Breed (28 page)

Adam is the first one, and then it is Alice’s turn. She whispers
Thank you
before maneuvering through the shattered French door, closing her eyes and holding her arms straight up, trying to protect herself from the deadly-looking shards that make going through the window seem like entering a shark’s open mouth.

“You’re next, Teacher, let’s go,” he says to Michael, and Michael makes his way through the smashed windows, but because he is larger, he is not able to fully escape the tear and bite of the glass that remains, and as he lands in the spongy, half-frozen grass behind the house, he is picking out triangles of broken glass that have pierced deeply into the weave of his coat.

The back garden has, aside from its small lawn, a ruined outdoor fireplace, junked lawn furniture, a stone cupid missing its head, and broken bricks where a bit of patio used to be. What was once grass trod on by a family that might have at least imagined happiness is now a delinquent frozen patch of uncared-for lawn that’s degenerated into a botanical feral state, a chaos of sticker bushes, knotted vines, and voluptuous weeds. And half covered by all the growth is a jumble of bones, most of them small and difficult to identify, but one at least clearly a pelvis, and another a small skull with large canines.

“Go!” Rodolfo shouts down at them. Behind him are the dim shapes of his friends doing their best to wrestle Alex to a standstill.

Stumbling over the bones, the twins and Michael rush toward the tall wooden gate in the corner of the garden, but it is bolted shut and they must scramble over it—no problem for either Adam and Alice, but a challenge for Michael, who must try it four times, with the twins, invisible now on the other side of the fence, urging him on in increasingly desperate tones.

But at last—with visions of Twisden hurtling across the yard and grabbing his legs—he hoists himself up. The toes of his shoes bang frantically against the gate’s wooden planks as he pulls himself higher and higher, and, after balancing for a moment with his knee on top of the gate, Michael flips himself forward and lands between the twins, and the three of them just stand there, wondering what to do and where to go.

Rodolfo and his crew, accustomed to chaos, to sudden exits and constant danger, have scattered in all directions.

Michael catches his breath and looks at Adam and Alice; their eyes are trained trustfully on him, and this trust, which seemed such a benediction before, now sends a chill through him. How can he ever protect these two? How can he even know whether he is about to deliver them directly into the arms of their furious father? How can he know if he is in the process of forever ruining his own life?

The three of them go to the front of the town house, hoping there, at least, people will be present, witnesses, and that will make them marginally safer.

Is he still in the house? Have the wild boys and girls knocked him unconscious, tied him up—killed him? Michael scans the block up and down, back and forth, looking for Twisden. There is a mail carrier; here comes a dog walker with eight, nine, maybe ten dogs, little and brown, black and white, big, shaggy, and gray. There is a mother’s helper pushing a stroller with a plastic rain guard covering her little passenger, who sits there like a tiny pope, his pudgy fingers splayed.

And there is Twisden, sitting on the fender of a battered old Volvo parked directly across the street. He can be wherever he wants to be. He can take these children whenever he thinks the time is right.

He slides off the front end of the car as softly as a shadow moving along a wall.

Fifth Avenue is less than two hundred feet away, and they speed toward it on the south side of the street while Twisden keeps pace with them on the north side.

“Daddy, Daddy!” Alice screams. “Leave us alone!”

Her cries arrest the attention of a few passersby. Some stare, but no one tries to interfere, or intercede.

“Just come here,” Twisden shouts over the traffic noise. “Okay? Come on, honey. What are you doing? What are you afraid of?”

“You, Daddy,” Alice yells back. Her face reddens, but despite the emotion she doesn’t break stride. In fact, they are all of them running faster and faster—the race is on to get to the Fifth Avenue light before it turns red again.

“Yeah, Dad,” hollers Adam, emboldened by his sister’s outburst. “You can go fuck yourself!”

“Adam!” Twisden says, almost leaping in front of a rattletrap of a plumbing-supplies truck, “how dare you use that kind of language!” He stands now on the other side of the street, his fists on his hips, his head shaking censoriously.

It seems to Michael that something is preventing Twisden from making a full-out attempt to grab the kids. Some part of him is wary of what others will see, what they might think or even do. Twisden’s plan is to wear them down, to keep pace with them, to make it impossible to get away from him until one of the kids, or both of them, or maybe even Michael himself is so exhausted and discouraged that surrender will seem the best option. Maybe that’s what the death instinct is… not a drive toward death itself, but the brute, inexorable reality of death gnawing away at life until it just snaps.

“Come on, quick,” Michael says, pulling the kids forward and dashing across Fifth Avenue just as the light goes to green and the herd of automobiles begins its charge, as if once they are past this one light they will never have to stop again. Car horns blare their owners’ displeasure as a few of the drivers must wait an extra half second for Michael and the twins to make it to the west side of the street.

