Audrey's Door Part 22

Mr. Evvie Waugh (78) of 15C, was interviewed at the hospital. When asked why he'd done such a thing to his own apartment, he replied, "I guess we got bored. Nothing happened at the seance, and after all those Manhattans, we were pretty ripped."

Turn to page 6 for details.

From The Enquirer Enquirer

34.

The Sound a Trap Makes as It Closes, I: Backward and Forward, the Same Thing Happens The night she'd found Jayne's body was a blur. Fast breaths and dizziness. A creaking rope. Her hand extended to the sole of the woman's swaying saddle shoe. She'd held it in her palm, as if to offer it consolation, and imagined a reversal of events: The metal ladder she'd tripped over rising up like a roused beast. Jayne's neck straightening, and the blood flowing from her face so that her skin became pale and freckled again. Her feet gaining purchase on the top step. Her hands swinging backward toward her neck, and loosening the noose. A prayer, perhaps the Lord's, begged backward, too.

She'd inserted herself into the dream. This time, instead of letting Loretta Parker distract her, she got off that elevator and knocked on 14E. Jayne's face peeked out from the rope, eyes bright, just as Audrey's shadow self appeared in the doorway, catching her friend before it was too late.

The dream withered as the tenants approached. Some walked. Some gimped. Some crawled down the hall. They wore suits and fitted dresses, like the occasion of Jayne's death was cause for celebration.

"You did this!" she'd cried as she let go of Jayne's sole and slumped down the side of the wall on her ruined knee. Their man-made faces bent over her. So close their features lost proportion: wide eyes, jutting noses, closed lips, all gargoyle sharp.

"Give it here," a grainy male voice ordered, and something was pa.s.sed down the line. The man above her had gray, closely trimmed brows, blue eyes, and yellow, jaundiced scleras. He looked handsome and trustworthy as he lifted the needle. "Help me," she mouthed. Then came a p.r.i.c.k. Her elbow or her forearm? Her nerves were firing off so many impulses, she couldn't tell. As the cold stuff dripped through her arms, then sloshed its way to her chest, her breath came faster. Her vision blurred and stretched, a movie still pulled taut as skin. She pressed down on her heart as if to calm it as she fainted.

When she woke, a man whose breath smelled like peanut b.u.t.ter was leaning over her. She shuddered and tried to push him away. Then her eyes focused again, and she saw that he was not one of the tenants. Too young by fifty years. His white uniform read: EMERGENCY MEDICAL TECHNICIAN.

Over his shoulder she saw more EMTs dressed in white. Was she in a hospital? A mental inst.i.tution?

No, there was Jayne. High up, her open skirt like a flower. The EMTs prodded. Jayne's legs swung in tiny semicircles, and then-clop! Her loose saddle shoe slipped off her toes and landed between Audrey's knees. Like the poodle skirt, it seemed costume, and Audrey wondered if she'd gotten dressed for her act at The Laugh Factory three days ago, but lost courage when the hour arrived and never made it to the show. Her loose saddle shoe slipped off her toes and landed between Audrey's knees. Like the poodle skirt, it seemed costume, and Audrey wondered if she'd gotten dressed for her act at The Laugh Factory three days ago, but lost courage when the hour arrived and never made it to the show.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" Peanut b.u.t.ter asked. He was s.h.i.+ning a penlight in her eyes.

She whispered her answer. "It looks like a thumb."

"Fat hands. Are you okay?"

She nodded, then leaned against the wall and hoisted herself up on what felt like a broken knee. It didn't hurt as much as she expected. Everything felt far away, like she was a spirit tethered to her body by cobwebs.

More people entered the den. A man and woman in plainclothes polyester suits flashed their badges. "Suicide," Peanut b.u.t.ter told them. "We just got here." Someone shoved the metal ladder aside, while another EMT began to cut Jayne loose from the rope.

The sound was that same creeeeaaak! creeeeaaak! and Audrey remembered, suddenly, the thing that had been in this hall with her. Spidery bones, guarding the trophy of Jayne's body. and Audrey remembered, suddenly, the thing that had been in this hall with her. Spidery bones, guarding the trophy of Jayne's body.

