Brood (8 page)

There is no way for him to stop. It is as if the fate of the universe hinges upon his reaching completion. Her legs are fluttering. Her muscles are contracting. Oh my, that feels so good. Water is sloshing out of the tub. The back of her head has completely disappeared. She is invisible to him now, but he surely can feel her.

His face is burning. His ears ring. His blood, mixed ever so slightly with the blood he has consumed, courses through him like lava. His hamstrings tighten. His heart rages like a madman locked in a room.

Only Annabelle's fingertips touch the edge of the tub. And one by one, they lose their purchase on the marble border. Her legs make a last, furious flutter. A trail of bubbles flows out of her open mouth, and the bubbles are consumed by the larger, denser, perfumed bubbles into which they flow.

At last, Ezra reaches his goal. His semen twists and jolts out of him, slightly painful, massively pleasurable, startling, exhausting, renewing. He thrusts again and again and again, not wanting the pleasure to end, and he is only now realizing that any resistance from Annabelle has ceased, and not only that, but there is no response at all. He slowly pulls out of her and sits back on his haunches, waiting for her to sit up again as well.

He has been rendered so stupid by the blood and the sex that he waits for nearly a minute before common sense kicks in and he frantically pulls her out of the water, but by then it is too late.

P
eter White and Cynthia race up the block, going east to west, and once that desperate act is completed, they don't really know what to do next, and so they quickly traverse the same block again, this time going west to east. White looks annoyed, but Cynthia is frantic. She grabs the therapist's arm.

“They could be anywhere,” she says.

“I told you,” White says, making no attempt to disguise his displeasure. “They need medication.”

“Oh, for God's sake,” she says, turning away from him. “Not now.”

Because right now in the world, there are more than seven billion people who are neither Adam nor Alice Kramer, and it seems to Cynthia, standing here on the sun-struck street in Manhattan, that a goodly number of that nameless multitude are streaming right past her. Tall and short, stocky and lanky, stumbling and nimble, old and young, stooped and straight, fragrant and rank, sane and insane, dressed to the nines and clad in castoffs, black, white, yellow, and brown, hirsute and smooth, hopeful and crushed, chatting on cell phones, gorging on street food—all these souls: none of them Alice, none of them Adam.

They have made their way to Bethesda Fountain, to the spot where Alice, running for her life from her parents, first met Rodolfo. Back then it was night, and she was alone. Rodolfo was one of several wild boys practicing their clattering stunts on their skateboards. He had been friendly to her in his own slightly terrifying way. And as their friendship went on, he was friendlier and friendlier.

“We're going to get in trouble,” Adam says now.

“Help me look,” says Alice.

The fountain, presided over by a dark stone angel, gushes water that turns bright silver in the sunlight. The pool beneath it trembles. A low stone wall surrounds the pool, and people sit on the wall, some reading, others eating or meditating or talking on the phone. The brickwork around the fountain is pigeon pink, the same color as the feet of the busy birds who patrol the area hunting for scraps. Beyond the fountain and its trembling pool, one of the park's lakes stretches, filled today with rowboats, plus the occasional toy under remote control.

“You see anyone?” Adam asks.

Alice shakes her head. There are plenty of skaters around, all ages, races, and genders, but no familiar faces. A hundred or so feet in front of them, the crowd suddenly parts. A boy is running, and behind him are two police officers, both young and fit.

The boy is small, with long dark hair that fans out as he races. His build is slight; his eyes pools of bright blue madness. He wears jeans and a T-shirt and looks dirty, uncared-for. Yet he is uncommonly swift, and the distance between him and his pursuers gradually increases.

A man with a graying crew cut wearing shorts and a tank top decides to come to the aid of the police and steps in front of the fleeing urchin. The boy throws the man to the ground in an easy motion, as if discarding a broken umbrella. The man's head thuds on the pavement. Blood pours out of the man's mouth. But it looks worse than it is—it's only that he hit the pavement with such force that he bit off a chunk of his tongue.

