Sighing, she dutifully climbed out of the tub and dried off with a thick towel. Then she opened the hamper and dug out the clothes she’d just thrown into it.
By the time she was dressed, she could hear Michael crying beneath the din of the clanging alarm bell.
He became quiet immediately when she picked him up. He rested his head on her shoulder, maybe going back to sleep despite the clamor. This wasn’t his first fire alarm; he’d attained a veteran’s nonchalance.
Michael was getting heavy fast, but she decided against the stroller. If he became too burdensome, she could always put him down and he could walk.
In the corridor she saw a knot of neighbors waiting by the elevator. Elderly Mrs. Grace from down the hall. A middle-aged married couple, Irv and Rachel Teller, who lived in 2G. The young blond man Molly thought was an actor grinned at them as he walked past still buttoning his shirt. He swung open the door to the landing and Molly heard his rapid footfalls on the stairs.
Molly sniffed the air and glanced toward the ceiling. Still no scent or sight of smoke. It would have surprised her if there had been. These repeated false alarms were becoming wearisome. She remembered David speculating that the faulty wiring causing the alarms could itself start a fire. He’d been joking, perhaps, but maybe it was possible. She decided to write a letter to the management company and add her voice to the tenants’ numerous complaints about the malfunctioning alarm system.
“Take the stairs,” a thirtyish, heavyset woman, whose name Molly had never learned, said to her roommate, a tiny, thin blond woman about forty. “You know we’re supposed to take the stairs and not the elevator in case of fire.”
“There is no fire,” Irv Teller told them in disgust. “It’s the faulty wiring again. They keep promising to fix it but they don’t. It’s the second false alarm this month.”
Both women stared at him as if he hadn’t spoken, then followed the young actor down the stairs.
“So where’s your husband, Molly?” Rachel Teller asked.
Molly shifted Michael’s weight against her. “Working late tonight.”
“Uh-hum,” Rachel said.
“Too bad,” Irv said sarcastically. “He’ll miss all the excitement.”
A few more tenants arrived simultaneous with the opening of the elevator doors. Obviously they wouldn’t all fit in the elevator, so several of them made for the stairs. Molly, the Tellers, and three men and a woman Molly knew only to say hello to, rode the elevator down to the lobby.
When they went outside, Molly saw many of the other tenants standing in three or four tight groups across the street, staring glumly at the building. No one seemed to be seriously considering the possibility of a real fire.
Molly crossed the street and joined them, glad to put Michael down. Still sleepy, he stood leaning with his head pressed to her thigh.
The tenants were talking casually among themselves, about the weather, baseball, the sad quality of summer movie releases, about everything but the notion that the apartment building might be on fire. The night was warm, and Molly hadn’t taken time to towel completely dry from her bath. Her clothes were sticking to her uncomfortably, and residue soap from the bubbles was starting to make her itch.
The alarm suddenly cut off, leaving the night in silence except for the usual neighborhood noises of traffic and occasional voices and laughter.
But nothing else changed. A police car cruised past, and one of the uniformed cops glanced with disinterest at the tenants, but the car didn’t stop. The alarm wasn’t the sort that summoned the fire department automatically, and apparently no one had phoned. Even people in the surrounding buildings knew by now that most likely there wasn’t a fire.
The tenants’ attitude became one of irritation tempered by resignation. They were New Yorkers and conditioned to standing and waiting.
After a few minutes, one of the downstairs tenants who hadn’t left the building appeared at the front door and yelled across the street to them that it was another false alarm and they could return to their apartments.
Several people groaned, as if disappointed that their homes and possessions weren’t actually threatened by flames. They’d been fooled again. Slowly they crossed the street and began reentering the building.
Molly lifted Michael and joined them.
Michael went back to bed without an argument, and almost immediately he was on his way to falling asleep.
Molly returned to the bathroom and lowered a hand into the bathtub to test the temperature of the water beneath the bubbles. It was still warm, and there were plenty of bubbles left.
She worked her damp body out of her clothes, dropped them back into the hamper, and lowered herself again into the tub. Trying to recapture her previous level of relaxation, she sank deeper and rested the back of her head against the cool porcelain. Enough bubbles had disappeared so that she could see patches of water now, but no washcloth. She fished around for it but didn’t feel it.
Then she noticed its dark form floating just beneath the surface near her right thigh.
She reached for it, lifted it dripping from the water, and stared in horror.
It wasn’t the washcloth.
It was the limp, dead body of Muffin.
Molly recovered from her shock enough to drop the dead cat and scramble screeching out of the tub. It was all one frantic motion and she felt the cat’s claws scrape her stomach. She splashed water everywhere. Her bare feet slipped on the wet tile and she fell to the floor, bumping her knee on the toilet bowl.
Her leg throbbing with pain, she staggered from the bathroom, not looking back, her feet sliding and her toes curled to find traction by digging into the grouted spaces between the floor tiles. Bubbles had splashed up in her face and soap stung her right eye and blurred her vision.
By the time she’d reached the phone in the living room, she’d stopped screaming but her breath was rasping and her entire body was broken out in goose bumps and trembling. She’d never felt so horror-stricken and so vulnerable.
So naked.
Curled on the floor with the phone, it took her three fumbling tries before she punched out the number of the direct line to David’s office.
46
They stood in the lobby of the Wharman Hotel near Columbus Circle. It was a small, mostly residential hotel, with wood paneling, a modest registration desk, and a single elevator with an old-fashioned brass arrow-and- numeral floor indicator above its door. Rates were reasonable because the Wharman hadn’t the amenities of the larger hotels, no restaurants, bars, shops, or ballrooms.
The desk clerk was in his early twenties and sharply dressed in a blue suit, white shirt with red tie. He had neatly trimmed dark hair and a smooth complexion and looked more like a leader in the Young Republicans than a hotel employee. If there was a bellman, he was nowhere in sight.
Clutching Michael’s hand, Molly stood off to the side near a chair and table and watched David check them in. At her feet on the waxed parquet floor were Michael’s folded stroller, a suitcase, and a large dufffle bag.
She found herself studying David’s face. He was obviously under more strain than he usually allowed her to see. Like her, he was trying hard to hold everything together and keep his world from disintegrating.
The young desk clerk turned away from him to swipe his Visa card, and David quickly wiped a hand over his face, massaging his Adam’s apple between thumb and forefinger as if his throat was constricted. His expression became placid and he glanced toward her and smiled to let her know he was thinking of her; he was hiding behind his facade again.
When he’d gotten the room key, he came over to her and lifted the duffle bag and suitcase. Without a word, she picked up the stroller and they went with Michael to the elevator.
David set down the suitcase and pressed the button with the Up arrow. After a pause, the brass arrow on the floor indicator trembled as if stuck on 12, then began moving spasmodically toward lower numbers.
