Christopher Smith - Running of the bulls

And then, in a shock of red light that illuminated the buildings surrounding her, he hit the brakes.

“Excuse me,” he called out.

No single woman at this time of night would stop for that call. Theresa quickened her pace even as the man called after her again. “I just need directions.”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she broke into a run while behind her, the brake lights turned to white and the van’s engine roared to life.

He was backing up.

Theresa sprinted toward Fifth. She jumped over a cat as it strolled from between two cars parked along the street and sauntered onto the sidewalk. She flew over it. The cat looked up at her and hissed.

The man pressed harder on the gas. She could feel him rushing up behind her. She looked over her shoulder and saw that he was leaning partly out of the window and looking backward as he closed the distance between them. But Theresa was an athlete and there was nothing stopping her but her own endurance. She bit down hard and pressed herself as she fled to the street corner and cut right, almost into oncoming traffic.

Car horns blared.

Theresa righted herself and ran toward 75th.

Behind her, a car made an effort to turn onto 74th Street from Fifth, but the van was blocking its way. More horns. The man in the van had no choice but to stop and go forward, where she was certain she would find him again, this time speeding up 75th.

There were people on Fifth. “Call 911!” she shouted as she shot past them. “Tell them to get to 75th and Fifth!”

She stopped just short of the street and pressed her back against the building at the corner. Slowly, she looked around and saw nothing, no sign of the woman or the van. She looked at the car parked directly next to her and saw what appeared to be a medium-sized white brick stuck to the back near the gas tank. For a moment, Theresa couldn’t move. Every part of her told her it was an explosive.

Heart pounding, she weighed her options. She should leave here, save herself, but she couldn’t. Helena meant everything to her and her home was only five houses down the street. If she could somehow get inside before the van or the woman appeared again, she could call the police herself, take Helena deep into the basement and into Cecil’s fortress of a wine cellar, which was well away from the street. They could hide in there. The walls were so thick, they’d be safe from any intruders or explosions.

She reached into her pocket, pulled out a set of keys, got the correct one ready, and peaked around the corner again.

Nothing.

This time, she carefully scanned the block, but there was no movement. The woman was gone. So far, there was no sign of the van.

And so Theresa Wu rolled the dice and ran.

When she did, she was running the fastest she’d ever run. Fear propelled her forward. With each car she passed, she made an effort to look down to see if the same brick was attached to the rear bumper. From what she could see at this speed, in most cases, it was. The woman was rigging the street with explosives. She was planning some kind of terrorist attack.

But why here?

Focus. Just two houses to go. She sprinted. But then, just as the cat had done moments ago, the woman she’d seen earlier slipped between two cars, stood, moved to the sidewalk and stopped in front of her. Blocking her. In her hands was a gun with an extended silencer. She raised it while, at the end of the street, headlights rolled around the corner and shined against the woman’s back. It was the van. Its engine roared.

Theresa was running quickly, but not too quickly to think. In an instant, she dropped hard to the ground and rolled toward the woman’s feet. Surprised, the woman fired and the bullet went deep into a confetti of concrete. She made an effort to jump but Theresa was faster. She collided with the woman, who went down like a ten pin and fell hard on her chest.

Theresa leaped to her feet. Helena’s house was just up the stairs to her right. In her hand, she still clutched the key. But the van was nearly upon her now. And the woman was on her feet, though one look told Theresa that she was dazed and obviously hurt, though not badly enough to keep her from raising her gun.

Ducking, Theresa scrambled to Helena’s house. She ran up the steps and pressed the key into the lock just as the barrel of a gun pressed against the back of her head.

It was the man from the van. She could smell his breath. It was over in an instant. There was a click. A soft “goodbye.” A sudden jolt as a bullet bore through her brain and left part of her face stuck to Helena’s door. But molecules were still working, still making an effort to connect. She was aware of herself tumbling backward down the steps. She saw bricks rise up in front of her, a fan of tree limbs, a moving sky.

When her head struck the sidewalk, it did so with a sickening THWACK-and then Theresa Wu saw lights of another sort.

10:18 p.m.

In his town house on East 75th Street, Emilio DeSoto admired himself in the full-length wall mirror and realized that at last, he had created his master work.

He was now a retro piece of living art. Minimalism was dead to him. In its place was classic severity and brash beauty delivered through the driving force of haute couture.

He held out his arms and then lowered them, allowing the scalloped polyester fabric to flutter in pretty waves. He did it again and then turned in such a way that air funneled up through the garment to create the illusion of weightlessness. He had smoked a joint earlier and his glaucoma was tolerable. Though he had only tunnel vision, if he looked directly at himself, he could see his reflection, and he was thrilled by what he saw.

After months of work on his latest piece-which used his own slender, angular body as its catalyst-he now embodied two art forms, each of which enjoyed a spellbinding link separated by centuries.

When that Spellman person left, he started going through the motions of at last bringing the influences together. And it worked, just as he knew it would months ago, when the idea struck him that soon, minimalism would no longer define who he was as an artist or a person.

After a long gestation of artistic incubation, that day was now.

He always had been a creature unlike any other-it’s why they loved and celebrated him-but now he had taken his talents to a new, defining level of greatness.

His face was a shield of Kabuki makeup that consumed his features-there was no trace of them beneath it. While his skin always had been pale, now it was painted pure white. The only other color was bright red, which he’d applied to the corners of his eyes-and to the lower lids-in an effort to make them appear as if they were about to spill over with blood.

On his lips was the same red, painted in such a way that his mouth now looked so grossly small, one would be surprised if words could escape it. Naturally, some critics would look at his mouth and seek connections to his dead body of work. They’d think its tiny appearance was his nod to minimalism, but they’d be wrong. Some would lean toward the great Kabuki artist Tamasaburo and see it as something of an homage, but they’d be wrong. It was, in fact, a post-apocalyptic statement designed to honor the past-and to confuse what DeSoto believed was now a dystopian present.

He turned again in front of the mirror, lifted his arms at his sides and enjoyed the way the vintage Halston caftan moved in sync with his body. It had belonged to Barbra Streisand, he’d bought it anonymously at auction when she had her big 1994 Christie’s garage sale, and he wore it instead of the traditional Kabuki dress most would be expecting given his Kabuki makeup.

On his head was a white turban, also by Halston, which harkened back to Emilio’s days at Studio 54, where he’d use cocaine in bathroom stalls and on bathroom floors with other celebrities and danced with a freedom that was stolen away from him when he gave himself over to the dead art of minimalism.