CHAPTER FIFTEEN
She picked the side that faced against the traffic. But there were no cars when she started out along the narrow walkway, and none came until she'd made it to the first tunnel, their tires throwing the pooled rain against her like sudden curses, as if her presence was an insult, a loathsome trespass in the night.
She ran when she could, her feet slipping and tearing on the cobblestones, and when she could bear it no more, she slowed to a ragged trot, hurling herself against the wall whenever headlights blazed up in front of her, the vehicles then slashing past her, the only lone person in a city of safe millions.
It was madness, but as she stumbled along she counted the jagged complaints of a telephone ringing. How many? Thirty, forty, fifty? Peggy counted because it was a comfort, because it made a noise in her head loud enough to drown out everything else. Again and again she turned to see if the echoing noises behind her were footsteps. But when she strained to look back up the tunnel, all she saw was her own bloated fear sneering back at her and the stone walls running black with seepage.
***
"Sam!" she called sternly, and then, in one fluid movement, like a length of silk swiftly splitting along the fibers, the woman pushed the door wide and presented the cleaver.
The room was empty. Both windows were closed.
But then she saw where one of the Levelor blinds was raised halfway up and the window latch lay meaningfully open.
She advanced across the floor and put her fingertips to the sill, trailing them back and forth through the sooty droplets of rainwater.
She shoved against the frame. When it lifted, wind blew against the soft grey wool of her jumper, and the Peter Pan collar fluttered wildly and then stood up against her hairy, matted throat.
She looked down and then up before she squeezed herself out onto the grating. When she stood—her great height erected against the lights of the city—it was like a four-footed creature trained to stand aloft, the fire escape the carnival grid on which the beast had learned to balance himself.
***
When she saw the lighted windows of the buildings along Fifth, she quickened her pace until she was running again, running past the gaping doormen watching from their lobbies as she raced against the rain that fell crashing to the street between the apartment houses on East Ninety-sixth. At Madison she turned right and cut across partway down the block, two busses nearly colliding when the first one had to swing wide to miss her. She tumbled headlong as she rounded the comer onto Ninety-fifth, her knees ripping open where they scraped along the cement. She clambered to her feet and was running again before she realized she'd dropped her purse. She kept going, counting the whines of a telephone that never stopped. But at Park Avenue she turned around and, gasping, quickly walked off her course back along the windswept block, her eyes searching the blowing shadows for her handbag, for the pair of housekeys she'd need to get inside.
***
She started up the iron steps, sometimes calling for him, sometimes humming to herself, the Mongol 482 back in place now so that both hands might be free to make the slippery ascent. At each landing, she stopped and tried the window, fitting the bulb of her knobby shoulder in against the frame and heaving. When the window would not give, she pressed her snout to the wet glass, her bristled nostrils quivering as they sought to catch the scent.
She went all the way to the top and, still calling him, climbed off onto the roof.
It was here that she smelled him, and readied the meat cleaver.
***
She sprinted the rest of the way, almost falling again just as she staggered in under the canopy. She banged at the door and waved her hands. The doormen turned and looked in her direction. But neither of them moved from his place on the wainscot chairs that stood to either side of the mantelpiece.
"Help me!" she screamed.
Through the glass she could hear one of them shout for her to get away before he called the police.
"Please!" she screamed. "It's Mrs. Cooper!" But neither of them seemed to hear.
She had her hand in her purse and her head down as she scooped blindly for her keys when she felt the door push against her.
She stepped back and looked up.
"Thank God," she sobbed before she saw who it was.
He had his arms reaching for her and he was stepping out under the canopy to enclose her inside.
"Pegs baby," he said, and when she moved to fight her way past him, he punched her in the face.