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I NEEDED TO get Howard’s busted-up brother help, and fast. But I also couldn’t afford to lose the suited hitmen who were beating a hasty retreat all the way down at the far end of the alley.
Well, two of them, at least. The first bad guy to run was gone, completely off my radar. But the last two were still easily within scent tracking range.
It was obvious that the one who’d been standing at the beaten man’s head was the leader within their small pack.
And he was the one I needed to get to in order to get some information about where I could find Howard.
I reached for my cell phone, so I could call 911, and realized for the first time that I didn’t have it on me.
I’d left my apartment too hastily. I’d forgotten it.
So I did the only thing that came to mind. I lifted Howard’s brother onto my shoulder and started to race down the alley after the finely dressed thugs.
There were a series of hospitals on the East Side, such as Rockefeller University Hospital or New York Presbyterian Hospital, and I consoled myself with the fact that, while I was chasing these guys down the alley, at least I was heading in the right direction to get the guy help.
He moaned on my shoulder – it was the first time he uttered anything, and I took that as a good sign. His heart also seemed to be returning to a more normal pattern. I also took that for a good sign.
The scent I was tracking told me that, upon reaching the end of the alley, the suits had headed left onto Park Avenue.
I quickened my pace, trying as best I could to tune in to the sounds coming from that direction that weren’t traffic, horns or regular footfalls. All I could get was an indistinct sound of multiple racing footsteps.
I continued to follow the faint scent of the chemical used to clean their suits and followed it.
When I got to the street, I turned left and though I couldn’t see them anywhere, the scent of those suits was now easy for me to follow. And here, there was also a unique smell of sweat mingled with the suit. It was a heavy, damp, musky smell, and I could tell that one of the men I was pursuing, although in pretty decent shape, must have been a heavy sweater. Not just a typical heavy sweater, but the honey-thick perspiration kind. What was it those radio ads called the condition? Hyperhidrosis.
That, to me, was like hitting the jackpot. I consciously absorbed as much of his unique odor as possible, in order to place a marker on it in my mind.
Particularly since I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I would be able to catch these guys – I had to at least have something to follow, something to go on. And a uniquely overpowering scent like that was a wonderfully brilliant beacon that would be easy to trace.
“Thanks Mr. Hyperhidrosis. You’ll help me find Howard.” I mumbled, deciding that I had enough to go on even if I did lose their trail at this point. Given the heart condition of the man I was carrying it was likely best to get him to a hospital.
“Howie?” the man on my shoulder said in a voice so faint that a normal ear wouldn’t have picked it up.
“What did you just say?”
“Howie. They said they had Howie.”
“Howard?”
“Yes. Howard Clark.”
Good. A first and a last name.
“How do you know Howard?” I asked.
There was a pause as he sucked in a huge mouthful of air. “He’s my brother.”
“You are?” I, of course, knew this, but needed to keep him talking, learn as much as I could.
“Yes.” It was more an affirmative hiss than a word as I heard his heart skip a double-beat then begin to race as he started to panic. “They said . . . they were going . . .” his words faded as his heart raced even harder.
I increased my pace toward the hospital.
“C’mon,” I said. “You’ll make it. Hang in there.”
His respiration increased to closely match his quickening heartbeat. “Going to . . . beat me . . . within . . . an inch . . . of . . . my life.” He finally pushed the words out between a steady series of breaths.
“Why?”
“To show Howie they were serious.”
At that point, his breathing became sporadic and his heart started doing a double Dutch kind of thing.
“Dammit,” I said, running faster toward the hospital.
––––––––
I checked my watch again. It had only been a couple of minutes since the last time I’d checked. And it was still only about 10:40 a.m. 10:43 a.m. to be exact.
My previously overwhelming atmospheric impressions of the emergency room slowly filtered to the back of my consciousness. For sure, it was a quiet morning in the ER, but there was still a buzz amidst the small group of people sitting in the waiting room with me and with the patients being treated whose plights I could overhear from where I sat.
I could hear the anxious, though muted, voices of the others sitting near me, hear the pulse of the machines measuring heart rhythms in the actual trauma rooms on the other side of the glass doors, the quickly spoken words of the ER doctors and nurses. And, in the midst of all the hubbub and excitement, the irritated mumblings of one of the security guards who had brought in a four-cup tray filled with large coffees. He argued with the intern behind the main service desk over the sizes and blends that were ordered.
I had to suppress a chuckle as I overheard the security guard say “double double,” – and thought he must be Canadian. “Double double” was a standard order call at Canada’s beloved coffee chain, Tim Horton’s.
The coffee smelled stale and burnt as if it had come out of a vending machine, or perhaps out of a carafe left sitting on the burner for too long.
In any case, the smell of the coffee was a welcome mask over the other smells I’d been sitting with. The antiseptic smell of the recently mopped floor, the blood-and-snot smell of the patient who had been next on the list to be treated until I brought Howard’s brother in. A heart attack did rate over a broken nose, after all.
