SHE KNEW SHE WAS stretched out on her back. She felt something wet on her face, then her memory began to function again. Sir was sniffing her face, licking her cheek and nose, whining with impatience. His tongue was slippery and she got a whiff of his breath and pushed his head away with a gloved hand, forced herself to open her eyes.
The man in the trench coat was leaning over her.
“Lew …”
She closed her eyes again, then opened one hesitantly, thinking maybe she was hallucinating.
“Natalie, for God’s sake, are you all right?” His heavy glasses were sliding down his nose and he jammed them back up. She nodded, tried to say something but her mouth was stuck dry.
“Natalie,” he said, as if he enjoyed repeating her name. She heard a blast on a boat’s airhorn. The low roar of traffic on the FDR was dragging her back to wakefulness. “You fainted.” He looked very worried. “Your pulse is okay. But doctors hate it when people faint. … Do you have any nausea? Try to talk to me. Please, Natalie. And get that silly grin off your face.”
She wet her lips. “I’m all right. … There was a man in the shadows.” She blinked and saw him in her mind: the grin, the eyeballs like pinpoints of light in the blackness. An impression of rags, a vile smell, stringy hair … Quickly she forced her eyes open, hating the images playing in her mind.
“Yes, there was a man, a bum, I guess.” He put his arm around her, helped her into a sitting position. He watched her closely as she took a deep breath. Her face was damp and he patted her forehead with his handkerchief. “Tell me if you feel any nausea—”
“I’m okay,” she said. The cold air off the river felt good. “I think I cracked my head—no, really, I’m all right. Just had the pants scared off me.”
“The guy took off. All raggedy and with a stiff leg. You gave him a helluva scare, too. Just a crazy. Do you feel like standing up? Here, take my arm. …”
She leaned heavily on him, felt a moments dizziness once she was on her feet, sagged back against him. He held her. There was something wrong, something at the back of her mind—Yes, of course, she had just tried to call him. Now here he was. She was starting to hate coincidence.
“What were you doing out here anyway?” It was a sharp-edged question; not very grateful, but she wanted to know: she was sure he was the man she’d seen behind her, whistling. Lew …
“Well … I was following you.”
“Why? I don’t understand.” She felt the involuntary shudder of fear running along her spine. Why? Why was he following her? And why should she fear Lew of all people? Or was fear becoming a constant in her life?
“I saw the piece in the Post, called you at the office, missed you, called you tonight, ditto, and thought I’d drop by your place. You were gone, so I remembered Sir’s favorite course. Simple.” He had Sir’s leash and they were walking back along the river, back the way she’d come. She felt normal strength returning to her legs but she clung to his arm. “And there you were, out cold.” He shrugged. “Hell, we haven’t gotten together since when, Labor Day weekend? It’s about time. And to tell you the truth I didn’t like that little tidbit in Garfein’s column—I mean, it looks to me like your privacy’s being invaded. Who told him the story, anyway? Is it true?”
“Tony.” She sighed. “They’re pals and I don’t suppose he thought it would wind up in the column. Yes, it’s true, it happened.” They had reached the footbridge she’d crossed earlier and she realized she was a little slow going up the stairway. At the top, on the bridge, he said he thought they ought to stop for a few minutes.
Leaning on the railing, watching the traffic, he scrutinized her clinically. “Feeling bushed? Lightheaded?” She nodded. “You really shouldn’t be out down here this late … certainly not now when there’s a guy who might be looking for you. Did you see his face?”
“God, don’t you start too. Everyone acts like I’m the only living witness to an ax murder. No, I didn’t see his face. And I certainly cannot spend the rest of my life hiding from this guy. Who is probably long gone by now.” She watched his breath making little balloons of steam before him. He smiled grudgingly, sighed and pulled her away from the rail, set off walking again.
“Oh, Lew—I don’t mean to bite your head off. It’s only because I know you’re right, I should be more careful. Stupid bravado. I hate admitting I’m scared; it makes it worse. Whistling past the graveyard. I’m very lucky you were there. Who knows what that guy would have done if you hadn’t come running—”
“Oh, I think he was mainly interested in getting away. Really.” But he squeezed her arm through his, as if he really was her hero.
She asked him what he’d been up to and he said he was still doing his act with the couch and the photograph of Freud. At her house he stopped and gave her the leash.
“Listen, you’d better go right to bed. Fainting really does take a lot out of you. It’s surprising. Are you sure you feel okay? Well, I guess I’ll head for home, Nat—”
She laughed. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Lewis, we’re not a couple of strangers. Come on in and have a coffee or a Scotch. Let me tell you the kind of night I’ve had—before I went out for Sir’s walk.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, I’m not going to beg.” She opened the door and Dr. Goldstein followed her inside.
An hour later she’d told him about the burglary and the discovery of the gun on the construction site. She rattled on and he listened, nodding, seldom taking his eyes from her face. Finally she said, “You poor guy, you may not be my analyst, but you still seem to have to do all the listening.” She bit her lip and frowned. “I seem to be on some kind of ghastly roll. … Oh, and Julie—I didn’t tell you what happened to Julie at Scandals. …”
That story left him shaking his head. “It’s sort of strange,” he said, pouring himself another cup of coffee, “but I don’t think men generally have any idea of the weird experiences women—particularly working women in these big labor-intensive urban areas—have on an amazingly frequent schedule. Most sort of moderate, vaguely normal—I know, what’s normal?—vaguely normal men, who don’t do a lot of coming on to women they don’t know, don’t have a clue about this other world that women are prey to. I hear things from patients all day long, and a lot of this social activity I can’t even begin to relate to. …” His voice trailed away and he looked into his coffee cup.
“Well,” Natalie said slowly, “one of the more surprising things that happened to me ever since I saw the man with the gun—” She heard herself stop speaking as a series of images, psychic flashbacks, suddenly imprinted themselves on her mind: the man darting between cabs in the rain, the cement-encrusted gun on her desk, MacPherson capping his fountain pen, the white teeth gleaming like polished bones in the darkness above her. …
“Yes? Go on—” He was watching her closely again, as if she might be showing symptoms of something.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “I’m feeling a little scattered, after all.” She closed her eyes, blinked them open to confront his. “You’re right, Lewis. I am bushed all of a sudden.” She felt as if the room, the sound of her own droning voice, Lew’s steady gaze—she felt as if they were all closing in on her. She got up from the stool at the tiny kitchen counter and went into the living room, put on a Villa-Lobos tape and sat on the end of the couch. She told him he should sit down and finish his coffee.
“See how cleverly my plan has worked? I came over here to talk to you over coffee, and by God I’m doing it.”
“Fairly circuitous route,” she said.
He settled back in his chair, looking around. “Look, exactly how scattered are you feeling? You’re pale—”
“Really, just tired but … I’m not looking forward to your leaving me alone with my thoughts. Ever since all this started, things have been sort of piling up around me … oh, hell, Lew! No point in babbling to you—”
“On the contrary,” he said. “But for now I want you to get right to bed. And I’m going to call you tomorrow. I want to know just what it is that’s been piling up.”
“Oh, please don’t worry, Lewis!”
“What, me worry?” He grinned, boyish, like the old days.
She got up and followed him up the stairway to the front door.
He stood there looking at her.
She smiled up at him.
He punched her softly on the arm. “I’ll call you, Natalie. Tomorrow.”
Once he was gone, once she was standing at the sink brushing her teeth, she thought how lucky she was that he’d remembered where Sir liked to walk. Way to go, Lew. She took a sleeping pill to blot out the images that haunted her and went to sleep with the radio playing softly. And Sir curled against her legs. He began to snore just before she went under.