When the boy races past Alice and Adam, they don't give it a moment's thought; they start running alongside him.

I
n the silence and solitude of the house on Sixty-Ninth Street, Cynthia can still smell the sweetness of the freshly painted walls—she had instructed the contractors to pour a little bottle of vanilla extract into every can of paint, so when she and the children moved in, the place smelled like a bakery. What a good idea it had seemed, but now the cheerful, friendly aroma mocks her senses.

Her eyes ache from crying. She wonders if it's possible to weep yourself blind.

She had no alternative but to go to the police. In her fevered imagination, every cop in the precinct would know that the twins were her adopted children, and their disappearance would be used to prove her unfitness as a mother. But the reality was something quite different. The officer who took down her information—a young, somehow Turkish-looking fellow with dramatic eyebrows and an aggressive smile—showed no inclination to question her competency as a mother, nor did he show much interest in the report that two young children were missing. Apparently, not enough time had passed for the police to make looking for the twins a high priority. In fact, as Cynthia left the precinct, she doubted that searching for Adam and Alice was a priority for them at all.

She continued to look for them, but now she is home, waiting for someone—the kids, the police—to call her. Or for the greater miracle of the children coming home.

An hour passes. She sits in the parlor with her legs crossed and her folded hands in her lap. She must remind herself to breathe.

Every so often, the waiting becomes intolerable and she springs from the sofa and races to one window or another, parts the curtain, and peers out at the street. She is coming to believe that at a certain level, hope and insanity cross paths. And she is at that level.

Who can she call? There is no one in this city she knows except for Arthur, and she has already tried his numbers and her calls have gone unanswered. Who else? The people in the antiques world? You might as well call a Siamese cat to save you from drowning. Why, oh why, has she not bothered to establish herself with any AA meetings in New York? Did she really believe that she would somehow do better on her own?

She drinks ready-made iced tea. Suddenly famished, she tears open a box of crackers and devours half of it. She turns on the TV in time for the local news. The anchors appear to be a former football player and a recently retired runway model.

“The hottest summer in New York history continues to rack up record numbers, and another bonds trader comes forward in the Banco del Mondo scandal that continues to rock the financial world,” the runway model says with an expression that suggests a wry appreciation for a world careening out of control.

“And police,” intones the retired athlete, “find the bodies of two young people in Central Park, apparently killed in broad daylight.” He glances at his co-anchor and shakes his head, as if to say,
Why must it be up to me to report these most terrible things?
“And also Earl with the weather, Lilani with sports, and a special treat later in our broadcast—celebrity chef Tangerine Dream will demonstrate five easy dishes that actually promote weight loss.”

“Sounds intriguing,” the model says, patting her virtually nonexistent tummy.

“Back right after these short announcements,” the athlete says.

Cynthia is standing, her hands on top of her head, her mouth open. She must now wait through three long minutes of advertising for gold, denture cleaners, life insurance, and, most wicked of all, a pitch for a new drug for children who are judged not to be living up to their full potential in school—Excello, prescribed for a large scattering of childhood behavioral patterns, from forgetfulness to foot jiggling, and sold in this ad through a grandmother character, who looks as if she wandered off the set of
Little House on the Prairie,
reassuring her daughter, who looks hip (tattooed) but responsible and concerned (eyeglasses, a worried expression), that it is perfectly safe to give Sean (failing in school, alienated from his friends) Excello. “I wish it was around when you were a little girl driving everyone crazy,” the old woman says, to which the daughter says, “Mom!” and gives her a playful but totally respectful little shove.

At last, the newscasters' faces fill the screen. Cynthia has an impulse to turn off the TV, but she forces herself to watch. Film of two bodies, both on the small side, covered with Mylar sheets. The whirling red and blue lights of several emergency vehicles flicker in the leaves of the abundant trees. Yards of yellow tape isolate the crime scene; hundreds of people who look as if there is no place else in the whole world they'd rather be stand off to the side, watching the bodies being taken away.

Who are these people?
she wonders.
Who are these people standing and watching?

