14 Stories (19 page)

On our way to my building she says “Incidentally, what is your name?” “Name.” “That's your real name.” “My real name is Name.” “Then so is mine.” “That's a coincidence,” I say. “And I like your name,” Name says. “I like your name too,” I say. “I not only like your name but I like you, Name.” “I like you too, Name.” “This is really unusual. Because there probably aren't two people with the same name as us and feeling quite like us about our names and each other anywhere in the world right now.” “I don't know why you assume that.” “You don't think there's a reason?” “No.” “I do.”

Two people stand on the street corner. Or rather she stands on the corner. He's gone into the corner store. She looks up. A jet plane passes. She waves at the plane and laughs. She looks at the cars passing on the avenue. A bus. She waves at the people in the bus. A young boy in the bus waves back. She sees me waiting at the bus stop. She smiles. I smile. The man comes out of the store. He holds out a package he didn't seem to have when he went into the store. She takes the package and puts it in her pocketbook and runs. He walks after her. She sees him walking after her and runs faster. He starts jogging after her. She sees him and begins to run as fast as she can. At least it seems like that. She's sprinting. He's now running after her. She turns around as she runs and sees him gaining on her. She seems to try to run faster than she was going, but she can't. She's in fact slowing down. She's getting tired. The pocketbook she's holding might be heavy. I'm running along the avenue behind both of them. People turn as we run past. They look at the couple and then me as if I know what's going on. I don't. As if I'm part of a threesome—this woman, man and I—but I'm really not. I was just watching them on the corner. Then just the woman on the corner. Then the man leaving the store and holding a package out to her and the woman taking the package and putting it in her pocketbook and running away with it and the man following her, and now he catches up. He tries to take her pocketbook. She pulls her pocketbook back. I stand and watch this from about fifteen feet away. Other people watch. He pulls the pocketbook from her. When she tries to get the pocketbook back, he pushes her. She falls. A man steps over to them and says something to the man who pushed her and holds out his hand to the woman and pulls her up. The man with the pocketbook tells him to mind his own business. The helping man steps back but continues to watch them while sitting against a parked car. The man he's watching pulls the package out of the pocketbook and puts it in his side jacket pocket. The woman reaches into the pocket. He slaps her hand. She slaps his face. He punches her in the face. She falls, this time on her back. Her head hits the ground hard, and she seems unconscious. The helping man rushes over and begins arguing with the man who hit the woman. The man swings the pocketbook at him and catches him in the face. The woman was only stunned or maybe unconscious for a few seconds. The helping man has a cut on his cheek from the bag. He pulls out a knife. The other man tries to knock the knife out of his hand with the pocketbook, but the strap breaks and the pocketbook drops to the ground. The woman takes a handkerchief out of the pocketbook, presses it against the back of her head and stands. The two men are facing one another and shouting, the helping man waving his knife in the air, the other man his fists.” Use it. You just try and use it,” he says to the man with the knife. Several people come over, and others from across the avenue, and almost all of them crowd around the two men and the woman, though giving them plenty of room to move around. I still haven't moved. The crowd forms quickly and so densely around the trio that I can no longer see what's going on. I hear screams. From women and men. One woman turns around from the crowd with her wrist to her lips and looks at me and walks away. Her space is taken immediately, so I still can't see what's going on. I go over to the crowd, try to get a place in the circle by squeezing between two people, then look over a couple of shoulders to see what's going on inside. The man who tried to help the woman has his own knife in his chest and is lying on his back. The woman is lying on her front, her face on its side. Blood frames the back of her head, though it could be from the second fall that I saw. The man who hit her then is on his knees. Blood seems to be blotting his dark shirt around his stomach where he's holding himself.

“What happened?” I say to a man.

“Don't you see?”

“But how'd it happen?”

“What's the difference how? It's happened.”

“Someone should go for the police.”

“Good idea. You go.”

“And the people there should be helped.”

“That's what someone else said. You help them.”

“How can I if I'm going for an ambulance and the police?”

“That's true. And an ambulance. You're right. They need one.”

“Will someone please go for an ambulance and the police while I try and help these people?” I say.

“I'll go,” a girl says. She doesn't look older than eight.

“Someone older?” I say.

There are about twenty people around the trio. Nobody responds to anything I say with even a head shake. I push through the crowd. The man's shirt is soaked now and he's groaning. The man with the knife in his chest looks dead. The woman is still bleeding from the head.

“Will someone please go for the police?” I say.

“Let the girl go,” a woman says.” I know her. Know her mother, I mean. She's a smart girl. Rather, her mother says she's smart”

“She's smart,” another woman says. “Go, girl. Call the police.”

“I need the money,” the girl says.

I put my hand in my pants pocket. Everyone watches me go through all my pockets for change. I look at the crowd nearest the girl. “I thought I had change,” I say.

“Sure,” a man says. He gives the girl a dime.

“Give her two,” a woman says. “She might lose the first.”

“I won't lose the first,” the girl says.” I know who to call and how. I dial. I put the dime in.”

“You put the dime in and then you dial,” the woman says.

“I know, I know. I only need one dime.” She goes.

I get down on one knee. I don't know whom to help first. Probably the woman. The knifed man looks dead. If the knifed man is dead, and he didn't by some accident fall on the knife himself, then the man who stabbed him would seem like the last person to help. I'm not sure about that. All I know is someone has to be helped first. So I pick the woman. Maybe because she is a woman. Though if she's the one who stabbed the man, then I probably should first help the man who I thought stabbed the man in the chest, though only if I'm sure the stabbed man is dead. If he isn't dead, then I wouldn't know which man to help first—that is, if the woman is definitely the one who stabbed the man, but not out of self-defense. If she stabbed him out of self-defense or to protect the man who chased and hit her before, then the last person to be helped would be the stabbed man, dead or not, and the first would be either the woman or the man holding his stomach.

