The homeless man stared at him, filled with a sudden distrust.
“Here,” he said carefully, indicating his spot on the sidewalk. “There,” he continued, gesturing toward the street. “Everywhere.” He concluded by sweeping his arms in a circle around his head.
“Where’s home?” Ricky asked.
The man pointed at his forehead. This made sense to Ricky.
“Well, then,” Ricky said, “have a nice day.”
“Yes sir, yes sir, God bless you, sir,” the man continued melodically. “Spare change?”
Ricky stepped away, abruptly trying to decide whether he had cost the homeless man his life, merely by speaking with him. He walked toward the taxi stand, wondering if every person that he came in contact with would be targeted like the detective had, like Dr. Lewis might have been. Like Zimmerman. One injured, one missing, one dead. He realized: If I had a friend, I couldn’t call him. If I had a lover, I couldn’t go to her. If I had a lawyer, I couldn’t make an appointment. If I had a toothache, I couldn’t even go and get my cavity filled without putting the dentist in jeopardy. Whoever I touch is vulnerable.
Ricky stopped on the sidewalk and stared at his hands. Poison, he thought.
I’ve become poison.
Shaken by the thought, Ricky walked past the row of waiting cabs. He continued across town, heading up Park Avenue, the noises and flow of the city, incessant movement and sound, dropping away from him, so that he marched in what seemed to him to be complete silence, oblivious to the world around him, his own world narrowing, it seemed, with every stride he took. It was nearly sixty blocks to his apartment, and he walked them all, barely aware that he even took a breath of air on the trip.
Ricky locked himself into his apartment and slumped down into the armchair in his office. That was where he spent the remainder of that day and the entirety of the night, afraid to go out, afraid to stay still, afraid to remember, afraid to leave his mind blank, afraid to stay awake, afraid to sleep.
He must have nodded off sometime toward morning, because when he awakened the day was already blistering outside his windows. His neck was stiff and every joint in his body creaked with the irritation of spending the night in a chair. He rose gingerly and went to the bathroom, where he brushed his teeth and splashed water on his face, pausing to stare at himself in the mirror and to remark internally that tension seemed to have made inroads in every line and angle he presented to the world. He thought that not since his wife’s final days had he appeared so close to despair, which, he admitted ruefully to himself, was about as emotionally close to death as one could get.
The x-ed out calendar on his desk was now more than two-thirds filled.
He tried Dr. Lewis’s number in Rhinebeck again, only to get the same recording. He tried directory assistance for the same region, thinking perhaps there was a new listing, but came up with a blank. He thought of dialing the hospital or the morgue, to try to determine what was truth and what was fiction, but then stopped himself. He wasn’t certain that he really wanted that answer.
The only thing he latched onto was one remark that Dr. Lewis had made during their conversation. Everything Rumplestiltskin was doing seemingly was to draw Ricky closer to him.
But to what purpose, other than death, Ricky could not guess.
The
Ricky quickly flipped through the pages of the newspaper, half hoping that the reply would be somewhere within, because, after all, Merlin had overheard the question and presumably had passed it on to his boss. But Ricky could find no evidence that Rumplestiltskin had toyed with his paper. This didn’t surprise him. He did not think it likely that the man would employ the same technique twice, because that would make him more vulnerable, perhaps more recognizable.
The idea that he would have to wait twenty-four hours for an answer was impossible. Ricky knew that he had to make progress even without assistance. The only avenue that he thought viable was to try to find the records of the people who came to the clinic where he worked so briefly twenty years earlier. This, he believed, was a long shot, but at least would give him the sensation he was doing something other than waiting for the deadline to expire. He dressed quickly and headed to the front door of his apartment. But once standing there, his hand on the doorknob, ready to exit, he stopped. He felt a sudden wave of anxiety sweep over him, heart rate pitching high, temples starting to throb. It was as if an immense heat had dripped into the core of his body, and he saw that his hand quivered as he reached for the door. A part of him screamed internally, a massive warning, insisting that he not go out, that he was unsafe outside the doors to his apartment. And for just an instant, he heeded this, stepping back.
Ricky breathed in deeply, trying to control his runaway panic.
He recognized what was happening to him. He’d treated many patients with similar anxiety attacks. Xanax, Prozac, mood elevators of all sorts were available, and despite his reluctance to prescribe, he had been forced to do this on more than one occasion.
He bit down on his lip, understanding that it is one thing to treat, another to experience. He took another step back from the door, staring at the thick wood, imagining that just beyond, perhaps in the hallway, certainly on the street outside, that all sorts of terrors awaited him. Demons waiting on the sidewalk, like an angry mob. A black wind seemed to envelop him and he thought to himself that if he stepped outside, he would surely die.
It seemed in that immediate moment that every muscle in his body was crying to him to retreat, to hole up in his office, to hide.
Clinically, he understood the nature of his panic.
The reality, however, was far harder.
He fought the urge to step back, feeling his muscles gather, taut, complaining, like the first second that one has to lift something very heavy from the earth, when there is this instant measurement of strength versus weight versus necessity, all coming together in an equation that results either in rising up and carrying forward, or dropping back and leaving behind. This was one of those moments for Ricky and it took virtually every iota of power he had left within him to overcome the sensation of complete and utter fear.
Like a paratrooper jumping into unknown, enemy darkness, Ricky managed to force himself to open the door and step outside. It was almost painful to take a step forward.
By the time he reached the street, he was already stained with sweat, dizzy with the exertion. He must have been wild-eyed, pale and disheveled, because a young man passing by spun about and stared at him for a second, before picking up his own pace and hurrying ahead. Ricky launched himself down the sidewalk, lurching almost drunkenly toward the corner where he could more easily hail a cab working on one of the avenues.
He reached the corner, paused to wipe some of the moisture from his face, and then stepped to the curb, his hand raised. In that second, a yellow taxi miraculously pulled directly in front of him, to disgorge a passenger. Ricky reached for the door, to hold it open for whoever was inside, and in that time- honored city way, to claim the cab for himself.
It was Virgil who stepped out.
“Thanks, Ricky,” the woman said almost carelessly. She adjusted dark sunglasses on her face, grinning at the consternation he must have worn on his. “I left the paper for you to read,” she added.
Without another word, she spun away, walking quickly down the street. Within seconds, she had turned a corner and disappeared.
“Come on, buddy, you want a ride?” the driver abruptly demanded. Ricky was caught holding the door, standing on the curb. He looked inside and saw a copy of that day’s
Ricky started to reply, then stopped. “The woman who just got out,” he said, “where’d
