Authors: Sandra Kitt
“Ask Allen,” Gail responded. “I have to go. There’s still a lot to set up. Is Allen coming back to the house with you afterward?” she asked suddenly.
Leah felt an odd heaviness in her chest. “Probably. Why?”
“I don’t want him to mess up my plans. I’ll see you later. Bye.” She hung up.
Leah sat holding the receiver a moment longer, completely confused by her sister’s last remark. Did that mean Gail was going to be with someone else? She had lost count of her sister’s short-term affairs and, given Gail’s attention span for most things, wondered what exactly it was her sister was looking for. And did it really take so many men to find out?
She stared at the new sketch, put it away in a folder of ideas, and tried to turn her attention to the half-finished jacket of the money book. It was taped to the board, and she eyed it with disinterest. She felt distracted. Edgy. She wasn’t looking forward to the show. She wasn’t particularly looking forward to being with Allen. He was either going to complain about the people in his office, how he was not appreciated enough, or trash Gail’s efforts. And Leah wondered who her sister was going to spend the night with this time.
Leah got up from her drafting table and left the studio to go to the small staff lounge. There she made herself a cup of hot tea, just needing the movement and activity to curtail her moodiness. No, it wasn’t moodiness, she corrected herself as she returned to her drafting table. But rather than sit to work once more, she stared out of the window overlooking the river. She frowned at the way the rain continued to pelt the city, and for no real reason a hunched figure came to mind, the man she and Gail had found outside their home back in September. Leah suddenly wondered what had happened to him. Was he at this very moment getting soaked to the skin? He might get sick. Catch pneumonia. What if he fell down unconscious in the street somewhere? Would anyone notice him? Or had he disappeared back into his own life?
Leah tried to put her finger on the problem of her restlessness, but could only come up with dissatisfaction. But she also wished she hadn’t relived the incident with Mike, the argument with Allen, or the total stranger who had haunted her dreams. She looked out over the city and felt a sudden need for something more. Something different.
There were so many things that she loved about New York. There were many more things that she disliked and found confusing. There was a lack of beauty and gentleness that Leah felt the city needed to soften the harder, unavoidable edges of day-to-day life, which was sometimes scary. Leah imagined that there were people who lived in the city who didn’t know anything beyond their streets or neighborhoods. There were whole generations of city-locked kids who didn’t know that the night sky was black and studded with a million brilliant specks of light called stars. In the polluted skies overhead they saw nothing, and they never looked up. People were living cheek by jowl without taking the time to know anything about the person right next to them. How could they do that? Where was the curiosity?
But there was danger as well. The man in her dreams: the one who’d mugged her. It had all come back again in September and in nights since then. She sometimes felt so fragile, but she didn’t want to be helpless. She didn’t want to be a prisoner, either, to an event that hadn’t been her fault but which, nonetheless, sometimes threatened to engulf her. That in one moment on a summer’s night her very soul and existence would have ended at a meager value of nine dollars … and the whim of a man.
The dream was always the same.
The crazy flight down the tunnel along hallways and corridors continued with almost predictable regularity. Finally Leah would float, lift upward out of sleep into welcome daylight. She’d catch her breath and will her pounding heart to slow down. Then she’d curl up in the bed sheets, feeling small and needy like a child. Sometimes she was aware of the sound of her own voice, the low moans and whines of exhaustion and fear.
Suddenly out of blackness came the danger. The ominous man with the knife, not caring who she was but pursuing her relentlessly until she was worn out and unable to escape the presence gaining on her.
In the low tunnel light in her mind, the face was clear. It was the grinning black face of the man who’d attacked her. Once, in the dream, it had been the face of someone she didn’t know at all, and once it had even been the face of Allen. Not chasing her, but laughing at her.
