She rang it again.
“
“I thought you were supposed to be dying.” She pushed me back.
“I’ll start dying again after he opens up.” I put my finger on the bell and kept it there.
“Stop upstaging me,” said Ella, trying to pry my finger off the black button. We were so engrossed in how to ring the bell and who should ring it, that we didn’t hear anyone coming down the stairs.
The door swung open so suddenly that we almost fell in. That is, we would have fallen in if our way hadn’t been blocked by six feet of leather and a face like a wall. The doorman looked a lot bigger up close, and not nearly as charming.
He didn’t say anything, he just stood there staring at us in a sullen and inhospitable way.
I groaned and clung to Ella, holding her tightly.
“I … I … I’m sorry to bother you,” Ella stammered, “but I was wondering if we could—”
“There’s a party on,” he informed us shortly. He had the soft, polite, reasonable voice of a thriller killer. “Invitation only.”
“Please,” I gasped. “We just want to use the phone.”
No flicker of compassion showed in those steel-blue eyes.
“This is a private residence, not Grand Central Station. Use a public phone.”
“But we have no money,” cried Ella. “And my friend’s very ill.”
Mr Charm put his hand in his pocket and pulled out some change. “Here,” he said. “My treat.”
I groaned. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I whispered. “Quick! I’m going to be sick.”
A slight look of doubt appeared in the granite of his eyes.
“You can’t leave us out here!” Ella half commanded, half begged. “My friend’s going to throw up on the street.”
He hesitated for a second, obviously weakening. “Look, I don’t know … I’m really not supposed to let anybody in…” He glanced behind him, as though the answer to his problem might be coming down the stairs.
Ella and I looked, too. Something was coming down the stairs. We could hear a lot of angry shouting and the pounding of hurrying feet. The only words I could make out were ones I can’t repeat. All three of us moved to one side as two men came charging down the staircase. Neither of them seemed too steady on his feet.
“Come back here, you idiot!” screamed the one who was behind. Ella gave me a nudge. It was Steve Maya, Sidartha’s lead guitarist. “You can’t leave like this. You’re making a fool of yourself again.”
The man in the lead didn’t slow down.
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do!” he screamed back. “It’s all over, remember? I’ll do what I want!”
“Haven’t you always?” screamed Steve Maya. And then, seeing the three of us gaping up at him, he started yelling at the doorman. “Grab him, Mick! Don’t let him out!”
The man being pursued stopped at the bottom of the stairs, pointing at the doorman. “You touch me, you loser, and your wife’s a widow!” he roared.
Mick wasn’t sure who to take his orders from. He’d moved to block the door, but now he hesitated, frozen with indecision. Ella and I didn’t so much as breathe. We couldn’t. We were frozen with awe. All three of us kind of leaned backwards as Stu Wolff thundered past us and hurled himself into the stormy night.
Ella looked at me. “Now what?” she whispered.
Life is full of ironies, isn’t it? Ella and I had been desperately trying to get into the party, and now the gods had made it possible for us to do just that. Steve Maya had reached the door, and he and Mick were standing there, discussing what they should do next. Paying no attention at all to Ella and me. All we had to do was walk up the stairs and we were in. But the main reason we wanted to be inside was now outside, staggering down the street in the wind.
“Maybe one of us should go after him,” Mick was saying. “He could hurt himself.”
“I don’t care if he hangs himself,” said the man who, according to the magazines, has been Stu Wolff’s best friend since elementary school.
“OK,” said Mick. “Then he could hurt somebody else. Remember what happened in LA?”
Steve Maya laughed unhappily. “I remember. And I remember Chicago, Frisco, Albany, Tokyo, London and Manchester, too…” He laughed again. “There’s hardly a city in the world where something hasn’t happened because of
I took hold of Ella.
“You know,” I said loudly, “I think I’m feeling better. I don’t think we have to call my mom after all.”
I gave Ella a squeeze.
“Well,” she said, picking up her cue. “I guess we’ll be going now. My friend’s OK.”
I nodded. “Yeah, we’ll be going now.”
We could have saved our breath. Neither of them acted as though we’d spoken.
Mick’s eyes were still on the street. “You sure you don’t want me to follow him? Just in case?”
“Nah,” said Steve Maya. “Maybe we’ll get really lucky and he won’t come back this time.”
Hand in hand, Ella and I followed Stu Wolff, the Bard of Lower Manhattan, into the dark and treacherous night. My cape swirled behind me as we walked. Except for the garbage and traffic, it was like following Heathcliff out on the moors.
Ella squashed my fingers every time we crossed a street, as though we were about to fling ourselves over a cliff and into the cold embrace of the sea. This was slightly less distracting than the way she went rigid whenever anyone suddenly loomed out of the shadows.
“Will you please chill out?” I whispered. “We’re going to lose him if you keep slowing down like that.”
Ella was watching everything at once, but I was trying to keep my eyes on the tall, thin figure several yards ahead of us. The darkness and rain made him come and go like a ghost.
“I’d rather lose him than lose my life,” Ella muttered darkly.
Those were not idle words. Stu Wolff might not exactly be a man of the people at home – unless you mean the people who drive $50,000 cars – but let him loose in the wilds of the Lower West Side and he went straight for every blackened window with a Bud sign hanging in it.
Nonetheless, I barely heard her. My mind was leaping ahead to the moment when we finally caught up with Stu. Would he still be angry, or would the walk have cooled him off? Would he tell us what the argument was about? Would he ask for my advice? Maybe he’d take us for a coffee at one of his favourite cafés. I could see the three of us walking into a room filled with plants and mirrors and people wearing clothes with names (Gucci, Armani, Ralph Lauren…). Stu asked for his usual table. “Certainly, Mr Wolff,” cooed the waiter. A silence fell on the sophisticated New Yorkers as we passed among them. “Look who it is…” they whispered. “It’s Stu Wolff… But who are those girls with him?”
Ella moved even closer as we trudged across Sixth Avenue for the third time. I wasn’t sure if it was for warmth or protection.
“Where do you think he’s going?” she whispered nervously.
“God knows,” I whispered back. Which put God in the minority. Not only was it pretty obvious that Stu had no destination, it seemed pretty likely from the number of times we came back to the same places that he wasn’t always sure where he was.
I wasn’t always sure where we were, either. I’d recognized Chinatown (because of all the restaurants and Chinese people), the East Village (because we walked right past my dad’s building), and the West Village (because of all the out-of-towners), but not everywhere we went was on the tourist maps, or someplace where my parents used to take me to eat, or the street that was home to my father and his dog.
