Frank De Felitta - For Love of Audrey Rose

“Bill!” Janice shouted, and ran over the snow.

Her interposed body made it impossible for Borman to aim. Bill groaned, his legs kicking out, throwing clouds of snow into the night. He gritted his teeth in pain. As she clutched him, she saw a five-inch tear in his shirt, and flesh in his shoulder mixed with welling pools of blood.

“Bitch! Bitch!” Bill groaned.

“Bill! I meant to save you!” Janice wept.

He tried to shove her away, but she clung to him, crying; the pain finally overcame him, and he moaned, his chest heaving up and down. Janice whirled around.

“He’s dying!” she yelled. “Can’t you help him?”

“He ain’t dying,” Wilkins said, still crouching, but his revolver lowering. “It’s just his shoulder.”

Wilkins furiously hand-signaled to patrolmen in the street, pointed to an ambulance waiting at the barricade, then took Juanita from the Master’s arms, felt her pulse and peered into her eyes.

“She’s okay,” he said. “Let’s get her inside.”

Two more patrolmen swarmed onto the roof. One of them took the girl carefully in his arms and, with the help of yet another patrolman, eased her down the steps and into the corridor below. Cheers, mingled with hoots, rose from the audience below, and applause, some derisive, resounded over the cleared intersection.

“You bitch!” Bill yelled, kicking futilely as Borman and Wilkins eased him to a sitting position, tore open his sweater and shirt. Soon a patrolman brought some cotton cloth and bandages, Bill was read his legal rights, and they pushed him to a standing position.

Janice recoiled. Around Bill’s head was an aureole of drifting snow, like an oblong halo; and his face, grimacing in pain, looked like Christ’s as she had always imagined it — in agony, yet proud, and humble, but in Bill, unforgiving.

“Bill,” she protested, shaking, a blanket draped over her shoulder by unknown hands. “I–I love you.”

“Bitch!” he snarled.

“That’s enough of the dramatics, friend,” Wilkins said. “Let’s go.”

As they led him away, he resisted, so they hoisted him partially by the belt and partly under the good shoulder. As they approached the fire escape, more hands reached out, evidently afraid that he would try to throw himself off the roof.

“You knew!” he suddenly yelled.

A rough hand pushed his head down. Then he was gone.

On the roof, dazed, Janice walked unsteadily over the snow. Her feet cut cleanly toward the Master, himself badly shaken, readjusting his orange robe, gazing down the sheer drop to the streets below.

“Dear God,” Janice whispered, “what have I done?”

“You did the only thing you could,” the Master said as comfortingly as he could.

As he brushed the snow from her hair and shoulders, she swayed, grabbing his arm. He bent to support her, and then she shook her head violently, as though she were about to become ill. But she only looked dismally at the roof, the scuffles and streaks all over the snow, and a small red oval where Bill had fallen.

“Would you talk to him?” Janice asked. “Help him?”

The Master looked away. Over the neighboring roofs a pink light broke through from the adjacent city, making huge swirls of strange light around them.

“I’m not sure,” he said evasively.

“Why not? You helped tonight.”

“Yes, but — that was before I held the girl.”

Janice stared at him. For a moment, she thought her heart had stopped.

“What?” she faltered.

“One senses these things. One has training. My perceptions, after the holy utterance, were heightened.”

He backed away, but she grabbed his sleeve.

“What — what in heaven’s name are you trying to say?”

“I–I’m not really sure, Mrs. Templeton. As I told you, I’m not completely versed in Tibetan Buddhism, their techniques. One has to go by impressions, purified by a life of training, of course. Strong impressions in the divination process…”

“Are you trying to say—?”

“It’s not for me to say,” the Master said quickly. “I think we’d better go.”

“But, Master—”

“Please, Mrs. Templeton. Let me go.”

The Master reached the fire escape, slipped, but found his footing and climbed down and inside. Janice went in after him, but he was quickly lost in the crowd in the dark. All she saw was a group of policemen gathered near the stairwell, and all she heard was Mrs. Hernandez weeping again, and the sound of the weeping reverberated throughout the hallway until Janice thought she would go mad.

Janice stared into the transient forms of pure space. Low drones, like Tibetan mountain horns, reverberated around her while the ragged clouds flew by and disintegrated. She stretched her legs against the narrow seat in front of her and leaned down to examine the folders in her leather handbag. Belgian printed fabrics, cost analyses, and a spiral notebook of charcoal sketches. Next to that was a bulging envelope of Marseilles summer design, nearly fifty brochures from an international design conference. Janice found her third packet, a collection of leather designs from Christine Daler Ltd.’s newest outlet in Tel Aviv. It was all there, plus photocopies of several disputed pay claims. Janice leaned back, still weary from the past two weeks of travel, delegations, hotels, and indigestion. She took pleasure in watching the clouds roll by beyond the metal wing. At five hundred miles an hour, she was going east, not west.

Her traveling case looked like a portable pharmacy. Antinausea pills, digestive liquids, antibiotics, and even powders to purify water. Passport, visa and, wrapped around the visa, a white paper. For the tenth time on the flight, she made certain the paper was there. It was an address, the only known conduit to Elliot Hoover.

Sesh Mehrotra. Hindu University, Benares (Varanasi), U.P.

The sunlight slanted in through the small curtains, white and pleasant on her hands. Janice realized she was nervously twisting her fingers into a locked mass, and she straightened her hands. She leaned back against the pillowed headrest and closed her eyes.

Once again she saw the same crowds. Crowds hooting on the ice-slick, night-reflecting alleys of Spanish Harlem. Crowds leaning over the police car as Wilkins drove her away. Crowds in the Criminal Court Building. She even recognized the corridors that led to the hall where Hoover had stood trial a year before. But this was a small chamber, and held only one lawyer, Dr. Geddes, five police officials, a stenographer, and two court psychiatrists. It all moved swiftly, like the extraction of a tooth. When it was over, Dr. Geddes grimly took her by the elbow and escorted her through the crowds.

It was then that the shock began to wear off. Janice found herself in a black limousine next to Dr. Geddes. A lawyer was next to the driver. It was a slow ride, the traffic was dense and gray in the filthy slush, and the limousine fought its way to the immense slabs of the parking structure behind Bellevue Hospital.

Bellevue was so large to her, it felt like dying to walk into its catacombs and chambers. There was no sense of emergency anywhere, only a sad, hopeless atmosphere that breathed despair from every dank corner. In the inner corridors, past the security wardens, the patients and orderlies shuffled with identical slow, lead-weight steps, as though they had all been condemned to New York’s sepulcher for the insane.

Dr. Geddes impatiently showed his credentials to yet another desk official. The lawyer demanded entrance, and threatened to telephone the court. Janice signed long forms, short forms, a declaration of intent, and waivers. They were led into an older wing of the complex, where a system of metal grids blocked off the corridors.