The attack had taken place on the nearly deserted Pratt campus where she’d taken an evening art class. At first to Leah it had seemed that it would be a mugging. That is, until the very quiet and opportunity of the moment became clear to Leah and to the man confronting her with a knife. She’d seen the change in his eyes, when he stopped being concerned about escape and a few dollars, and had lingered over the possibilities that had come almost simultaneously to both their minds. Instant panic and dread filled her. His response had been one of glee. He’d smelled sweaty and nervous, and he had not cared about her shaking hands and tremulous voice.
Leah’s imagination had jumped to fast forward, to
afterward,
when she’d have to pull together her shattered wits and her used body; when she’d have to go for help and tell someone. She became paralyzed with fear when she further considered the other violent choices available to the attacker.
If she didn’t show fear, she had tried to reason to herself, if she didn’t demonstrate vulnerability, maybe he wouldn’t think to hurt her. But it had been so quiet in the stairwell.
He’d started to laugh at her quick understanding of the situation. Leah’s first thought had been that he was going to kill her when he was done. She thought about Gail having to call their father to tell him.
Leah had only put up a token attempt at resistance. She had been afraid of an outright struggle because of the knife. What if she made him mad and he just stabbed her … over and over again?
She could still feel weak with nausea when she thought of that knife held against her face.
He’d hit her with his fist, and when her head had resounded with a painful thud off the wall, she’d slid to the floor dazed. She’d been wearing a khaki jumpsuit. Fashionable and blessedly difficult. In his anger and frustration at the obstacle of the clothing, the black man had pulled and slashed at the fabric, cutting Leah’s fingers and thigh, although superficially, when they got in the way. Her screams had been feeble, the mere utterances of defeat and helplessness. He’d hit her again.
And then, two floors above them, a stairwell door had opened and the voices and laughter of two female students echoed and multiplied the sound as they’d begun to descend. They must have heard her crying first and then, hurrying down the two flights, had found her alone, bloodied, among the ruin of her clothes and her class work. They, and the jumpsuit, had saved her. She had
not
been raped. She had
not
died a vile death. Only her spirit had been tortured and terrorized.
It was almost five o’clock before Leah arrived back in Brooklyn to get ready for Gail’s fashion event. The moment she began to ascend from the Seventh Avenue station she knew she’d made a mistake. She should not have exited the station from this end. It was true that the stairwell would leave her two blocks closer to her home, but this end of the station was also mostly deserted, with too many deep shadows and dank corners, with sounds that echoed and which couldn’t be identified.
It was only as Leah approached the stairwell leading to the street that she hesitated. She felt her heart lurch suddenly. Adrenaline pumped through her body as she had a flashback of another stairwell that had been equally deserted. Or so she’d thought. Leah braced herself, the sudden heat of panic making her skin break out in a sweat. She tried to rush up the stairs. Her purse strap slipped from her shoulder, and the heavy pouch thudded against her portfolio. The book she’d been reading slid against the newspaper, and the manila envelope, and the other sheets of paper that had kept her occupied on the hour long ride from Manhattan. Leah hastily juggled them back into position and finished the climb into the November night.
It had stopped raining, but car tires swished along streets that were still wet, and lamplight reflected off the shiny black surface. It was unusually quiet. Leah took a deep breath and started down the street in the direction of her home, planning to stop at a local market on the way.
She walked briskly to make up the time with a determination not to let her imagination take her hostage. But Leah heard footsteps behind her. Her heart pumped faster.
“’Cuse me …”
It was a male voice. Firm and deep. The burden in Leah’s arms shifted again, threatening to drop.
“Hey, miss. Hey, you!”
Leah never responded to hey, you.
“I think this is yours.”
Was he kidding? Did he think she was stupid? Leah moved closer to the curb away from the buildings with their entrances and alleyways and opportunities for an innocent passerby to be dragged into. She drew in a breath. Should she start to run? He tapped her on the shoulder.
“Hey. … is this yours?”
