The Animal Hour (2 page)

N
ANCY
K
INCAID
L
EARNS
T
RUTH
A
BOUT
S
ELF
! C
OWARDICE
E
ATS
F
UTURE
! Get the
Post!

She stepped off the sidewalk. Dashed into a break in the Broadway traffic. Ran to the opposite curb. There was a deli there, on the ground floor of her building. Its plate-glass window was decorated for Halloween with paper jack-o'-lanterns and snarling skeletons. On one side, a huge black bat with a phosphorescent stare darkened the glass. She could see her reflection in it. She paused to look herself over.

She was a small, slender woman. Still with a girl's figure really. Still with a lot of girl about her face too. It was a round, open face. Too broad and flat, she thought. Too strong in the jaw. But she had curly red-brown hair that tumbled to her shoulders and softened the effect a little. And her eyes—not only were they a delicate china blue, but they appeared very frank, very straightforward. Her friend Maura always said they made her look intelligent and honest.

The subway ride had left her a tousled mess. She brushed at her hair. Smoothed down her imitation camel hair trench-coat. Adjusted the green tam-o'-shanter on the crown of her head.
Intelligent and honest
, she thought. Not as good as, say, smoldering and mysterious. But there must be some guys who like intelligent and honest. Somewhere. Maybe.

She let out a sigh. Went into the building, plucking her compact from her purse as she shouldered through the door. She redid her lipstick, waiting for the elevator. Smoothed away a smudge of mascara.

Painted lips, painted eyes.
Wearin' a bird of paradise.
Oh, it all seems wrong somehow …

The decorated steel door of the old elevator slid open. She stepped into the little box. Just before the door clapped shut, she pulled off her tam and stuffed it into her trench coat pocket. More businesslike. Less schoolgirl.

She rode up to the twelfth floor. Stepped out into the reception area of Woodlawn, Jesse and Goldstein. Old aqua sofas. A coffee table covered with copies of the
Law Journal.
A heavyset black woman reading a newspaper behind a pane of glass. Nancy waved to her. The woman hardly glanced up as she buzzed her through the low wooden gate.

Here there was a single broad hall, a row of offices on either side. Gunmetal desks and maroon swivel chairs behind walls of windows and brown wood. Everything buried under papers. Folders and briefs stacked in the corners of everybody's floor. Open file cabinets, skewed bookshelves. Pretty dingy stuff, all in all. Nancy remembered that she'd been shocked the first time she'd seen it. How could these be the offices of the great Fernando Woodlawn?

She had heard about Woodlawn since she was a child. Every time his name was in a newspaper, Dad would go on and on about him.
I always knew he was destined for big things! A real world beater! A true legal mind!

Poor Dad, she thought. The sweetest, gentlest man in the world really, but as a lawyer he was never much more than a maker of wills. And as a politician, he was downright proud to be a licker of envelopes for his beloved Democrats. His sole claim to fame was that he had gone to Brooklyn Law School with Fernando. “Lifted many a beer with the man between one class and another.” Dad just never stopped being proud of that. He took personal satisfaction in Fernando's big real estate deals. His meetings with the mayor. His battles with the governor. He even bragged about the patronage jobs Fernando had sent his way when he needed them. “All I ever had to say was, ‘I'm a little short this quarter, Fernando,' and by God, within a week, I'd have more assessment appeals on my desk than I could handle.”

Poor Dad.

Well, she thought—she walked along the empty corridor toward her own office down at the end—soon Dad would have cause to be even prouder, God bless him. She wasn't allowed to tell him yet, but it seemed fairly certain that Fernando was on his way to Albany. The governor, it was pretty much agreed, was through. He'd been taking a slow-motion nose dive in the polls for over a year, and the new tax hikes he was going to need to balance the budget were sure to finish him off. If the Democrats were going to stay in power, he'd either have to step down next year or risk a humiliating defeat at his own convention. So the field was open—and guess who was at the starting gate. If the new Ashley Towers project got approved this week, Fernando would be able to farm out enough legal work to the party leaders to virtually assure himself the nomination. And with the state Republicans completely in disarray, Governor Fernando was looking like a very good bet.

Nancy's head throbbed again as she thought about it. It was going to be hell this week. It was going to be just like last week. The inside lines ringing. The conversations in whispers. The sudden bursts of shouting. “I want it! Now! Let's go! Let's go!” She had begun to live in terror of the next harsh hiss over her intercom. “Nancy! Come here! I need to talk to you!”

There was a photograph on Fernando's wall—it was visible through the glass as she passed it now. It was a two-page spread cut from an article in
Downtowner
magazine. The article had run about four months ago. It was the first interview in which Fernando had hinted at his intention to run for the statehouse. “Floating the balloon,” he called it: it was the start of all the craziness. The magazine's photographer had come to the office and spent the whole day following Fernando around. And Fernando had charmed the kid as only he could. Shoulder slaps, racy jokes; he even took the kid and his girlfriend out to dinner when the day was through. The result was that photograph. Practically a campaign poster. Fernando, leaning forward over his desk, with a wide-angle view of downtown Manhattan spread out behind him. Fernando's shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows. His thin forearms corded and throbbing as he thrust himself forward. His whole wiry frame seemed coiled, ready to spring over the desktop and into the lens. And his thin face, the blade-sharp features—they were burning like a laser with his craving and his glee. It was Governor Fernando, all right. And the sight of that photo as she went by actually made Nancy's stomach boil with anxiety.

With another sigh—almost a groan—she turned into her office. Her gunmetal desk, of course, was neat as a pin. Papers properly stacked in the corners. Computer keyboard lined with the desk's edge. Even her monitor was tilted expectantly toward her chair.

