Officer Antassi was extremely sympathetic on the phone, and Trudy found herself imagining an Italian George Clooney. Not a big stretch, considering Antassi's name and Clooney's dark hair and eyes. Antassi didn't look a bit like Clooney in person, but hey, who expected miracles and movie stars, it was a real world they were living in. Although...considering what had happened to her on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth at 1:19 P.M., EDT...
Officer Antassi arrived at about three-thirty, and she found herself telling him exactly what had happened to her,everything, even the part about feeling ningly-tumb instead of tingly-numb and her weird certainty that the woman was getting ready to throw that dish at her -
"Dish had a sharpened edge, you say?" Antassi asked, jotting on his pad, and when she said yes, he nodded sympathetically. Something about that nod had struck her as familiar, but right then she'd been too involved in telling her tale to chase down the association. Later, though, she wondered how she could possibly have been so dumb. It was every sympathetic nod she'd ever seen in one of those lady-gone-crazy films, fromGirl, Interrupted with Winona Ryder all the way back toThe Snake Pit, with Olivia de Havilland.
But right then she'd been too involved. Too busy telling the nice Officer Antassi about how the apparition's jeans had been dragging on the sidewalk from the knees down. And when she was done, she for the first time heard the one about how the black woman had probably come out from behind a bus shelter. Also the one - this'll killya - about how the black woman had probably just stepped out of some little store, there were billions of them in that neighborhood. As for Trudy, she premiered her bit about how therewere no bus shelters on that corner, not on the downtown side of Forty-sixth, not on the uptown side, either. Also the one about how all the shops were gone on the downtown side since 2 Hammarskj?ld went up, that would prove to be one of her most popular routines, would probably get her onstage at Radio Goddam City someday.
She was asked for the first time what she'd had for lunch just before seeing this woman, and realized for the first time that she'd had a twentieth-century version of what Ebenezer Scrooge had eaten shortly before seeing his old (and long-dead) business partner: potatoes and roast beef. Not to mentionseveral blots of mustard.
She forgot all about asking Officer Antassi if he'd like to go out to dinner with her.
In fact, she threw him out of her office.
Mitch Guttenberg poked his head in shortly thereafter. "Do they think they'll be able to get your bag back, Tru - "
"Get lost," Trudy said without looking up. "Right now."
Guttenberg assessed her pallid cheeks and set jaw. Then he retired without saying another word.
Three
Trudy left work at four-forty-five, which was early for her. She walked back to the corner of Second and Forty-sixth, and although that ningly-tumb feeling began to work its way up her legs and into the pit of her stomach again as she approached Hammarskj?ld Plaza, she never hesitated. She stood on the corner, ignoring both white WALK and red DON ' T WALK. She turned in a tight little circle, almost like a ballet dancer, also ignoring her fellow Second Avenue-ites and being ignored in turn.
"Right here," she said. "It happened right here. I know it did. She asked me what size I was, and before I could answer - Iwould have answered, I would have told her what color my underwear was if she asked, I was in shock - before I could answer, she said..."
Ne'mine, Susannah says you look like about a seven. These'll do.
Well, no, she hadn't quite finished that last part, but Trudy was sure that was what the woman had meant to say. Only then her face had changed. Like a comic getting ready to imitate Bill Clinton or Michael Jackson or maybe even George Clooney. And she'd asked for help. Asked for help and said her name was...what?
"Susannah Dean," Trudy said. "That was the name. I never told Officer Antassi."
Well, yeah, but f**k Officer Antassi. Officer Antassi with his bus shelters and little stores, justfuck him.
That woman - Susannah Dean, Whoopi Goldberg, Coretta Scott King, whoever she was - thought she was pregnant. Thought she was inlabor.I'm almost sure of it. Did she look pregnant to you, Trudes?
"No," she said.
On the uptown side of Forty-sixth, white WALK once again became red DON ' T WALK. Trudy realized she was calming down. Something about just standing here, with 2 Dag Hammarskj?ld Plaza on her right, was calming. Like a cool hand on a hot brow, or a soothing word that assured you that there was nothing, absolutelynothing to feel ningly-tumb about.
She could hear a humming, she realized. A sweet humming sound.
"That's not humming," she said as red DON ' T WALK cycled back to white WALK one more time (she remembered a date in college once telling her the worst karmic disaster he could imagine would be coming back as a traffic light). "That's not humming, that'ssinging. "