But worse than any of those smells was the subdued scent of fear and anxiety, which mostly came from the folks who shared the sitting room with me. That, and the distinct scent of fear I caught as one particular doctor moved through the ER. I deduced that perhaps it was his first day, or at least first week in the ER. And he seemed absolutely terrified. Perhaps terrified that he was going to make a mistake, terrified that he wouldn’t be able to handle the things brought in to him, perhaps terrified of not being able to save a patient.
I glanced at my watch again. 10:44. Sigh. Okay, so it had only been about 10 minutes since I’d called Gail to let her know where I was and who I was with. And it’d been perhaps 20 minutes since I’d arrived here with Gary.
I’d learned Gary’s name as the attendants had been tearing at his clothes and working at resuscitating him. When I’d been unable to give his name, one of the attending physicians had found his wallet, and announced he was Gary Clark, 34 years old, no known allergies.
If I tried, I could pick out the conversation threads from the trauma rooms, or at least snippets of them, and had learned that Gary had suffered a minor heart attack, likely due to the beating, and within a few minutes had been stabilized.
So it was basically just a matter of waiting for Gail.
I thought back to all the times when I’d been waiting for her during our short, but whirlwind romance.
And remembered how the waiting pissed me off.
Now, I wasn’t at Mack’s super-heightened level of impatience when it came to waiting, but it still wasn’t my favorite thing. Growing up, my mother had inflicted me with a sense of urgency over being on time. The emphasis was always on arriving early, on planning ahead, on being prepared.
I didn’t quite measure up to the anal nature in which my mother lived out her entire life – sending Christmas cards out immediately after Halloween, giving herself an extra hour or two to complete any simple task, beginning to prepare meals absurdly early, such beginning to prepare the potatoes for dinner while still washing the breakfast dishes, or pre-cooking the breakfast bacon the night before so it could be heated in the microwave oven the next morning – but I still had a tendency to dislike being late or having to wait.
At least Gail had found my impatience cute and tolerable. And usually, by the time she showed up, I’d worked myself into such a whirlwind of anxiety that she often laughed.
I remembered one time we were supposed to meet at Rockefeller Center behind the famous Paul Manship sculpture of Prometheus that sits in the center of the plaza in the middle of the water fountains.
I’d been standing, mostly patiently, on the walkway behind the golden sculpture, just enjoying the scenery. At first it had been quite interesting, particularly when I’d realized that while I’d been to Rockefeller Center many times, that I’d never just taken it in. I’d never actually stood in that spot, looking from the base of the RCA building, the spot where the Christmas tree was raised to signal the beginning of the Christmas season, across the fountain and to the arcade that became an ice skating rink in the winter.
I remembered looking down at the sub-ground, over Prometheus’s shoulder, at the small, round tables around which dozens and dozens of folks, mostly tourists, had clustered. I remembered the square, blue-and-white-striped umbrellas that hid most of them from view. But, even without my enhanced hearing, I’d been able to catch the buzz and excitement in the crowd gathered there, and reflected how I and so many others often took this marvelous city for granted.
I’d turned to face the RCA building and actually looked at the relief sculpture of Wisdom above the main entranceway. I’d never paused to look at that either, despite having gone into the building dozens of times.
The sculpture’s hand sent relief rays of light down, across the phrase in capital blue letters upon an orange backdrop: “Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times.”
I didn’t know where the phrase was from, or what its significance was, but I remembered just staring at it, wondering at what point that sculpture was added – if it had been a part of the original design of the building or if it had been added later.
I’d been thinking I’d have to look it up. It was likely included in the page after page of notes that I’d taken about the history of Rockefeller Center and which I’d incorporated into my first Maxwell Bronte novel, Print of the Predator.
The climax scene took place at Rockefeller Center, where I had my bad guy spend most of his time. He’d been obsessed with Art Deco and Art Nouveau and worked within an office within the RCA building. Most of my notes for that novel came from trivia offered up by my pal, Buddy.
On his first return trip to the big apple, he took me over and delighted in filling my mind with information about the building’s conception, the architecture, etc. I proceeded to pull out my notebook and start writing and the concept for that first novel was born.
It was about that time Gail had showed up.
I’d been so absorbed in the scenery, in the Art Deco sculptures, in the crowds of people enjoying the center, that I hadn’t even been aware of how late she was.
There was an anxious look on her face, but even before I saw it, I knew she was there by her familiar scent as she approached from the street.
The fact was that I while I had originally been a bit pissed over how late she was, I’d been enjoying myself so much that I’d pretty much forgotten about it. But I’d had a role to play, after all – there had been an expectation of what my reaction was going to be based on prior incidents.
I glanced down at my watch, not out of annoyance, just out of curiosity. She was somewhere in the realm of 45 minutes late, which was, even for Gail, who usually averaged about 5 to 10 minutes late, pretty bad.
“Michael,” she said as I turned to face her and lowered my watch arm. “I’m so sorry that I’m late.”