Jayne's open, unblinking eyes were fixed upon the long hall. Urine sopped the edges of her doilylike socks. Audrey hopped down the hall as fast as she could, following her own b.l.o.o.d.y trail, so she wouldn't have to see the girl as she fell.

A few feet down and to her right was the master bedroom. Family photos of redheads littered the floor. Jayne's face in all of them was blotted out. Audrey let her eyes focus on the inky smears, juxtaposed against a sea of voluptuous smiles.

Loretta and Marty Hearst, the guy with Parkinson's, met her halfway down. They scooped their hands under her shoulders and walked with her, little baby steps.

"No," she said, as she tried to break free, but the slanted floor was spinning.

They took her into the common hallway across from the elevator, where the rest of the tenants waited. More then ten, less then twenty. She started counting, but got confused. Except for Francis Galton, their faces swirled. From ten feet away, she could hear the echo of his breath beneath the porcelain mask.

Her heart pumped fast, and she pressed her hand against it, to rub it calm. Her thoughts circled and sank. Rorschach letters and images merged, then separated. Schermerhorn in his suit, only his arms and legs had multiplied, spiderlike, as he perched upon a pile of metal bones-The Breviary was a greedy G.o.d. Clara over a tub, slicing length-and width-wise, so that her wound would bear four points. Betty tethered to a hospital bed, dreaming of what she could have been, only she'd been born with black wings too heavy to flap. Jayne, all dressed up, but too scared to go to her act, so she'd stayed home and rubbed out her own face. The tenants at a c.o.c.ktail party, screaming with delight. And then, in her mind, a terrible door opened, and everything went black.

"Letmeohhh," she whispered. Her voice slurred like her mouth was filled with hardening wet cement. "Ahhllscream."

Their faces up close were worse than she'd remembered. Paper-thin skin pulled so tight it looked as if it might split apart and bleed.

Marty didn't have any eyelashes, and she wondered if it was because the doctor had cut them out when he'd widened the man's eyes. Only his hands showed his age. She remembered, then, that Jayne had known Marty's name that night they'd all crowded outside her door. The sneakered outfit she'd worn on the date with the old man-it had been too casual for dinner at a restaurant, or even a walk in the park, and now she knew why. The date had taken place inside the building.

"Itwa.s.ssyou?" she asked lashless Marty as a pair of uniformed cops got off the elevator. "You hurt my best friend?"

Marty blinked his slits. His grip on her arm tightened until it pinched, and she knew. knew. It was him. The man who was so good and kind and full of promise that Jayne had been afraid to say his name. She looked up at him now, and saw that in his vanity, he'd lined under his eyes with brown pencil, and his fake hair was slick with pomade. Jayne. Poor Jayne. She'd trusted too much. It was him. The man who was so good and kind and full of promise that Jayne had been afraid to say his name. She looked up at him now, and saw that in his vanity, he'd lined under his eyes with brown pencil, and his fake hair was slick with pomade. Jayne. Poor Jayne. She'd trusted too much.

The EMTs were the first to leave 14E. They wheeled Jayne out on a gurney with a white sheet over her body. One of her saddle shoes stuck out. Its sole was broken, and her feet were geisha-tiny. Audrey would have cried, but her chest hurt too much.

After asking some questions of the tenants, the uniformed cops were the first to leave. It happened so fast, and she was shaking so hard, sweating, too, that she didn't think to speak or even try to stop them.

"I can't believe this. Can you believe this?" one of the tenants asked.

"She was always so quiet. I had no idea," Loretta answered.

"-Kept to herself, mostly," Evvie added.

"-Poor girl!" Galton said as he clapped his hands together, unable to contain his jubilation.

The last to leave were the detectives-a man and woman dressed in brown suits a few sizes too tight, like they'd bought them when they got their promotions and hadn't upgraded since.

"Her name was Jayne Young. Her family came from Salt Lake City. Like we told you, Loretta found her and called 911," Marty told them. "That's all I know."

"Terrible," Loretta chimed in. "She left her door open and the light on. I didn't even have to go inside."

"The killer," Audrey said. Marty and Loretta squeezed her arms. The feeling was a sphygmomanometer's sleeve, tightening.