The voice was impatient now. Leah stopped and turned around. The man was older than she’d thought he would be. A little overweight. He carried a plastic bag of groceries in one hand. Several yards behind him stood a woman, waiting in front of a building Leah had already passed. The woman also held packages from the market. Leah looked at the man’s outstretched hand. He held an envelope that was slightly soiled. It was a letter she’d received just that afternoon. It was about a piece of her freelance work that was being accepted for magazine publication. There had also been a check. She reached for the envelope, a smile defrosting her facial features.
“Yes, that’s mine. Thank you.”
“Didn’t you hear me calling?” the man asked.
“Yes, but. … I thought …”
“Uh-huh …” he murmured before Leah could finish.
The older man looked her over carefully. He pulled his shoulders back and glared at her, as if Leah had somehow offended him. She had, and she knew it.
He finally turned away, back to the waiting woman.
It seemed foolish to shout out thank you when she probably owed him an apology for her suspicion. But defensively Leah reasoned that he should have understood. It was late. She was alone. How could she have known his intentions were good? Hadn’t he ever been a victim?
Some young men were hanging around the store as usual when Leah stopped for milk. The entrance had become some sort of staked-out territory for a group of local teens through which everyone else had to pass. Leah knew that she would have to endure their comments. She would have to rebuff come-on attempts. It was like running a gauntlet with no particular prize for having succeeded. Leah ignored the swaggering young men except to murmur, “Excuse me,” as she passed through. Everywhere in the city the verbal strutting seemed to be standard learned behavior of males between fourteen and forty as an acceptable way to get the attention of the opposite sex.
“Hey, mama. Hey, fox. Ain’t you gonna say hello?”
Leah ignored the tall, skinny youth who thought too much of himself. She’d seen him before. Was it that he didn’t know any better, or that he didn’t care? When Leah left the store moments later, the skinny teen fell into step beside her. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen. His friends stayed where they were, joking and taking bets on his chances with her.
“Let me carry that for you,” he began ingratiatingly.
“That’s all right,” Leah responded, swinging her bundle away from his reach. “You’re not stronger than I am. I’ll carry it myself.” She quickened her steps home.
The comment caused the onlooking companions to crack up in laughter, slapping each other’s palms, butting their knuckles. The skinny youth recovered quickly from the set-down, but Leah was way ahead of him down the street.
“I’m strong enough where it counts. And I know how to use it. You should check it out sometimes … sweet thang!”
Leah opened the invitation and read it once more. One of Seventh Avenue’s hottest young designers was opening a western boutique on the ground floor of the store where Gail worked. It was redoing what Ralph Lauren had done years before. Fashion and trends were cyclical, and nothing if not fickle. Everything came back sooner or later, updated for those who’d missed it the first time around.
Gail said she had made it her responsibility to coordinate the opening night events: fashion show, reception, press and photo coverage. The right people had to be invited, who would in turn bring the right people, and on ad nauseam. Leah grimaced. She didn’t want to go. But even as she complained, she laid out her outfit—appropriate western attire was expected—because she wanted the night to be a success for Gail’s sake. Gail had a plan for herself, and tonight’s event was only a step in the right direction toward reaching her goals.
Leah recognized that while her sister was sometimes resentful of how Seventh Avenue operated, it was only because she herself wasn’t yet in charge. What she wanted was a line of designer clothes all her own, of course. Leah envied her sister her single-mindedness and dedication to purpose: making a name for herself in fashion and pots of money along the way. Any offers of help were greedily accepted, but Gail had no time for anyone who wasn’t in a position to do her some good, who could help her dreams come true.
“I learned a lesson from those little white girls at college,” she constantly lectured. “And that’s how to position yourself to meet the right people and take advantage of the right opportunities. Seventh Avenue is going to know who I am in three to five years’ time.”
Leah understood. Time tables were very useful if everything went according to schedule. So far Gail was certainly doing okay, but it had taken longer than “three to five years.” Out of school and into a marketing program at one of Manhattan’s top stores, putting in time as assistant buyer in children’s wear, then transferring to the Executive Training Division to add a little polish and business know-how. Finally winning a foothold in the exclusive group of people responsible for the high-priced boutiques and special lines at the store.