And yet, she is one of them. She is staring at the TV screen, waiting for the unlikely moment when one of the blankets will fall to the side and reveal who is beneath it—or show a hand, a shoe, anything…

The on-site reporter, a young, cooperative-looking man in his late twenties wearing a striped seersucker jacket over a white T-shirt, is speaking into the camera in a rather droll, laconic voice. “Right now, Tina and Doug, police are not releasing any details about the two victims, awaiting positive identification.”

“Is there anything we know so far about them, Rafael?” Doug asks in some vague approximation of actual conversation.

“Well, my sources tell me the victims appear to be somewhere between fourteen and sixteen years old. They were carrying no identification. Interestingly, they had quite a bit of money on them.”

Money?
thinks Cynthia. She latches on to the oddity of this—it gives her hope.

“Both young men were well-dressed, and right now no cause of death has been given,” Rafael continues.

Young men? Without realizing she was doing so, Cynthia had lowered herself into a kind of crouch in front of the TV, and with this last bit of news—both victims male—she falls forward onto her hands and knees, drops her head, and simply stares at her hands and the pattern on the Persian carpet.

The reporter is still talking, but Cynthia is no longer taking it in. All she knows is this: both victims were male. Which rules out Adam and Alice. And besides that: Who could see them and mistake them for sixteen-year-olds? More likely to mistake them for ten-year-olds. And they had no money on them, at least none to speak of. She feels crazy and horribly tainted—to be so elated that the dead children are not her own. A sin, certainly. And as a longtime citizen of San Francisco, she believes that the laws of karma will one day have their way with her.

“Thanks, Raf. Try and stay cool out there,” Tina says.

Cynthia switches off the set and paces the room. She is momentarily overjoyed. She wants to tell someone the wonderful news: the corpses found in Central Park are not the twins! Yes, it's come to that: Slain children not her own qualify as good news.

She goes to the window and looks out, expecting to see them. But they are not there. She returns to the sofa, sits, rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. Is there really nothing she can do to bring these children home? No call to make, no favorite place to look, no one to help her? Hillary Clinton used to say it took a village to raise a child, but right now, Cynthia would settle for a barbershop quartet or a couple of cousins or, really, just one extra person: someone who could be here in the house in case they return while Cynthia goes up and down the streets of New York, hoping to get lucky.

She needs a drink. Why, oh why, did she have the thousands of other drinks, none of which she needed as much as she needs one right now? If only she had not already once—well, actually, twice—wrecked her life with alcohol, she could do what any normal person would do in a situation like this. She could pour herself a modest little drink. She could put two ice cubes in a glass and pour a bit of vodka over them. A splash. Nothing crazy. Just a splash, a goddamned splash. The warmth of the vodka would startle the ice, and the cubes would creak and crack and secrete a little bit of moisture, mixing in with the vodka, and she'd move the glass in a tight little circle to stir the ice water and the vodka, and then she'd take a sip. The vodka would be cold and astringent on her lips, on the tip of her tongue, in the back of her throat, and then, as it went down, it would miraculously mutate from cold to warm to very, very warm indeed. And by the time it was in her stomach, it would be like a lovely hydrangea made out of pure shimmering heat. Would it be the solution to all her problems? Of course not! All it could do was settle her nerves, which, she reasoned, would probably make her a more useful person than she was right now. Now she was approaching the edge of her endurance, and her thoughts were repetitious and maddening. This is what every person in recovery dreads: the voice inside one's head, reasonable, persuasive, and utterly evil, repeating over and over that a shot, a snort, or a drink is the only thing that will help.

And yet…it could be argued, the case could definitely be made that if she did not have something to calm her nerves, she would soon go mad. And what better thing to soothe her than a modest little sip of alcohol? This was tried-and-true. This was ancient—older even than prayer. She had read somewhere that the consumption of alcoholic beverages dated back to the very dawn of human society. In fact, as she recalls, pacing now from one room to the next, the article seemed to have suggested that without fermented drinks and the good vibes they engendered, human society might have been delayed by another couple of thousand years.