"Killer?" the male detective asked. He had black hair that was gray at the temples, and he looked tired, like he'd been woken from a sound sleep and was still debating whether he gave a s.h.i.+t about the dead girl in the poodle skirt.

"Them. All of them. Got inside her. Mader do it. Sacrifice, so their door would open," Audrey panted.

The man came closer, and Audrey saw he didn't believe. He was looking at her the way people used to look at Betty; with narrowed eyes and poker faces. "How did they do that? Because it looks like she hung herself," he said.

Audrey blinked. She thought she felt a tear roll, but her cheeks were numb. The left side of her chest throbbed, and she wondered if the injection that the kind-looking old man had given her might induce a heart attack.

"Do you know something?" he asked.

"They do," she said.

He looked Audrey up and down, from soiled blue sweat suit to blood-crusted bare feet. "Would you like to come to a hospital?" he asked. Then he turned to the other detective. "Donna? Why don't you call another van for this nice lady?"

She winced. Nice lady-code for crazy. That van wasn't going to a hospital, it was going to Bellevue. She realized then that these detectives were in on it. So were the EMTs. Everybody in the whole world, including Saraub, was in on it. A genuine gaslight, just to drive her mad. They'd done the same to Betty. Jayne wasn't even dead. The tenants had paid her off. All fun and games for the idle rich.

She took a breath. The floor was spinning. The walls were slanted. Nothing in this entire building made sense!

Donna opened her phone. She sounded cheerful, like maybe she got a commission for every lonely woman she helped lock up. "A van-"

Audrey interrupted. "No docore. I'maset..." She bit her lip. "She was my friend."

"You sure?" the man asked.

"She's my niece. Too many vodka tonics," Loretta said, then clapped her hands together. "Back to Betty Ford for you!"

The detective waited for Audrey to answer.

"I'ma sore," she said.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a business card. Audrey's eyes were so bleary that she couldn't read the number or t.i.tle, only the name: AIDAN MCGIL-LICUDDY. "Well, when you're feeling better, if you think of anything you want to tell me, give me a call."

Aidan and Donna got on the elevator. The tenants closed in around her. More than twenty now. At least thirty. Loretta's eyelids blinked over opaque cataracts. The wise, gray-haired man pulled out his needle, and masked Francis straightened her arm. Another shot. Fluid sloshed. The left side of her chest cramped like a charley horse.

The detectives closed the iron elevator gate behind them with a crash. It was then that she realized her mistake. "Waaaait!" she rasped. But by then, it was too late.

35.

The Sound a Trap Makes as It Closes, II: A Little Insulin Never Killed Anybody!

The tenants closed in around her. Cold hands and loose skin. Her feet weren't touching the floor anymore. She felt herself being carried back into 14B. "Soooop," she moaned, as they walked the fifty-foot hall. Their hands were soft, as if they'd never washed a dish or lifted a bag of groceries. But like a game of light as a feather, there were so many of them that they each only needed their fingers to hoist her up over their heads. "No. Peeeease, no."

Into the dark den to find rippling bits of clothes and chopped cardboard and Wolverine, all laced with her blood. Tiny red ants circled the hole in the floor. "I'm-get-you," she said. "Even if I have come back an haunt-you."

"My dear," Loretta answered. "We'd be delighted!" They laid her on the floor next to the air mattress. Her feet felt cold and stiff, like ice. So did her hands. She was s.h.i.+vering even though she was sweaty and hot. Loretta and Marty stood over her, while behind, the rest cleared the smashed old door from the room, then piled more moving boxes in its place. To her left, someone returned the grisly rebar to the side of the piano, along with a s.h.i.+ny red toolbox.

"We can't have you calling Romeo!" a man in a blue Armani suit from the early 1960s announced, then shoved her cell phone into his pocket, while an old woman unplugged her laptop and packed it under her arm, and another collected her soiled pants and shoes, so her only clothing was Clara's sweat suit.

Marty held her wrist with shaking fingers while looking at his watch. She was convulsing now, and she didn't dare take a deep breath. Her chest felt like it might split open.

"How much did you give her?" he called into the crowd.

"n.o.body ever died from a little insulin. I take it every day," a woman with coa.r.s.e, dyed-black hair and more gold necklaces than 1980s Mr. T. answered. Marty pumped the plastic mattress with air, then helped Audrey on top of it.