Here the sidewalk is somewhat narrow. A few feet away is the pale gray stone wall bordering the eastern edge of Central Park. Between the pavement and the wall are wooden benches, freshly painted bright green, and occupied, for the most part, by young women from the Caribbean, bundled against the cold, with hoods and scarves and earmuffs and gloves, talking to one another while they keep an eye on the swaddled infants in their care. A few of these young women, with their lonely eyes and weary smiles, watch as Michael and the twins run past them. Michael is the first to clamber over the wall, fighting off the chaotic tangle of the immense, empty forsythia bushes just on the other side of the wall. Scrambling to get his footing, he reaches over the wall, grips Alice under her arms, and lifts her.

Twisden is there, closer than ever, walking along the sidewalk next to the wall, his hands in his pockets and his lips pursed, as if he were whistling. How did he gain on them so suddenly? Can he really move this quickly? And if he can, what hope is there?

As if to answer the question as soon as it crosses Michael’s mind, Twisden is now just a few feet away. Escape? There is no escape. Hope? There is no hope.

“Dad!” Adam screams, feeling the nearness of his father, hearing his breath, smelling him.

Michael quickly lifts Adam to bring him over the wall, but he hasn’t acted quickly enough. And he is not strong enough. And today, it would seem, is not his day.

Nor does it seem to be Adam’s. His father’s hand closes around his ankle with the heartless stubborn strength of forever, and he is captured.

Alex turns Adam around and clasps him fiercely by the shoulders, holding him up so that the tips of their noses are practically touching. Heat ripples off Twisden, as if he were burning inside. “Is this the little boy who told his father to go fuck himself?” he says.

“No,” Adam says, barely.

“Is this the little boy who tells family secrets?”

“Adam!” Alice screams.

Michael must restrain her to keep her from climbing over the low wall and getting caught herself. He pulls her toward him. They back up, stumbling, nearly falling over the twisted vines armored against the winter, cold and hard.

“Give me my daughter,” Twisden says, his voice boiling, yet inside that rage there are ripples of doubt. How can he hold on to the boy and catch the girl? What are people seeing right now? What are they thinking?

“Dad, please,” Adam says.

Alex turns toward Adam’s voice, as if startled.

“They’re getting away,” Twisden cries.

“Put me down, Dad, please, put me down.”

A young couple walking their Australian shepherd have stopped, and they stare openly at Alex and Adam while the dog sits, ears flat, hackles up, its docked tail twitching nervously.

“Wait until you have children,” Alex says with what he dearly hopes looks like a good-natured grin. He hoists Adam up and holds him in the crook of his arm, as if his son were a three-year-old who has gotten tuckered out during his playtime and now must be carried. The very familiarity of the image seems to reassure the young couple, though if they had taken note of the apprehensiveness of their dog, they might not be quite so sanguine. And, of course, they can’t be faulted for not noticing how fiercely the man is gripping his son’s leg. But the privacy of family life, like the primacy of private property, is a given to most people, and the young man yanks his dog’s leash authoritatively and the couple continue on their way.

“Dad?” Adam asks in his smallest, most timid voice.

Alex, who has been making certain the couple and their juicy-looking dog are indeed walking away, turns toward the sound of his son’s voice.

Adam has exactly one second to implement his plan, and he does not waste it. As soon as his father is fully facing him, Adam runs his finger into Alex’s eye, stabs hard and remorselessly into the cool jelly of it.

Alex howls with pain. He grabs for the pulsating flame of his eye and covers it with his hand, dropping Adam to the ground.

“I’m sorry,” Adam whimpers as he scrambles over the wall and runs toward Alice and Michael, who have been waiting for him, thirty yards beyond.

On the other side of the curving roadway connecting the east side of Central Park to the west is the monumental Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Michael leads the twins quickly and crazily across the road, dodging taxis, trucks, and cars. They run as fast as they can, past the sellers of postcards and pastel portraits and giant pretzels, fewer here than usual because of the raw weather.

The massive white stone staircase leading to the museum’s entrance looms before them, at the top of which hang banners announcing the World of Watteau, Treasures of the Topkapi, and Representations of Evil—this last one made of dark red silk and bearing the silhouette of Lucifer, his arms raised high, one hand holding a pitchfork, the other a human head. Not daring to glance behind them, the three push through the doors. Inside, they slow themselves so as to not court unwanted attention, but they still move quickly as Michael guides them to the ticket booth. He has only a couple of dollars in his pocket but, though the admission price is hefty, it is also voluntary. “Three, please,” he says, pushing a single toward the woman in the booth, who impassively slides over three lapel pins, giving them access to the museum and its trillions of dollars’ worth of treasure.