I’d shaken my head and given her a wry smile.
“I was held up at the shop when one of the part-timers called in sick and the other one showed up late.” She’d been referring to one of the many university students she had working for her at her occult shop. Despite the fact that student schedules were often hard to deal with, and, being a business owner and not having to contend with any head-office policies and procedures, Gail still insisted on hiring as many part-time students as possible. Her intention had been to spread as much cash as she could to the young, hard-working students who, in her opinion, needed it most. As a result, she’d only had one full-time staff member to help run her shop, a young man named Rob.
“What about Rob?” I asked.
Rob was a decent chap, a mostly quiet guy, but brimming with energy and enthusiasm for everything occult. He was also an accountant by trade and was instrumental in helping Gail keep the books for her shop.
“Rob is on vacation this week,” she said. “Michael, I’m truly sorry. I would have called but I knew you wouldn’t be at the apartment and I didn’t have your cell phone.”
She reeked of sorrow and regret, but also of frustration, because, as I could easily tell, she was truly sorry, but ultimately didn’t have much choice. She couldn’t leave the shop unattended or close it early. Despite the fact that she was the owner and could do whatever she pleased, she wasn’t the type of person who would just close the shop down for personal reasons. Regardless of the fact that in the half-hour where the store would be closed she might only have a single customer – she held her customers in too high a regard to have an unscheduled closing, even for that short a time.
I loved that about her.
Yet, despite all that, I still played up the whole impatient angle, shaking my head and trying to look disappointed in her. I’m not sure why I was doing that, perhaps just following along with the standard back and forth that we’d grown into in those months.
But in any case, she caught on.
She was so good at reading people, at seeing through surface elements to what was actually going on with a person, that in the relatively short time I knew her, I suspected that she too had extra-sensory perception. I would have suspected that, like myself, she too was a werewolf if it wasn’t for the fact that I imagined I would be able to tell by her scent, particularly the way it would shift with the turn of the moon. But, no, while I could smell the subtle difference in her scent based on the way her female body reacted to a monthly cycle, there was no wolf-ness about her.
Regardless of that, she possessed an uncanny ability to see through so much surface bullshit, to be able to cut right down to the marrow.
She stopped in her apology, bit her bottom lip, something that drove me absolutely bananas with lust for her, then swung her purse at me.
“Andrews, you bastard,” she said, laughing as she swung at me. Her scent was a mixture of relief that I wasn’t actually mad, annoyance, and humor. “Why did you make me believe you were pissed at me?”
I looked at my watch again. “But I was, Gail.”
“Bullshit,” she said, as I deflected yet another blow of the purse and moved close to take her in my arms.
Her body, hard and muscle-toned in all the right places, yet soft and curvaceous in all the other right ones, melted against mine.
“You were probably standing here soaking in the atmosphere, looking at the people, at the architecture even, and building up some sort of repository for your writing.”
How right she was. How ultimately right she often was about me. I was continually amazed at how accurately she knew me, knew the things going on in my head, in my heart, despite the fact that these were things that no other person on this planet had been able to figure out about me. And that she’d been able to do it within just a few weeks of knowing me.
My heart burned in love with her as I held her close and felt her heartbeat against my chest while listening to its rhythm increase in my arms. I was easily turned on whenever I could both hear and feel her heartbeat like that – like an ultimate closeness between us.
About a foot lower, something else stirred and, feeling it, she smiled demurely at me, green eyes catching a glint of the afternoon sun and sending me reeling into a state of bliss and joyful lust.
I pressed my lips to hers. And we kissed. God how we kissed. The next several minutes seemed to just freeze in time.
That certainly was one thing I enjoyed about my time with Gail. If the constant waiting was a negative, then the kissing more than made up for it on the positive side of things.
I was remembering the way we had kissed that day in Rockefeller Center as typical of the way that we kissed each other regardless of the setting, regardless of the occasion.
That was one thing about the relationship with Gail that we both fell into quite comfortably from the beginning. I know that it sounds corny, that it sounds contrived, that it sounds like something out of a romance novel. But I don’t care how it sounds. Just like when we were dating, I didn’t care how it looked to anyone who was watching us. Our kisses weren’t mere kisses, they were the merging of our souls, a single point of our physical bodies coming together that represented our entire beings melding together.
Kissing Gail was like falling into another person.
And I couldn’t think about the kisses we’d shared without a painful and intense longing for those magical times filling my heart.
As well as stirrings in my groin. Kisses with Gail were so powerful and momentous in my memory that they rivaled memories of sexual intercourse with the women that came before her.
There had been no other women since her.
Nobody could even come close to setting those same fires Gail’s presence inspired.
Just thinking about her, just remembering that kiss, I could almost taste her, could swear that I smelled her sweet scent, the sandalwood perfume that she wore, the unique rosemary-mint scent of her hair.
Even just the memory of a kiss with Gail was better than sex with another.
And that’s what was going through my mind when she walked into the hospital waiting room.