“Who stabbed who?” I say.

“Who stabbed who?” a man says.

“Who's responsible for all this?”

“I didn't see it.”

“I did,” a woman says.

“Who stabbed who?” I say.

“Why you want to know? You a cop?”

“No. I just want to help these people.”

“You a doctor?”

“I'm a passerby, just like you.”

“No you're not. You were running after them before.”

“I was running after them because I saw the man chasing the woman, and I thought something was wrong.”

“Something was,” a man says.

“What happened?” I say.

“You're the one running after them, and all of a sudden you didn't see?” a woman says.

“No.”

“Like hell you didn't.”

I decide to help the knifed man first. At least I can find out quick enough if he's dead or not. If he's alive then there can't be much I can do for him except put a support under his head, and then I can go right to the woman or other man.

“Will someone please do what they can to make the woman and that man comfortable while I see to this one?”

“Best medicine and treatment in these situations is to wait for professional help,” a man says. “Real doctors or hospital aides, but someone ignorant of medicine can do more damage than someone not doing anything.”

“He's right,” several people say in different ways.

“But I know what I'm doing. I'm not in the field of medicine, but I know how to stop someone from bleeding to death.”

“How?” a man says.

“Tourniquets, for one thing.”

“That's for arms and legs, not the head.”

“I said ‘for one thing.' Another way is pressure points. The neck. There's one there. They're all over the body. Or you stick your finger on the wound or in the blood vessel that's cut if you can't find the right pressure point. At least let me try.”

“Sure, we can let you try, and watch you finish off all three of them before our eyes. Just stay off them.”

“I'm sorry, but I still think it's best I try.” I feel the woman's forehead. Put my ear next to her mouth. “She's breathing.”

“We said stay off her,” the man says. “Wait for help.”

“What I think is someone else ought to call the police for help. That girl might have met a friend or someone and just forgotten about it.”

“She's a good trustful girl,” the woman who said she knows the girl's mother says.

“I'm not saying she's bad or distrustful. But younger people—particularly around her age, eight or nine or so—do get distracted more than adults.”

“She's ten,” the woman says.

“Ten-year-olds probably get less distracted than eight- or nine- year-olds, but still get distracted a lot.”

“So do adults,” a woman says.

“I know. But children more so.”

“Children more so. You're right. Maybe someone ought to go as he says. You go, why don't you?” she says to me. “You seem so interested and reliable.”

“I want to stay here and help these people now.”

“I think you'd best be giving help by phoning for it than touching them,” a man says. “And out of all of us, you're the one who seems more liable to do the most trouble if you stay.”

“I agree,” a woman says.

“I don't.” I feel the stabbed man's temple. “He's alive.”

“Too bad,” a man says.

“What are you saying?” someone else says.

“What I said. Too bad he's alive. He started it, didn't he?”

“No, the other man did.”

“It was a woman,” a woman says. “She stole something from the man with the knife in him. That's why he chased her. The other man just happened to step in. And she took the knife out of his hand, which he only pulled out to protect her, and put it in the stabbed man's chest.”

“I think the woman and the man holding his stomach did know one another,” I say.

“You know them?”

“I saw them together. They were standing on the corner of this same avenue three blocks away. The man went into a corner store, and the woman waited for him outside.”

“What kind of store?”

“I forget. A jewelry store. I was waiting for my bus. Then the man came out and held the package out for her, or just held it out without any intention of giving it to her. Anyway, she took it and put it in her pocketbook and ran. The man walked after her. She ran faster. He started jogging and then ran after her. She at first ran faster than him when they were both running, and then, because she was tired or her pocketbook had become too cumbersome to run with or something, she slowed down and he caught up. Right here. I was standing over there. Next to the hydrant. The one where the two dogs are.”

I'm still on one knee and now pointing through someone's legs. Almost all of them turn to look at the hydrant and dogs. “Then the man took the pocketbook from her, and she tried getting it back. He pushed her and she slapped him. Rather, he hit her hand and she slapped his face and he punched her and she went down. That's when the man who was knifed stepped in for the second time. Most of you must have seen that. The first time he stepped in he was told to mind his own business and he did. This time I don't remember him being told anything. They just argued. And he pulled out a knife—the knifed man did—after the other man hit him in the face with the pocketbook. Then the other man must have taken the knife away from him and stabbed him with it, though I'm only assuming now, since that's when you all suddenly encircled them and I couldn't see what happened.”

“That's not at all what happened,” someone says.

“Then what really happened?” someone says.

“You didn't see it?”

“I just got here.”

“Remember that little girl who went to phone the police?”

“I told you, I just got here.”

“Well, there was a little girl of about nine or ten or so who we sent to call for help.”

“Ten,” a woman says.

“Ten. Well, she knifed him.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” several people say in different ways.

“I thought we needed a bit of, I don't know, levity here, what with the grim sight of them lying there and waiting for help taking so long. But I guess it was in bad taste.”

“Very.”

While they were saying all this I took my jacket off, rolled it up and put it under the woman's head.

“Here it comes,” a man says.

We hear an ambulance siren and look in the street. The ambulance and police escort preceding it pass.

“Must be for someone else.”

“I really think one of us should try and get the police now,” I say. “Just to remind them, if the girl called, or to let them know, if she didn't.”