Nearby, a shabbily dressed woman with a torn Bloomingdale’s bag sat and stared at her. A street person, Allie was sure, with no address, no hope, no perceived future beyond the hour. The woman seemed disturbed that she couldn’t categorize Allie, who obviously was not waiting for a train, but was dressed rather well to be one of the army that walked the streets of Manhattan and sought places like this for shelter.
After a few minutes the woman seemed to lose interest. She settled back with her chin tucked into the folds of flesh at the base of her neck, lowered her puffy eyelids and appeared to nod off to sleep. One of her withered hands slid from her lap onto the floor, where it lay palm-up.
Like Sam’s hands.
Allie looked away. Shook the vision. She’d read about people who virtually lived in Grand Central, moving around so the police never got a fix on them as vagrants. She decided she should be able to spend the night here, getting up and changing locations once or twice. She’d have to doze sitting up, like the old woman across from her, but that would be better than roaming the cold and dangerous streets.
A bearded man in a scuffed leather jacket hurried past, late for his train. He was munching a hamburger in a McDonald’s wrapper. Allie caught the savory scent of the fried beef and onion. About twenty feet beyond her, he absently wadded the wrapper around the hamburger and dropped it into a trash receptacle. He picked up his pace and began to run, licking his fingers as if they were just-discovered popsicles.
Allie sat staring at the refuse can. No one seemed to be paying attention to her. The old woman with the Bloomingdale’s bag was still asleep. The scent of the hamburger lingered, or might Allie only be imagining that? Hunger could make the mind play pranks.
Allie thought, Oh, Jesus! I’m really going to do this. She slowly stood up and ambled over to the trash container, as if she were going to throw something away.
Instead she reached inside, as if it were the sort of thing she and everyone else did every day, and her exploring hand sought the crumpled paper wrapper with the still-warm hamburger inside. It was like a live thing hiding from her, but at last her fingers closed on its vital warmth. She drew the aromatic prize out quickly, unable to keep her eyes from darting around to make sure what she’d done had gone unnoticed. But there was no way to be positive. Walking too fast, she returned to her spot on the floor.
She sat for a moment with her heart pounding. Then she told herself that for all anyone passing her knew, she’d bought the hamburger and was finishing eating it. She might be sitting here waiting for a train departure, or for a friend coming into the city to visit her. Might live on goddamn Park Avenue, for all anyone could guess. Not that it was any of their business, was it?
Bastards! she said to herself, hating them because she did care what they thought.
With exaggerated casualness, she peeled the wrapper away from the hamburger. She started to tear off the portion of bun marred by the man’s tooth marks, then thought better of it.
Took a deep breath and bit into the hamburger.
There was cheese on it, along with onion and pickles. She’d never tasted anything that brought such sensation to the taste buds. She could almost see and feel the word “delicious.”
Too soon, she finished the hamburger and was licking her fingers, as the man who’d thrown it away had licked his, only with more obvious greed and enjoyment. When she glanced to the side, the old woman still had her chin resting in the folds of her neck, but her slanted, rheumy eyes were open. A look passed between her and Allie, for only a second, a spark of understanding that was like a lightning bolt to Allie. The woman had placed her at last in the hierarchy of humanity. They were one and the same, the look said. Outcasts and comrades in agony.
Allie quickly averted her eyes and wiped her hands on her jeans.
Hunger still clawed at her.
She’d never been so lonely.
In the morning she awoke to the shuffle and humming of the busy station. A Godlike, echoing voice was making unintelligible pronouncements over the PA system: “NOWREEING PRESSTO STAMFOR ONTRAREEE-SAAAN!” No one was paying the slightest attention to Allie where she lay curled on the floor. Now and then an eye would glance her way and then quickly be averted, as if denying her existence. There was some charity in the world, however; a crumpled dollar bill and some change lay on the floor near her hand. Only the thousands of passing potential witnesses had prevented it from being stolen.
Allie sat up and tucked the money into a pocket. She worked her mouth to remove some of the sour taste that had accumulated during the night. A hint of onion from the hamburger still lingered. She was thinking more clearly now. Graham! He was someone—the only one now—who could corroborate Allie’s claim that Hedra had shared the apartment.
If the police would listen to Graham and believe him. Allie had read about how the law hated and resisted evidence to the contrary in what, to them, was a murder with a known perpetrator. The prosecuting attorney was probably salivating while waiting for Allie to be arrested.
She braced her back against the smooth wall and used numbed legs to lever herself to her feet. Then she glanced around and saw a bank of public phones. Gripping the coins she’d scooped from the floor, she walked stiffly toward them.
Graham didn’t answer his phone.
Allie called Goya’s next, and was told that he wasn’t working today, they had no idea where he might be reached.
Her heart fell as she hung up. She couldn’t risk going back to the Cody Arms, or to Goya’s. She’d have to wait and try to get in touch with Graham later.
She found that it was warmer outside. There was no accumulation of snow but the streets were still wet. People wearing raincoats and carrying folded umbrellas scurried along the sidewalks, on their way to work. Exhaust fumes hovered thick and noxious in the air. Stalled traffic on East 42nd was like a freeze-frame on TV, but with shouted curses and the frantic blaring of horns. Allie wondered why New Yorkers seemed to think that leaning on a horn might help clear a traffic jam. Many of them thrived on noise, she supposed. Maybe some people adapted to noise and then craved it.
Near the sidewalk a cabbie was leaning with his head and bare arm out his taxi window, chewing out a bicycle rider who’d gotten too close and scraped the cab with a handlebar. The cyclist was wearing a shirt that had KING MESSENGER SERVICE lettered across the back. “Both wheels up your ass… !” the driver was yelling, so angry he was spraying spittle. The messenger, a scrawny kid who looked about fourteen, was chomping a huge wad of gum or tobacco. He looked blissfully unconcerned.
Allie walked on. A few seconds later the messenger flashed past on his bike, whipping the vehicle from side to side between his legs, wove with breathtaking elegance between a car and a bus, and disappeared. Nonchalant survivor.
Allie knew where she was going now. She’d thought of it last night, slumped on the hard floor in Grand Central Station. Sleep had come to her only in snatches until almost three A.M. Seconds after closing her eyes, the dream would begin. Sam lying on his back with the stumps of his wrists at his sides. Sam staring at his hotel room ceiling with those wide and terrified eyes. Sam and the blood. Hedra and the blood. Sam, already dead, gazing at Hedra. Saying, “Allie …” The blood, blood, blood.
When she finally did fall asleep, it was into a red ocean where dead things swam.
A floor was a poor substitute for a bed. She still had an incredibly stiff neck. And she’d been mortified to find the money near her on the floor. Mortified but grateful to the stranger who’d mistaken her for one of the dispossessed and homeless.
Mistaken, hell! She was one of the homeless.
She’d conserved her change for the phone and used the dollar to buy a doughnut in a coffee shop in Grand Central. She’d made herself eat it methodically, so the counterman wouldn’t realize she was starving, then washed it down with a glass of water. Half a hamburger for supper and a doughnut and water for breakfast. Surprisingly, as she’d hurried out of the station she felt satisfied. And she walked now with a sense of purpose.