I didn't go straight home after leaving work on Friday the 14th. Treated myself to fried clams at Howard Johnson's, then a boring showing of The Amityville Horror followed by the slightly more compelling When a Stranger Calls. I wasn't sure what might await me back at the lofts—silence unbroken? fracas revived?—but I wouldn't have minded finding waif-faced Carol Kane, all a-goggle and in need of assistance.
Near midnight when I got back to #515. Dark out and dark inside, except for a glow in the window obscured by the exhaust fan. I hauled it off the sill and guardedly scanned the light court.
Her magic casement.
Its echoed contents.
Bed shifted since last I'd seen it, into full view adjacent to the spiral staircase. (So they could leap from above and land on each other, perhaps.) Horde of candles grouped and lit around the bedframe, making its brass flash like Brynhild's ring of fire. And on the batik coverlet, arms crossed, lay—
"YEEDGE!"
An exclamation that must have shattered enchantment, as she jackknifed bolt upright. Spewing projectilely.
Blink and I was at #517, door unlocked, her on the floor trying to crawl, trailing puke as I hoisted her into the bathroom that doubled as darkroom and tripled as pantry, shelves of chemicals mixed with cosmetics and comestibles till who the hell knew what she might've swallowed and was now disgorging over the bowl, me guiding her head, her geyser of barf soon joined by tears and snot that kept flowing after her stomach was empty and the rest of her sagged into stupor.
"Crank?" I said. "Crank!"
Flaccid on the tiles, colder than vanilla.
Most of what I did next was inspired by pulp fiction and, I've since learned, the opposite of what you're supposed to do. Slinging Lynnette into the tiny shower stall (after wrestling off a nightie that resisted like chainmail) and blasting her with icy water. Brewing up a pot of her pungent tarlike tea and ladling it down her gullet. Plodding her bodily roundabout that loftcell for miles upon miles, picking our way through the debris of last night's fight and the preceding twelve-day affair. (No syringes, I was glad to see.) Repeating this cycle again and again, chanting "Why-no-phone why-no-phone why-no-phone?"—not daring to leave her unattended even for the few minutes it would've taken to run back to my place and summon an ambulance. Twice I did start to go; both times she went limp and slumped over with a heart-rattling shudder. Once I tried wrapping her in a dress, a shirt, a towel—anything so I wouldn't have to carry her naked and insensible along the galleries, even at that wee hour. But if her nightie was chainmail, all other fabric was plate armor that refused to stay on.
So Lynnette remained in the raw. And not her usual vision-of-savory-opulence raw; more like a bedraggled dumpling. With a shiner under one sloe and lurid new bruises on her arms and flank. If I'd been able to rouse any other neighbor, a helluva lotta 'splainin' would've been called for that I only wanted to recite to paramedics.
Consequently: shower, tar-tea, plod-around.
Hearing her damned toe bells go CHING-A-LING. Wondering how long it would take them to corrode. How long her head was going to bounce like a boulder on my shoulder while one boob juggled and the other one quaked. How long her blundering legs would have to be yanked away from the guttering candles, each time sending her chest into another double tumult. How long she might emit those whimpery mewls, sounding like a sack of kittens sinking underwater. How long I could keep going myself without toppling over like a hewn tree—or giving her unbruised cheek (upper or lower) a few sharp open-handed slaps as wake-up call and payback clout for all the crud she'd put me through these past few hours, these past two weeks, these past three months—all her whining and kvetching and querulous complaining and whut the hail did I think I wuz dewin'?
I glanced down and found Cranky Lynnette staring back at me. Glaze-eyed and chatter-toothed, shivering with baffled dismay.
Towel at last then, rubbing her briskly as the candles flickered. Now for some clothes and a plod to the phone and getting her to St. Luke's ER—
But she would have none of that. Shrugging off the towel to clasp me in her poor bruised arms. Turning up her tremulous mouth and pressing it to mine, as she had never done before. Not quite as swabbed-out as in my fondest fancies, but I wasn't about to avert my lips. It was she who broke the kiss, to mumble in my ear:
"Don' leave me… stay with me… don' go 'way… please stay hyar."
So I did. Though I couldn't be sure she was talking to me.