So how was it that people—beginning with the ones who lived so long ago that they could barely walk upright all the way to the several million folks just beyond the glass of her house's many windows—could all of them enjoy an innocent little snort of something lovely and relaxing while she, the accursed Cynthia, had to white-knuckle it? Where was the justice in that? Why was she being punished?

And then it occurs to her: If all this viciously enforced sobriety is a prison, she is, in fact, her own jailer. She has the keys right in her own pocket! She can walk out to freedom—the freedom to choose, the freedom to exhale—any time she wants to.

There is not a drop to drink in this house. There is not even cooking sherry or aftershave. She wonders how close the nearest liquor store is, pretending for the moment that she doesn't know full well—she knows, in fact, the location of every liquor store within a ten-block radius of the house, carries the invisible map of their locations. She even knows which ones deliver.

She is holding the phone. Much to her own surprise. She wonders when she picked it up, how long she has been pacing around with it in her hand. She pushes the Talk button, listens to the dial tone. Testing. Testing. In a kind of panic, she throws the phone onto a sofa. Get thee behind me, Satan!

Okay, one thing for sure. She is not going to have a bottle of vodka delivered to the house. First of all: What a waste of money! Second, the last thing in the world she needs is to start forming relationships with liquor stores, to be opening accounts, talking to clerks, tipping delivery people. No way. No fucking way! If she wants a bottle of Grey Goose, she can walk to the corner of Seventieth and Lex and get it herself. And by the way, Grey Goose is out of the question. If she's going to take a little vacation from sobriety, she's not going to indulge her love for certain brands; she will make do with the cheapest vodka they carry. Once, back in SF, she recalls, smiling weirdly, she bought a gallon of a vodka called St. Pitersberg for $4.99. The dumbbells who bottled it couldn't even spell Petersburg! It left an aftertaste that reminded her of a fly she had accidentally swallowed when she was seven years old.

The afternoon turns to evening. The evening light, a dark dusty blue, hangs on like someone clinging to the edge of a cliff, and then, suddenly, it lets go and the darkness rushes in. Completely lost now in faulty thinking, Cynthia tells herself,
Well, it's now or never,
and she hurries toward Lexington Avenue, scarcely able to breathe—each breath is like swallowing a rag soaked in gasoline. Passersby seem to be glancing at her, shooting her looks that say
Don't do it.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. She knows this. And yet, she also does not know it.

The clerk at Lexington Quality Spirits has a head shaped like a lightbulb. He decides to torture Cynthia by asking her if she'd like him to gift wrap her bottle of cheap vodka. “Just put it in a bag,” she manages to say. As she trudges home, she holds the sack away from her, like those people on dog walks carrying bags of their pet's shit.

Home! She left the door unlocked in case they returned in the five minutes she was absent. “Kids!” she calls, walking in. “Kids? Kids?”

The door slams behind her. She whirls around. Why did it do that? Oh, well…

She unscrews the bottle. Great word:
unscrew.
Like removing your sexual experiences, sip by sip, until you are just a slab of meat programmed for metabolizing alcohol. Anyhow, it's good to get the suspense over and done with—this bottle has not been brought home for storing away. This quart will be drunk. Only one question remains: Just a few restorative snorts, or drain the thing down to the glass stalagmite on the bottom of the bottle?

She sits with the vodka, delaying that first drink. She sniffs the fumes rising from the bottle's neck. Wow! Horribly wonderful, wonderfully horrible.

And then she realizes: She is not alone.

Her heart is racing, completely out of rhythm. “Alice? Adam? Kids?”

She lifts the bottle as if it were a club, forgetting she uncapped it. The vodka cascades over the heel of her hand, her wrist, up her arm to her elbow. She curses, puts the bottle down on the table. She licks the trail of wetness—and this is it, after all, this is how her unbroken string of sober days is suddenly ended, not with a toast, not with any pleasure, not with a slap or a tickle: just a hurried, half-conscious series of little cleanup licks.