The sun shone down on his head like a spotlight, but it was so bright that he wondered if he hadn’t set his wings on fire.
This was a spectacle indeed. Pierrot cut such a peculiar figure in his fantastic threadbare suit. Everyone gasped and became silent as they watched Pierrot begin to tiptoe across the ladder. He hummed his composition under his breath, so he could focus. He stepped quietly from one rung to the next. He had always been able to balance so well. A rung cracked under his foot. He heard the sound so clearly, as though it were a bone inside him breaking, and then he slipped between the bars.
As he fell, he had a clear memory of himself and Rose when they were little. They had stopped at a park to play. They hung upside down on the jungle gym, facing one another. They had a conversation while they were upside down. Pierrot imagined that she was a mermaid, her hair floating so mysteriously and weightlessly below her head. Pierrot smiled in his memory.
And then he hit the ground.
A cat crawled up on him. It showed the claws on its paw like a switchblade.
? ? ?
POPPY FLUNG OPEN the glass front doors of the building. She had gotten free of the chair, and the ties were still dangling from her wrists. She ran down the front steps and over to Pierrot. He was lying on his back with his eyes closed. He looked so peaceful that it would be easy to assume he was dead. But his mouth kept opening and closing, as if he were a fish on the deck of a ship, breathing its last breath and thinking, I knew that worm was too good to be true. Poppy took his hand and lowered her face close to his.
“Please tell Rose that I’m sorry, will you?” Pierrot said. “And that no matter how poorly I’ve acted, for me, she was the one.”
Poppy was taken aback and sat up. If you knew a little about Poppy’s past, you might surmise that she could put up with just about anything. She had sucked men’s dicks at the bottom of staircases. When she was done, she’d stood up, plucked out the pebbles embedded in her knees—like small diamonds—and then headed off down the street as though nothing had happened.
But this was where she drew the line. She had created this elaborate production just for him. And his last words were to Rose! Rose? She hadn’t done anything for Pierrot in years and years, but now she was the one he would devote his last words to?
The pimp, who had run down from the roof, raised his gaze from the boy on the sidewalk and looked for Poppy. He put his hand out for her.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered.
She took his hand in hers. The silver key to the hotel room fell out of her pocket like a scale falling off the Little Mermaid the moment she was transformed into a human.
30
STUDY FOR BROKEN FINGERS
When he came to, Pierrot had both his hands in casts, as if he were wearing white mittens. He had trouble sitting up because his ribs were broken. Pierrot looked at the tips of his fingers peeping out from the cast. Each one was black.
The police officer at the side of the bed looked at Pierrot. He held up a piece of paper on which was drawn a sketch of his own likeness.
“Oh, how lovely,” said Pierrot. “You’ve made a sketch of me.”
“This is a drawing that a sketch artist made based on a description from a four-year-old boy. We believe this is the face of a thief who’s been robbing houses all through Westmount.”
Pierrot had a distinct flashback of the little boy with a top, smiling at him all those nights ago.
“On second thought, that face looks like nobody I’ve ever seen before.”
“Mmmhmm. We tossed your place. And there’s nothing. But you sell everything for the cheapest price so you can get high. We are onto you, Pierrot. You little schmuck. You keep your crime to your own neighborhood. If you so much as step into Westmount, I will come after you.”
Although he couldn’t tell the police officer, Pierrot had already determined he was done with that life. But what else could he do now that his hands were smashed? Could he still play the piano?
He asked the doctor who came in to see him next.
“I know it might be silly to tell you that you’re lucky when you’re lying there with all your bones broken. But it’s really amazing that you are still alive. You might go down in the record books for this fall—if there were such record books.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Pierrot said. “There are books about all sorts of things.”
“It’s not the time to worry about playing the piano. Take it easy.”