She lets him feel her face and shoulders like a blind man trying to understand what she is. He looks at her with trepidation.
“Everything is good, Jamey,” she says, like telling him the time. “I love you.”
He takes his hands off her quickly, as if she just barked.
Four hours later.
“I’m freezing.” He looks at Elise like a child in the snow.
She rubs his arms briskly. “We’ll warm you up.”
“I’m so cold,” he says pathetically.
Elise sighs. “Do you want a blanket?”
He drawls like a dandy: “I want your fur coat. Can I have it?”
“It might not fit.”
He looks like he might cry.
“I’ll get it, I’ll get it,” she says.
When he puts it on, they hear a seam break like ice cracking beneath their feet. He looks ridiculous.
“I’m warmer already.”
At the window, he slow dances like a charmed snake. He watches himself in the glass.
This lasts a long time.
Then he looks at her with dead certainty. “I need to go outside.”
Elise squirms. She got bored and lax while he danced, thinking maybe there would be an end to this. But his face is even more altered. He’s puffy, his face muscles operating in a foreign way, clenching and relaxing.
His eyes syrupy with light.
“Well,” she says, reasoning with a toddler, “maybe in like a little bit, we’ll go out.”
“I need to go now.”
“Jamey, I don’t think this is the best idea you ever had.”
Matt and Valentina are making sculptures with salt and butter, still giggling, and Elise suspects they’re coming down from their one tab each, and can’t let go. She doesn’t want their help but is sick of babysitting, and she blames them.
“Hey,” she says. “Jamey wants to go outside. Can you help explain why we shouldn’t do that?”
Valentina purses her mouth. “Why not we go outside?”
“Hey, James,” Matt says. “Maybe we’ll go for a walk in a little bit? Want to come over here and give us a hand?”
Jamey stands at the window, looking left out. “I want. To leave,” he manages to say, his mouth dry.
Elise looks at Matt, suddenly an ally.
“Why don’t we go out in like five minutes?” Elise asks, planning to manipulate Jamey’s sense of time.
Jamey looks down, then bolts for the door.
Matt and Elise get him before he opens it.
They instinctively know not to be too physical, but just pulling his hand from the doorknob makes Jamey jump like they hurt him.
“Maybe we can have a little quiet time, Jamey, and just calm down,” Matt tries.
“Let’s sit on the floor together!” Elise proposes, like it would be fun.
“No,” Jamey finally whispers.
Valentina traipses over. She puts her bony, diamond-braceleted arms around everyone. “We go out! It’s no problem. Come on. We have fun.”
She slips into her coat, her own face smeared by the trip, still beautiful.
Elise’s stomach flips.
“Jamey, we do what you want,” Valentina says, and presses for the elevator, jangling her keys.
“Do you want to wear that coat out?” Elise asks him carefully.
Jamey nods, his hair standing up like a gutter punk.
Matt puts on Jamey’s camel-hair coat, and Valentina hands Elise a yellow Moncler jacket.
And they get into the elevator and the elevator man presses the button for the ground floor and they all look at their feet.
In summary, on April 6, 1987, at approximately 0313 hours, officers were dispatched, along with EMS, to the Trump Towers building lobby at 725 Fifth Avenue, after being notified by Central Dispatch of an incident in progress.
Upon arrival, Officer in Charge noticed the offender, James Balthazar Hyde, walking in agitated circles and cursing. Officers Drake and Tomlinson announced office and proceeded to inquire whether Hyde was able to talk with them. Hyde stated, “I will not need you.”
Then Hyde pointed to his friend Matthew Danning, going up the escalator, and he began to hyperventilate. Hyde’s extreme distress seemed to be triggered by/fixed on Danning.
At that time, Hyde began to run up the “down” escalator, shouting unintelligible words. His wife, later identified as Elise Hyde, and Danning and Valentina Corsicona (family is Tenant at Trump Tower), shouted to stop, that police officers needed to speak to him. Hyde responded: “You don’t matter!” Officers gave multiple verbal commands for Hyde to get off the escalator. Hyde took the escalator to ground level, but instead of allowing Officers to cuff him, he proceeded to skip around the lobby, frightening residents trying to exit. “That’s it!” he was heard to say.
Officers showed weapons, at which point Elise Hyde became hysterical and begged the offender to stop running. He refused all verbal commands, and proceeded to give chase around the lobby, eventually speeding up as Officers closed in, tripping and skidding, breaking the glass wall of a boutique.
Officers at that time used necessary force; the Trump Security Guard was required to help, as offender was extremely aggressive. Officer Drake was injured on the left side of his face, and Hyde was injured in multiple places, including the forehead, mouth, teeth, left rib cage, and left leg. Central Dispatch had already sent EMS to the location, and the EMS attendants Jackson and Gertz spoke with Danning, who explained Hyde was under the influence of LSD. Officers agreed Hyde should be taken to the hospital, and at approximately 0422 hours, Hyde was given temporary sedative by injection, strapped into a gurney, and transported by ambulance to Lenox Hill ER. End of Report.
Jamey is wheeled into triage while Elise answers questions from someone with a clipboard.
Elise cannot believe this is happening.
When she hesitates with details, the EMS guy shakes his head. “They got to know, for his safety. This is not no bad thing, okay?”
“He took one hit”—she holds up a fingernail—“no, two hits, of LSD, of acid. He’s never taken it before, he doesn’t do drugs at all. This bitch made him do it.”
“Is he on other substances tonight?”
“No. Champagne.”
“How much?”
“Like, four glasses?”
“Marijuana, cocaine, heroin, PCP, pills?”
“Nothing.”
“Any prescribed medication?”
“No.”
“Has he had an episode like this before?”
“No!” Elise says, offended for him. “He didn’t even want to do it!”
“He was forced?”
“He was tricked.”
“By a stranger?”
“We were at a dinner party, with his friend.”
“You can press charges if you want, but it’s gonna be a he-said she-said.”
“Just make him better,” Elise says desperately.
Elise sits by Jamey’s stretcher, where he’s hooked to an IV, the orbs of his eyes moving but not seeing, hair drenched in sweat. A nurse touches Jamey’s wrist, counting, and says the doctor will be here soon.
“Hang tight,” she says.
Elise smells lemonish bleach and urine. Blood travels the threads of Jamey’s arm bandage.
Suddenly another team busts in, talking to each other, and injecting him again.