Mary Clark - The Shadow of Your Smile

“We were short that night,” the man explained, “and when Ms. Carter’s driver checked in to say he was free, I wanted to make real sure he had it straight. I didn’t need her calling me screaming if the driver wasn’t there. My guy was insistent. He said that Ms. Carter told him her date would drop her off home because he lived not far from her on Central Park West. Then he told me something else. It’s kind of gossip, if you know what I mean, but it may help you. When Renée was in a good mood she was really friendly. Anyhow, the other night she laughed and told our guy that her date thought she was broke, so she didn’t want to have a fancy car waiting for her when she came out.”

Shaken, and with blood dripping from her badly scraped hand and leg, Monica nevertheless refused the suggestion of several bystanders to call an ambulance. The bus driver who thought he had run her over was trembling so badly that for twenty minutes he was unable to continue his route.

A police car summoned by a frantic 911 call from a woman who also thought Monica had gone under the wheels of the bus arrived on the scene, which now became the center of attention at Union Square.

“I can’t really say how it happened,” Monica heard herself saying. “I absolutely wasn’t trying to cross the street, because the light was turning red. I guess the person behind me was rushing and I was in his way.”

“It wasn’t an accident. A man pushed you deliberately,” an elderly woman at the front of the crowd insisted, her voice rising above the comments of the other spectators.

Startled, Monica turned to look at her. “Oh, that’s impossible,” she protested.

“I know what I’m talking about!” Her head wrapped in a scarf, her coat collar up, her face half covered with round-framed glasses, her lips a tight line, the witness tapped the police officer on his sleeve. “He pushed her,” she insisted. “I was standing right behind him. He elbowed me to one side, then his arms went back and he gave her a shove that sent her flying.”

“What did he look like?” the cop asked quickly.

“A big guy. Not fat, but big. He had on a jacket with a hood, and the hood was up. He was wearing dark glasses. Who needs dark glasses when it’s dark out? I could tell he wasn’t a kid. Past forty anyhow, I’d say. And he was wearing thick gloves. Do you see anyone else around here wearing gloves? And did he do what the rest of us did when we thought this poor girl might be dead? Did he holler or scream or try to help? No. He turned and shoved his way out of the crowd and took off.”

The policeman looked at Monica. “Do you feel as if you might have been pushed?”

“Yes. Yes, I do, but it couldn’t have been deliberate.”

“We don’t know that,” the policeman said, soberly. “There are mentally ill people who shove people in front of trains or buses. You may have just come in contact with one of them.”

“Then I guess I’m very lucky to be here.” I want to get home, Monica thought. But it was another fifteen minutes, after telling the cop she was a doctor and could take care of her scrapes, then giving her name, address, and phone number for the police records, before she was able to get into a waiting cab and escape. Her crushed shoulder bag beside her, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

In an instant, she was reliving the sharp pain in her arm and leg as she slammed onto the pavement, then the acrid smell of the bus as it bore down on her. She tried to calm herself but the cabdriver had seen the commotion and wanted to talk. Trying to keep from trembling, she answered in monosyllables to his sympathetic diatribe that there ought to be a way to make sure crazies took their meds regularly and didn’t end up going off half-cocked and hurting innocent people.

It was when she was finally in her apartment, with the door closed and locked, that the full impact of having come so close to death hit her. Maybe I should have gone to the hospital, she thought. I don’t have a single thing in the medicine chest to calm me down. It was then, with the blood now crusted on her hand and leg, that she realized she had forgotten that Ryan Jenner was coming for the Michael O’Keefe file.

I have his home phone, she thought. He gave it to me the other night. I’ll call and apologize. Will I tell him what happened? Yes, I will. If he offers to come over I’ll take him up on it. I could use some company.

I could use Ryan’s company, she told herself.

Okay, admit it, she thought.

You’re attracted to him, big-time.

His apartment and cell phone numbers were now in the small address book she always carried in her shoulder bag. Wincing at the sight of her crushed compact and sunglasses, she fumbled for the book. Still sitting at the table with her coat not yet off, she dialed Jenner’s apartment number, the first one she had listed. But when a woman answered and said that Ryan was changing his clothes, Monica left the message that she would send the file to him in the morning.

She had just replaced the receiver when the phone rang. It was Scott Alterman. “Monica, I was listening to the radio and heard that you were almost run over by a bus, that someone pushed you?” She was surprised that reporters had released her name, and wondered how many friends and colleagues had also heard the report.

Scott’s voice was shocked and concerned, and Monica found it comforting. It brought back the memory of how kind Scott had been to her father when he was in the nursing home, and that he had been the one to phone her with the news that her father had passed away.

“I just can’t believe that it’s true,” she said, her voice tremulous. “I mean that I was pushed, that it wasn’t an accident.”

“Monica, you sound pretty shaken up. Are you alone now?”

“Yes.”

“I could be there in ten minutes. Will you let me come?”

Suddenly feeling her throat tighten and tears welling in her eyes, Monica said, “That would be nice. I could really use some company right now.”

Everything had been going so well. Sammy Barber had collected the money from Dougie-the-Dope Langdon, driven to the storage building in Long Island City, and stashed all those beautiful hundred-dollar bills in his safe in the space he rented there. Then, feeling on top of the world, at five thirty he had called Monica Farrell’s office, giving his name as Dr. Curtain in honor of a guy who had been his jail cell mate while he was awaiting trial. The secretary had told him that Dr. Farrell had canceled all her appointments because of an emergency at the hospital.

He had the money. He was set for life. He was feeling good about life, in fact. Sammy was convinced that it was his lucky day and he wanted to get the job done. That was why he had rushed over to the hospital and found a parking spot across from the main entrance, the one the doctor had used the couple of times he’d tracked her before. He had changed his mind and decided he would try to push her in front of a bus.

He waited for about an hour and a half until he spotted Farrell coming down the steps. There were two cabs passing, but she ignored them and turned right toward Fourteenth Street.

Ten to one she’s gonna walk back to her office, Sammy thought as he reached on the passenger seat for his gloves and dark glasses. He slipped them on, got out of the car, and began to follow her from a distance of about a quarter of a block. She wasn’t walking fast, at least not as fast as she had last week when he had trailed her. There were a lot of people on the street tonight, and that was good, too.