by S.J. Rozan
Botanical Garden
A week on the lam.
The beginning, not so bad. In the first day’s chilly dusk, a mark handed up his wallet at the flash of cold steel. Blubbering, “Please don’t hurt me,” he tried to pull off his wedding ring too; for that Kelly punched him, broke his nose. But didn’t knife him. Kelly didn’t need it, a body. He’d jumped the prisoner transport at the courthouse. A perforated citizen a mile away might announce he hadn’t left the Bronx.
Which he’d have done, heading south, heading home, risking the Wanted flyers passed to every cop, taped to every cop house in every borough, if he hadn’t found the woods.
Blubber’s overcoat hid his upstate greens until Blubber’s cash bought him coveralls and a puffy jacket at a shabby Goodwill. Coffee and a Big Mac were on Blubber too, as Kelly kept moving, just another zombie shuffling through the winter twilight. Don’t look at me, I won’t look at you. His random shamble brought him up short at a wrought-iron fence. Behind him, on Webster, a wall of brick buildings massed, keeping an eye on the trees jailed inside, in case one tried to bolt. You and me, guys. Winter’s early dark screened Kelly’s vault over. traffic’s roar veiled the scrunch of his steps through leaves, the crack of broken branches.
Five nights he slept bivouacked into the roots of a monster oak, blanketed with leaves, mummied in a sleeping bag and tarp from that sorry Goodwill. Five mornings he buried the bag and tarp, left each day through a different gate after the park opened. One guard gave him a squint, peered after with narrowed eyes; he kept away from that gate after that. None of the others even looked up at him, just some fellow who liked a winter morning stroll through the Botanical Garden.
The grubby Bronx streets and the dirty January days hid him in plain sight, his plan until the heat was off. He thought of it that way on purpose, trying to use the cliché to keep warm. Because it was cold here. Damn cold, bone-cold, eye-watering cold. Colder than in years, the papers said. Front-page cold. Popeye’s, KFC, a cuchifritos place, they sold him chicken and café con leche, kept his blood barely moving. Under the pitiless fluorescents and the stares of people with nothing else to do, he didn’t stay. The tips of his ears felt scalded; he got used to his toes being numb.
The first day, late afternoon, he came to a library, was desperate enough to enter. A scruffy old branch, but he wasn’t the only human tumbleweed in it; the librarians, warm-hearted dreamers, didn’t read Wanted posters and were accustomed to men like him. They let him thaw turning the pages of a Florida guidebook. The pictures made him ache. Last thing he needed, a guidebook: pelicans, palmettos, Spanish moss, longleaf pines, oh he could rattle it off. But he couldn’t risk the trip until he wasn’t news anymore, until they were sure he was already long gone.
Then, last night, a new scent in the air, a crisp cold, a rising wind. Bundled in his bag, his tarp, and leaves, Kelly heard a hush, everything waiting, a little afraid. He slept uneasily, knowing. When he woke, he felt new weight, heard a roar like far-off surf. He climbed from his root den to see more shades of white than he’d ever known. Ivory hillocks, eggshell swells, chalky mounds burdening branches. And huge silver flakes still cascading from a low-bottomed sky. The surf-roaring wind whirlpooled it all around. Ice stinging his face, Kelly was in trouble.
Snow as insulation can work, you in the bag in the leaves in the tarp in the snow. But you can’t climb back in; you’ll bring it with you, and melt it, and lie in a freezing sodden puddle. Once out, in trouble.
A sudden howl of wind, a crash of snow off the crown of a tree. He tugged his hat low, wrapped his arms around his chest. The wind pulled the breath from him. He wasn’t dressed for this, coveralls over his greens, puffy jacket, boots — but he wasn’t dressed. Who ever was? Why had anyone ever come to live here, where casualties piled up every year? All the green leaves, the red, yellow, purple, solid or striped, small or gigantic, lacy or fat flowers all dead, the birds gone, the ones who stayed, starving. Every year you had to wait and pray, even if you weren’t a praying man, every year, that life would come back.
At home the air was soft, the struggle not to make things grow but to clear yourself a corner in the extravagance, then keep it from getting overrun by the tangle that sprang up the minute you turned your back.
Up here everything ended and you shivered, as he did now. From cold, from anger, from fear. Eight years he’d shivered, the last four in lockup. It had been a month like this, cold like this — but heavy and totally still — when he’d killed her. Would he have, back home?
No. Why? In the warmth and openness, her taunts and her cheating would have been jokes. Back home, he’d have laughed and walked out, leaving her steaming that she hadn’t gotten to him. She’d have screamed and thrown things. He’d have found another beach, another jungle, lushness of another kind.
Here, there’d been nothing in the cold, nowhere in the gray, only her.
He shut his eyes, buried the memory. His face was stiff, his fingers burning. He had to move.
Astounding stuff, snow this dense, this heavy. Your feet stuck and slipped at the same time. It was day but you wouldn’t know it, trapped in this thick, swirling twilight. Fighting through drifts already to his knees, it took him forever to get near the gate. And the gate was locked. Beyond it, no traffic moved, no train on the tracks. A blizzard so bad the Botanical Garden was closed. It wasn’t clear to Kelly he could climb the fence in this icy wind, not with gloves and not without, and not clear there was any reason. No one was making Big Macs or cuchifritos out there, no sweet-faced spinsters in the reading room.
Two choices, then. Lie down and die here, and honestly, a fair idea. They said it was comfortable, in the end warm, freezing to death. Maybe keep it as an option. Meanwhile, try for a shelter at one of the buildings. He’d stayed away from them, not to be seen, not to be recognized, but who’d see him now?
One foot planting, the other pushing off, leaning on the wind as though it were solid, he made for the rounded mounds of the big conservatory. A city block long, two wings, central dome half-lost in the twisting white. Iron and glass, locked for sure, but buildings like that had garages, garbage pens, repair shops, storage sheds. Some place with a roof, maybe even some heat, there might be that.
The conservatory was uphill from here, and for a whil it seemed to not get any closer. He almost gave up, but then he got angry. It had been her idea to come north. That she’d wanted to was why he was here, and that he’d killed her was why he was here, struggling up this icy hillside, muscles burning, feet freezing. Maybe he’d kill himself when he got back home. Then he’d never have to be afraid he’d end up here again. But damn her, damn her to hell, not before.
Snow boiled off the arched glass roof. One foot, the other. He fell; he got up. One foot. The other. A glow stabbed through the blinding white, made his watering eyes look up. Lights. A vehicle. He was insane, the cold and wind had driven him mad. A vehicle? It came closer without vanishing. No mirage, then. Some caterpillar-tread ATV whining across the tundra. Didn’t see him or didn’t care. Lumbered to the conservatory, growled to a stop at the end of the wing. A figure, dark parka, dark boots, blond hair swirling like the snow itself, jumped down, pushed through the storm. To the door? She was going to open the door?
She did. He followed. When he got to the ATV it was there and real, so he eased around it, inching to where the storm-haired woman had disappeared. He stopped, startled, when through its thick quilt of snow the glass suddenly glowed, first close, then along the wing, then the high dome. She was turning the lights on. And moving toward the conservatory’s center, away from the door.