the elevation of the first Indo-Chinese Catholic to the Papacy, Eugene Keeton decided to use his incredible, though specific, power for the good of all mankind.

  All right, he admitted to himself, when he was finally convinced he had "the might to vote," I made a few mistakes. Nixon and Reagan were examples of muddy thinking; and voting for The Greatest Show on Earth for the 1952 Oscar, just because I liked Jimmy Stewart as a clown, when I should have gone for On the Waterfront or Viva Zapata! or Moulin Rouge or High Noon, was just plain stupid. But who knew? Who knew I was the deciding vote? Who could believe such a thing?

  Now, miraculously, he knew.

  He believed.

  In some wonderful, cockeyed flash of inspiration on the part of the sentient universe (no doubt in league with the powers of synchronicity, serendipity and entropy), he had been touched by the Paw of Chance: he had been accorded the lofty position of holder of the deciding vote. The knowledge had come slowly; it had taken forty of his fifty years to understand who and what he was.

  It hadn't dawned though he had cast vote for every successful presidential candidate since his twenty-first birthday. It hadn't dawned though he had been chosen by Flora from the slate of suitors for her hand. It hadn't dawned though he had been dead-on selecting every Emmy, Oscar, Tony and Obie winner for the past three decades. It hadn't dawned though he'd been on the winning side for the Rose Bowl, the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Stanley Cup.

  But when, for a lark, he voted for Daffy Duck as a write-in for the Board of Supervisors, and D. Duck won — after six recounts — by one vote, he began to have suspicions.

  So he tried a lightweight experiment. When TV Guide ran a readers' poll coupon for viewers to select their favorite television shows, he picked the sign-off Sermonette as best dramatic presentation, Tom Snyder as most outstanding male personality, and The National Drunk Driving Test as the best comedy.

  When they won, to the amazement and dyspepsia of Walter Annenberg, he knew he was on to something hot.

  He vaguely remembered a filler item he'd seen on ABC just before the last election. A county in Wisconsin — or had it been Oklahoma? — where the voting record had been identical to that of the nation as a whole since the 1840s without a miss. A statistical fluke, the announcer had said.

  Fluke, indeed. He was another.

  Eugene Keeton was
the stuffer of the ballot boxes.

  He came to think of himself as a superhero with a secret identity. In real life he was mild-mannered, fifty-year-old Eugene Keeton, good old Gene, an electrician at Universal Studios, a husband, father of two grown daughters, slow and precise and a credit to his race. But when the bat-signal flashed against the night sky, when the beleaguered forces of Good and Decency called for The Green Hornet, then Eugene Keeton shed his bib overalls and his Hush Puppies and became the deciding vote.

  Even with the emphysema and the arthritis, the secret knowledge made Eugene Keeton's life a happy dream.

  And when Cardinal Sorapong Krung Utanan was elevated by the Holy See, when the puff of white smoke went up over the Vatican and Reuters flashed the incredible news to the bead-counting world, Eugene Keeton knew he was the focus of vast powers. With knowledge came a sense of responsibility.

  Then he decided to do good things.

  But first, because he didn't have any concrete plans, because having the power and knowing how best to use it were very different matters, he resolved to share his wonderfulness with Flora.

  "You what?" she said.

  "I'm the ballot-box stuffer. I can make it all go my way."

  "Go to bed, I'll get the heat pad."

  "Flora, you've lived with me for twenty-two years. Have you ever heard me say anything like this? Do I see flying saucers? When Sandi wanted me to go to that self-actualization seminar her boyfriend was running, did I come back and talk about needing my space? Am I a sensible person or am I not?"

  "Maybe the hot water bottle, too," she said.

  Eugene Keeton went fishing. He hadn't gone fishing in over fifteen years; nonetheless, he sought privacy and sat for six silent hours in a small boat on Lake Sherwood. And as darkness fell a great sorrow took him.

  I'm fifty years old, he thought, and I don't know what to do with the world. I'm just a man, no great brain, no deep thinker, and I know there are so many things that are wrong, that ought to be made better, the world easier for people, and I don't know how to do it.