And here comes Alex, as arresting and incongruous in this great hall as a wild animal. He bursts into the great echoing main lobby, looking this way and that, his left eye deep red, his teeth bared. Whereas Michael and the twins even at the height of their fear are careful to remain somehow under the radar of the museum staff and the thousands of visitors, Alex feels no such need. After whirling around several times and failing to pick his children out from the waves of museumgoers that wash across the great room, he begins to shout: “Adam! Alice!”

“Oh God,” Alice murmurs, hearing her name bellowed, hearing its second syllable echo, seeing the people stop in their tracks.

A teacher and a couple of parent volunteers are escorting a class of sixth-graders from a nearby Catholic school—the boys in maroon blazers and white shirts, the girls in maroon skirts, kneesocks. Michael and the twins use them as a moving screen as they make their way toward the main staircase.

The shouting has released Alex from his inhibitions and from his desire to appear as if he were a man like any other. His voice, powerful, strident, is nevertheless full of anguish. “Alice! Adam!” The names shouted out so vehemently—who knows what he is really saying?
Adam
? It could be a word in Arabic, which it truly does sound like after bouncing around the acoustic chaos of the Met’s lobby. People are openly staring at him now. Since New York entered the Age of Terror, sudden noises are more disquieting than ever, and a man acting in a strange, possibly possessed manner puts people very much on alert.

Still, Alex’s piteous cries awaken compassion in some, though the overriding fact remains that he is causing a terrifying, completely destabilizing disruption, and whatever good reason he may have for carrying on like this, he should not be standing at the foot of one of the greatest collections of art and antiquity in the world and creating a disturbance of this magnitude, and so everyone feels a sense of relief when from every corner of the main floor, security guards come rushing toward him.

Still using the parochial-school class as camouflage, the twins and Michael have gotten to the second floor, though they can well hear Alex bellowing below, a sound as gut-wrenching as the roar of a lion. Alice’s hands are over her ears; Adam’s jaw is set, and his eyes are flat, almost dead.

“Keep going, keep going,” Michael says, tapping Adam’s shoulder. Alice is lagging behind and he reaches back for her. She takes his hand. When Michael glances over his shoulder at her, he sees the tears streaming down her face.

“Sir? Sir? I’m going to have to ask you to be quiet.”

This request is given by one of the twelve security officers who have come at Alex from all points, though it seems to be something a bit
more
than a request, since it is delivered as the guard—a tall, portly man with a shaved head and dark nostrils—pulls out a thirty-one-inch expandable steel baton.

When the mass of people on the grand staircase reach the Met’s second floor, some go straight ahead, some turn right, and others head left. Everyone heads in a separate artistic and historical direction—to see swords and chalices, or Dutch masters, or black-and-white photographs from the early twentieth century, or crowns and scepters from kingdoms that history has disposed of, or the innumerable examples of the arts and crafts of various preindustrial peoples: baskets, hammocks, bowls, and knives that some explorer thought so highly of that he decided to pack them up and ship them to New York.

Still following the sixth-graders, the twins and Michael veer slightly to the right and enter the first room of the Lucifer exhibition. To anyone looking, Adam and Alice are in this class, and Michael hopes that he will pass for either a teacher or a parent volunteer.

Straight ahead is an enormous painting of a saber-toothed tiger walking through a pale green savanna, a deep blue sky above. The tiger’s head is squared, equine; his mouth is open and his incisors are immense, stained, it seems, by bloody meat. Its eyes are dark, utterly alive and remorseless.

Alex has decided not to flee
or
fight, though the mental image of himself slashing and biting and pummeling those guards is so vivid and so real it feels like a memory. Yet as the guards draw closer and closer, he raises his hands and composes his face into a look of as much innocence as he can muster.

“Hey, guys, guys, guys, come on, I’m sorry,” he says in a slightly abashed tone.

“We’re going to ask you to come with us, sir,” says the baton-wielding guard as he approaches Alex. He walks steadily forward, but he holds his metal wand in front of him as if it has magical powers. The guard takes note that he is approaching an individual whose left eye is as red as a cup of tomato soup.

Among the other guards, all of whom are silent at this point, closing in on Alex one small step after another, a kind of prewar escalation is taking place—one has a pair of handcuffs, another has drawn a Taser gun, and another has a small silver can of pepper spray.

“Look, guys,” Alex says. “I realize I was making a commotion, and I’m sorry. I’m a lawyer.” He starts to reach into his jacket but stops. “May I show you my identification?”

“Keep your hands where we can see them, sir,” the lead officer says.