Richard Hawke - Cold Day in Hell

She spun around. There was no one there. Not this time. Robin crossed her arms across her chest and stepped into the stream of water. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. And cried.

A VOICE.

“I think I see something.”

I thought I did, too. To be more specific, a voidlike awareness thought so, too. There was no I. The void was comprised of black splinters in a black space. Fission lines. Cracks in blackness. But not inert. They were in frantic motion, ripping trails across the blackness like the crescent tails of dying stars. Reverberating at the edges of the void was the suggestion of things familiar. Familiar and also vital. But out there. Inside out. Awareness sizzled faintly off along the horizons, far from where it belonged.

“I thought his eyes were opening. I guess it was just a flicker.”

More cracks were appearing in the void, multiplying in a blur. Cracks within cracks. The voice fell away, like a receding surf, and then a faint signal sounded. A primitive beacon, orderly and welcome. A dull red pulse.

Beep…beep…beep…beep…

WHITE FLUORESCENCE OVERCAME me. It came on like the first intake of air after you’ve held your breath longer than you thought possible. I thought it would drown me. I was saturated with strobing light as I blinked my way through the adjustment.

I was horizontal. For a brief moment I thought I was floating. I felt dangerously buoyant. Then my eyes narrowed and forms dissolved into place.

Margo.

She was seated in a chair by a window off the foot of a bed-my bed-reading an issue of Vanity Fair . There was a look of intense concentration on her face; she was essentially scowling at the page. In my mind’s eye, a gilded frame dropped around her, the peripheral details all going fuzzy, and she was a portrait leaning up against a wall. I simply wanted to look. I had a craving to savor. But a moment later, she licked a finger, turned a page, looked up.

“Jesus Christ!” Already dropping the magazine, she rushed out of the frame. Her pale face filled my vision. “You shit. You big old goddamn son-of-a-bitch shit !”

There were tears on her cheeks. Her hand fumbled for something near my ear. I turned my head to see. A plastic button. Margo’s thumb was bloodless white on the button. A woman entered the room, a cartoon moving swiftly. A nurse. Breasts like soft mountains.

“What is it?”

“He’s awake.”

The nurse surged forward. I thought she was going to fall on top of me. “Hello, Mr. Malone.” She gave me a piano-keys smile to focus on as Margo bobbed on her horizon. The nurse held up an object in front of her nose. “What am I holding?”

I felt my eyes crossing as I focused on the object. It was a pen. Blue. Ballpoint. Paper Mate. Behind the nurse, Margo was scrutinizing me with her scowl.

“An elephant,” I said. My voice sounded harsh and unfamiliar.

The nurse blinked with confusion. “I’m holding an elephant?” She looked over at Margo, who was no longer scowling.

“He’s fine.”

I’D GONE UNDER the ice. Witnesses saw me hit (the one who called 911 said I hit headfirst, the other thought I landed on the small of my back), and for a short period of time, I had remained on its surface, motionless. When I finally did move, it wasn’t to prop myself up on my elbows and shake it off. Quite the opposite. Both witnesses agreed that it was my feet that went first. They slid down into the crack that my body had made when I’d landed. The widening crack. My feet lolled into the water, then, as if a voracious aquatic creature were reeling me in, I slid cleanly off the splintering ice and disappeared into the black water without a splash. Only a thin smear of blood on the ice gave any suggestion that I had been there at all.

The wound that Ratface and his kitchen knife had given my side required seven stitches. Fortunately, nothing vital had been pierced. Another set of stitches had been required to close up the nasty gash on the back of my head, where I’d hit the ice. This was where the doctors were placing concern. My head. They were worried about brain swelling, a concern that had prompted Margo to blurt, “God, that’s all we need.”

Perversely, the several minutes I had spent partially under the ice were to thank for my head injury not being quite as threatening as it otherwise might have been. The East River had performed first aid on me, the bracing water freezing the swelling in its tracks. However, it had also taken the opportunity to fill my lungs with a gallon or so of its chilly swill. But that was the least of my problems. Mainly, it was the concussion that preoccupied the doctors. I was given a list of symptoms I needed to be on the lookout for. Trouble remembering things, disorientation, difficulty making decisions, headaches, irritability.

My doctor insisted that I remain in the hospital through the day and overnight for observation. I wanted to wrestle him on the matter, but he refused. My memory seemed to have holes in it. My mother and my half sister, Elizabeth, came by to see me, but I have no recollection of what we spoke about. Joe Gallo’s face appeared at my bedside, but when it vanished, so, too, did my memory of our conversation. I got calls from Peter Elliott and Michelle Poole and Megan Lamb, but General Margo refused to let me take them. Kelly Cole put in a call as well. Margo jotted her number on the back of one of my business cards and stuck it in my wallet for me.

“I don’t think you’re up for that kind of syntax right now.”

I felt remarkably better the next morning and was dressed and ready to go by the time the doctor came to check on me. He aimed a penlight in my eyes and had me follow his finger as he waved it like a symphony conductor; then he told me I was to rest, not drive a car, keep off alcohol for at least a week and also to refrain from sex. Margo was seated on the large windowsill, posing with her hands on her knees. “Thanks, Doc. You’re a pal.”

I lost the argument with Margo about staying at my place while I convalesced. Truth was, I put no real heart into my end of the argument. Neither Margo nor I had touched on the subject of our recent sword crossings. My injuries had forced a truce, and I was just as happy to keep the issue unspoken. Margo took me from the hospital to a tiny country-food-themed restaurant near Gramercy Park, where I ate a double helping of eggs and sausage and home fries. After breakfast, we went to Margo’s, where I picked up the phone, set it back down, then crawled onto the couch and slept until eight that night. Margo shoveled some pesto pasta into me. I showered, got into bed, made a lame pass at Margo when she joined me, then went out with the light.

I can’t say I felt like a million bucks in the morning. More like enough for a down payment on a small dump somewhere unpopular. But that would do. Margo dutifully retrieved a three-day-old copy of the Post that she’d been holding on to for me. “If your head was a hundred percent, you’d have asked for this already.”

She flipped the paper open to page five. There was a short article about my unscheduled trip into the East River. Accompanying the article was a police sketch of my alleged attacker. If he looked like anyone, he looked like Thurman Munson, the beloved Yankees catcher who was killed midseason in a plane crash a quarter century ago.

“This looks like Thurman Munson,” I said to Margo. “The guy who attacked me didn’t look like this. You look more like him than this does.”

“Thank you, sweetheart. You’re doing a fine job of patching things up.”

Margo had a meeting at ten o’clock. She made herself pretty, then climbed into a thick winter coat and a mighty fur hat. I told her, “You look good enough to tackle.”