She tossed her purse down on the desk and headed straight for the window. She was beginning to feel muzzy again and wanted some more of that fresh air. She grabbed the bottom of the heavy wooden frame and sent it rattling upward. She stuck her head out into the smell of dying leaves and car exhaust.

From twelve stories above, she could hear the cars honk softly down on Warren Street. She could even hear the sound of synchronized footsteps on the sidewalk, the Monday morning march to work. She glanced to her left. On the ledge just beside her, there was a gargoyle. He was a clownish gnome of white stone. He wore a peaked cap. His face jutted out over the street. He stared down at it. His features were frozen in unpleasant, wild-eyed laughter. She turned away from him, turned to the right. Craning her neck, she could just get a glimpse of Broadway. The clustered sycamores in the park. The Hall's white dome. Justice holding her scales above the yellow leaves.

She breathed in the air gratefully, her eyes wide. She glanced back in the other direction.

The gargoyle had turned its head. It was grinning directly at her, its twisted face six inches from her own.

“Yikes!”

She pulled inside double quick. She backed away from the window, her hand to her chest. She could feel her heart fluttering against her fingers. Then she stopped. Her mouth open, she shook her head. She laughed.

“Whoa,” she said aloud.

What a
weird
thing to see! God! She felt her forehead with the back of her hand. Maybe she had a fever or something.

“Jeepers,” she whispered.

Well, then she went right back to that window. She stuck her head out again. For a second, she was half afraid the thing really
would
be staring at her.

Or creeping toward her. Oooh
, she thought.

Luckily though, the creature was back in its proper place. Grinning down at the street below. Just as stationary as a piece of stone ought to be. She smiled at it.

“Excuse me, may I help you!”

The voice came suddenly from behind her and, bang, she started and cracked her head on the windowsill.

“Yowch. Darn it,” she said. She wheeled back into the office, rubbing her scalp hard. There was a woman there now. She was standing in the office doorway.

She was a black woman. Slim and busty. Fashionable in a bright red dress made vivid by her dark skin and her red lipstick. The woman was holding a folder under one arm. She was regarding Nancy with an expectant smile.

For a moment, though, Nancy could only continue to rub her head. “Hi,” she said through her teeth. “Boy, that really smarted.”

The black woman just hung there, her smile just hung there. “Is there something I can help you with?” she said.

“Uh … no,” said Nancy, a little confused. “I don't think so.” She dropped her hand to her side finally. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, I … I mean, are you waiting for someone?” the black woman said.

“Uh … no. No. I'm supposed to be here. You must be new. This is my office.”

The black woman gave a puzzled little laugh at that. “Well, no it's not, actually,” she said. “I think you've made a mistake.”

Nancy gazed at her blankly.

When you walk down the avenue …

She blinked. “Uh … Excuse me? I'm sorry. What do you mean?”

“I mean, I think you've made a mistake,” the black woman said. “This is definitely not your office.”

Slowly, Nancy glanced around her, surveyed the place. Had she wandered into the wrong cubicle? “I'm … pretty sure this is the place,” she said more slowly. “Isn't this Nancy Kincaid's office?”

I just can't believe it's you …

The black woman stared at her for a long moment. The stare seemed dark. Deep. Empty.

Oh, it all seems wrong somehow …

“Well … yes,” the black woman said after a long moment. “Yes, it is Nancy Kincaid's office.” And then she shook her head. Once. Slowly.

“But you're not Nancy Kincaid.”

T
he phone rang. The baby started crying. The Shithead started pounding on the door.

For a moment, Avis did not know which way to turn. She stood in the center of the bare white living room, a small, paralyzed figure under the ceiling's naked bulb. Her hands were in the air, her fingers splayed. Her sweet, pale face seemed frozen.

The phone rang again and again. The baby kept crying for her. The Shithead hammered the door hard and now he was shouting too.

“Avis! Avis, I know you're in there! Open the goddamned door, Avis! You're my fucking wife, now open the goddamned door!”

Avis put her hands to her hair—short curls of dirty-blonde hair. She blinked once behind the huge, square frames of her glasses.

“Avis! I'm telling you! I know you're there!”

The baby's crying
, she thought.
Get the baby.

She could hear the rhythmic wails from the bedroom: “Aah! Aah! Aah!”

The kitchenette phone shrilled in between. And
wham! wham! wham!
went the Shithead's fist.

“It's my baby too, Avis! You can't keep me away from my own goddamned baby!”

But Avis stood there, stunned, yet another moment. It had all happened too quickly for her.

Just thirty seconds ago, she had been sitting in the empty room quietly. She had been perched on the canvas chair before the folding card table. She had been resting her hands on the keys of her portable Olivetti, staring at the page peeling off the roller. It was the last page of her report on
Thirty Below
, a thriller novel set here in New York City. She wrote reports like this for a living. She read novels and wrote synopses of them. Then she wrote her opinion on whether or not the novels' plots would make good movies. She sent these reports to the office of Victory Pictures, so that the Victory executives could pretend that
they
had read the novels and had opinions. She was paid sixty dollars for each report.

On this report, on this page, she had just typed: “This exciting urban thriller—reminiscent of
Marathon Man
—could be a good vehicle for Dustin Hoffman.” She had been sitting in the canvas chair, staring at that sentence.

Dustin Hoffman
, she had been thinking.
A good vehicle for Dustin Hoffman. I don't know how I'm going to pay my rent next month, and I'm writing about vehicles for Dustin Hoffman. How am I going to buy diapers for my baby, Dustin Hoffman? Tell me that, you stupid millionaire sitting by your pool someplace drinking champagne! My little baby doesn't have good clothes to wear, Mr. Dusty, Mr. Dust-man, and if he were on fucking fire YOU WOULDN'T PISS ON HIM TO PUT HIM OUT AND MY LIFE IS SHIT, YOU MOVIE STAR ASSHOLE! What am I going to do?