CHAPTER SIXTEEN
She circled the roof, making her way stealthily, skirting the places where the rain had collected in small black lakes, her lips parting to show her furry tusks as she paused to call out after him.
"Sam, you have only to do as I say, and I won't harm you."
Again she circled the roof, crouching to sniff beneath the racks of pipe, behind ventilators, around skylights, her snout thrusting in front of her like a foot testing a hot bath.
She stood erect again and backed toward the guard rail, her sow's face slowly lifting to regard the heights that lay above.
She saw the penthouse—and then, higher still, perched atop the tower of wet scaffolding that held it like a massive throne, the gigantic, shingled cylinder of the building's reserve water tank.
She saw the water tank, its gross immensity blotting out a sector of the sky, and then she saw the steel ladder leading straight up its side.
***
She heard his voice first, and she listened for a time before she opened her eyes.
"Just a family squabble," he was saying. "Honestly, you must forgive us. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Honey, wake up and tell them. Hey, Pegs baby, cut it out now, okay? All right, I lost my temper, and I'm honestly and truly sorry. I just popped off, okay? But just look at her—you guys can see for yourselves. She jumped out of the cab and started running around like a crazy woman, and then she ran away. I mean, I had to quiet her down. You can see that, can't you, fellas? It was for her own good. Hey, Pegs, honey. Tell them, baby. Tell them it's really all right."
When she looked, she saw him bending over her, and beyond him, the faces of the doormen looking back down into her own.
"It's not all right," she said. "Let me alone."
"Here," the older doorman said, and shouldering Hal aside, he helped her scramble to her feet and put her purse under her arm.
"Easy now," he said when she pushed herself away from him and made for the elevator. "You're bleeding, Mrs. Cooper."
"I'm all right," she answered. "Just keep him away from me."
"As you say, missus," the younger doorman said, turning to Hal to block his effort to cut her off, ordering him to shut up when Hal shouted after her.
"Pegs!" he shouted. "I tell you it's all right. Just stay out of it! She's not going to hurt anybody, I swear! You interfere and it'll blow the whole deal!"
She pressed the button and saw the light go off behind the B and then come on behind the L. The doors parted, and the operator stood staring.
"Jesus, ma'am," he breathed.
"I'm fine," Peggy said. "Just hurry."
***
She went hand over hand, her impossible face wincing in the flooding lash of the wind, the cleaver slipped through the belt of her jumper.
She hummed as she climbed into the roaring sea of the night, her throat grunting beneath the sinuous melody of the ancient music that drained from her pallid lips.
The boy listened. He listened from where he hung against the ladder inside the tank, his torn feet clinging to the last strip of metal, his fingers locked over the bar that lifted off the hatch.
Beneath him the water spread wide and black. He watched it as she climbed. He saw its surface ripple, registering each pounding step of the beast's steady, patient ascent.
***
She screamed when she found the man, and the elevator operator came running back. When he made it to the entrance to the hallway, he saw the scattered suitcases and the woman bent over the man. He followed her into the room. But by then she was out the window.
He leaned into the rain. He warned her to come back. He might even have reached for her, tried to grab her legs. But he was afraid.
***
"Sam!" the woman shrieked, and then another woman called his name, the second voice closer and much gentler than the first.
He heard the woman screaming, a voice so far away, and then, right after it, the nearer voice, a dreamy female purring that crooned his special name.
"Old scout, are you in there, dear? Mama's here at last."
He felt like swooning, or maybe just going to sleep.
"Sammy, darling. Mama's here. Up above your head."
He felt the bar in his hands moving.
"Up here, my precious. Can you turn your head and look?"
He thought he'd fall if he tried. But wouldn't she dive in after him and save him if he did?
He threw back his head and looked. He saw the smoking fingernails, the steaming female snout.
"Baby,'' the first voice whispered from a dream so far away. "Draw a circle. And her. Draw her falling off.''
He looked back at the clangorous liquid that shivered beneath his feet. He thought, I will die if I dare to draw her. But a child could let go. He could slip endlessly into the water because the water was only a dream, ceaseless, forever and forever, until you decided the sleep was over.
"Baby," the first voice whispered. "Draw her falling off."
With one hand, he let go of the bar, and felt along the waistband. His special pen. It was there, right where he'd stuck it, held fast by the stretched elastic.
He raised it to his lips. He used his teeth to pry the cap off. He lifted one foot to the next rung up, and lowered the nib to the thin white cotton.
He could smell it as he worked—like corn burning, only with sugar in it, something that smelled both ways at once.
He felt the hatch pulling away from his fingers, and when he looked again to see, he saw the black crescent of the plunging sky, and in it, grunting longingly, he saw the nightmare that was real—Miss Putnam's spectacles ringing the belching eyeballs, and below them the muzzle of a maddened swine, its blistered tongue slavering a veil of wormy saliva onto the lacy scallops of a Peter Pan collar.
He worked by feel, drawing against the easel of his leg, his execution never swifter, his skill never more artful.
In this Sam Cooper was an ordinary child, doing what God had given him to do. First he completed the little circle, and as the bar was swept from his hand, he finished the rest of the figure, arms flung eternally to the heavens, feet inked one infinite inch into the fathomless eclipse of space, the body forever flying from the faraway arc of the world.