"Oh, stop touching the girls, you dirty old man," Loretta teased.

"Hear, hear, Marty Hearst! Don't play with the girls; you don't know where they've been!" Evvie Waugh shrieked, then slapped Marty on the a.s.s with Edgardo's cane. The sound was sharp, nearly wet, as if it had cut open Marty's thin-skinned a.s.s: Whhhack! Whhhack!

Marty grimaced. Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. Loretta clapped. "Hear! Hear!" And then the rest were clapping, too.

In the commotion, Franics' mask came loose. Audrey gasped. His face was badly scarred. Something had broken the bridge between his nostrils, and it had healed wrong. One side was closed over with skin, and the other had opened up too wide. His left eye was missing, and its socket swelled with infection. It was as if the man had smashed his own face through a window, and then, instead of cleaning it or going to an emergency room, had covered it with gauze and never looked at it again, even while it itched and festered.

"Monsters," Audrey whispered, as the others looked upon his gore, and laughed, clapping all the harder.

"Boo!" Francis shouted, then peered down at Audrey as she convulsed: "BOO!" The tenants kept clapping, only they were jeering, too. Galton leaped across the den, waltzing with an imaginary partner. "BOO!"

In the commotion, Marty leaned too close. She flinched, thinking he might kiss her. Instead, he rubbed his lips against her ear and whispered so fast that she had to replay his words a few times before she understood them. "HoldonOkayHoldon!"

Then he stood and announced to the others, "Someone get her a blanket. She's gone into hypoglycemic shock."

Audrey closed her eyes. Her heart clenched and unclenched. She tried to think of calming memories, to slow down its beating. Her old apartment with Saraub. His hands on the back of her neck. The rooftop design of the Parkside Plaza.

"What-sa matta with her? Why doesn't she have blankets? Is this another homeless?" the woman holding her laptop asked. "The homeless never never work, they're too stupid." work, they're too stupid."

"-I thought we told Edgardo no dirty girls. Didn't we say that? An architect. A career girl, no attachments. That's what we said," Evvie answered.

Audrey drifted, closing her eyes. Chest clenching, she couldn't catch her breath.

"-And what did he bring us? A psycho or something? Isn't her mother in the loony bin? She gives me the craziest f.u.c.king nightmares!"

"-I like them. I haven't been to the Film Forum in thirty years. n.o.body here ever dreams anything new."

"-I'm glad Edgardo's gone. I didn't care for his accent. I only like Castilian Spanish. Besides, we should get Irish to clean," the doctor with the kind face announced.

"-It'll work this time. I could tell the second she took the tour. The Breviary likes her." This from Evvie.

"-Shaddup! It likes me better than any of you!" Loretta shrilled.

And then, something heavy on Audrey's chest. It was soft and relieved her s.h.i.+vering. Jayne's pink comforter.

"-Do you you think it'll work this time, smarty Marty?" think it'll work this time, smarty Marty?"

"Yeah, smarty Marty! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" Loretta screeched.

Marty cleared his throat. She recognized his voice without having to look because it was ripe with contempt. What was more remarkable, they knew it, and didn't care. From the way they interrupted and shouted, not one of them held another in regard. They'd known each other since they were children. Half of them were probably siblings or at least distant cousins. It occurred to her that after more than eighty years in the same building, without ever having kids or getting jobs, they played the role of children, and The Breviary their parents, in the oldest dysfunctional family in New York.

"She knows what she's doing," Marty said. "The Breviary could get inside the others, but it was like using a pencil to build a house. The tools weren't right. Even when they offered a sacrifice, they couldn't get their doors to open. She will."

"Who will she sacrifice?" Evvie asked.

"Romeo!" Loretta cried. "I knew I liked that darkie!"

"It's all about proper tools," Marty muttered. He sounded like he might be near tears. "None of us were equipped. Not even Jayne. Just this one."

"You're the tool, Marty Hearst," somebody shouted, and they all started hooting again. The sound grew distant as they headed back down the hall.

"-Where's my Mr. Frisky? Mr. Frisky!" Loretta asked.

"-I could kill that stupid cat..." This from Evvie.