Jump (12 page)

Be a ghost.

He found a jazz station on the radio, put it up real loud, not minding the cold air hitting him from all sides, feeling fresh now, feeling very fresh, pretending the wind was some crowd cheering for him.

But cheering for the secret Ellis. Ellis the invisible man.

All of a sudden, Ellis was yelling over the wind, yelling like a crazy man, driving too fast, feeling like he was above the wind.

Like he really could fly.

Hannah said to Beth, “I’m thinking about putting myself out there.”

Beth gave her that little surprised look, the one that said: Oh? How amusing. Hannah always wanted to tell her how much that look got under her skin, reminded her of her mother, her mother the airhead, acting as if she knew things Hannah didn’t, when her mother really didn’t have a clue.

But Hannah never said anything.

Beth said, “Out there?”

“My name. My face. I’m not comfortable hiding.”

“Maybe we should talk about this.”

Hannah tried to make a joke out of it. “Would you like to go first?” she said to Beth. “We could switch chairs.”

Beth started scribbling on her long yellow legal pad, making her wait.

That was just part of the game.

It was her Monday morning appointment with Beth, who was her official therapist. The amateurs, the newspaper reporters, they were nearly a full week into analyzing her now. By her count, hers and
Jimmy’s, they had branched out from him and gotten quotes from eight of her friends, one former boss, two old boyfriends, four neighbors. The newspapers and the
Current Affair
and
Inside Edition
shows and the local television stations were hardly getting anything from the Knicks; no one in the organization was talking, so the media was finding new ways, or at least trying to find new ways, to work Hannah’s side.

The media had started showing up at Jimmy’s apartment after he attacked Richie Collins. But then Marty Perez had helped out both Hannah and Jimmy, saying they were staying indefinitely with friends in the Hamptons. It didn’t stop the camera crews from staking out her apartment on West End, for some reason. On Friday,
Inside Edition
had set up across the street, just showed people walking in and out.

Then they showed the clip of her running away from the Vertical Club. Hannah noticed that television made her butt look fat.

Hannah started to wonder what she was running away from, exactly.

Beth was still scribbling.

Hannah said, “So what do you think?”

Beth looked up. “About switching chairs?”

“About letting people know my name. What I look like. They’re going to find out sooner or later. Somebody faxed Jimmy’s agent a clip from one of the London tabloids; they’re already using my name in the papers over there and some picture of me that looks like they got it from my high school yearbook. Why not have it be, you know, on my terms?” She looked past the cool therapist, lemon-colored overalls over a white T-shirt and Keds so white Hannah wondered how she could keep a straight face when she talked to obsessive people about being obsessive. Hannah looked past her to the tiny garden behind the office, set in there between Tenth Street and Eleventh, near the corner of Sixth Avenue, just a few blocks away from one of Hannah’s favorite things in New York, the arch leading into Washington Square Park. Hannah wanted to look at her watch, but felt the way she always did, that Beth would see it as another little victory, one for her side.

“Well,” Beth said finally, “you’ve obviously done some thinking about this since I saw you last.” Hannah watched her, trying to wait
her out for a change. She was almost pretty, in this miniature way, with short brown hair and small features, everything about her small, really, even her voice. Hannah didn’t know how old she was, if she was married, if she was gay. She’d try to picture her sometimes having sex, with either a man or a woman, and couldn’t. Couldn’t see her out of control, her legs up in the air, good and sweaty, into some good screwing.

Really getting into it.

Sometimes Hannah just wanted to shock the shit out of her.

“I’m not supposed to think about this?” Hannah said, surprised at how sharp the words came out. “There should be something else on my plate I should be worrying about? Doing something different with my hair? Getting rid of those hard-to-lose ten pounds? Give me a
break.
” Hannah looked away now, back out there in the garden, one of those New York country scenes that would just show up somehow, behind a brownstone in the Village, making you think it was a fairytale cottage in the woods.

“Where’s this coming from all of a sudden?” Beth said.

Hannah shifted slightly in her chair, looked back at her.

“I thought this was supposed to be about my destiny? Getting hold of the reins of my life again. Isn’t that what you said? I think they were your exact words, as a matter of fact.”

Beth bought time, took another note in what Hannah had seen was perfect penmanship. When she finished she looked up and said, “Getting hold of the reins, yes.”

“That’s not the way this thing is going.”

“How did you expect it to go, Hannah?” Crowding her a little by using her name. “We talked about how the lights were going to be turned up, something appropriate to the level of the ballplayers’ celebrity. It’s been obvious in the past, from the other big cases, the thirst the public has for this sort of … episode.”

“Episode,” Hannah said dryly. “Like from a television series?”

Beth gave her a fake smile.

“We’re going to argue about terminology? Frankly, Hannah, I’d like to have more time with you on this. I don’t know how you could have come in here initially and kept something like this …”

Hannah, the keeper of secrets. She had worked her way into it with
Beth the way she had with the police. Maybe she thought of Beth as another form of the police.

Detective Brian Hyland was friendlier, of course.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” Hannah said.

Beth started to say something, but Hannah put a hand up.

“It isn’t the publicity that’s surprised me,” she said. “It’s the … 
force
of it. I expected a storm, but not like this. I guess what I’m saying is, I didn’t know I was going to end up with a hurricane.”

Beth said, “Now your terminology is rather interesting.”

“How so?”

“In all these last couple of weeks, before you pressed charges, you talked repeatedly about being lost in a storm. It’s always been your most vivid metaphor.”

Hannah said, “I was after more control and got less. I just feel like I don’t want to be seen in the way I’m being seen. Or not seen. If that makes any sense.” She poured some Evian out of the liter bottle Beth always kept on the desk, with two glasses.

“Do you want to be seen?” Beth said.

Hannah got up from her chair and went and sat on the windowsill to her right, leaning against the window frame, able to see a little of the garden, the country scene, from there. Wanting the next part to come out just right.

“I just don’t want to be some artist’s
version
of me,” she said. “Marty Perez? The newspaper columnist?” Beth’s face was a blank. She probably only read the
Times.
“Anyway,” Hannah said, “he’s been very kind so far. Very supportive. Most people have, other than the sportswriters. Those bastards. My mother has been right about very little in her life, but she was right about sportswriters and how low they are on the planet’s food chain. They’re writing about me, what happened to me, and half the time I don’t even know what they’re talking about.” She crossed a leg, sneaker to knee. Compared to Beth’s Keds, Hannah’s Reeboks looked like they should be on some homeless woman. “But even when people are being nice, it’s as if they’re working around me, never actually getting
to
me. Does that make any kind of sense?”

She hated herself because it sounded like she was pleading to be understood. Looking for Beth to give her a pat on the head.

“It makes a lot of sense,” Beth said. “Go on.”

Hannah said, “I’m not looking to make some kind of speech or statement, say something that might jeopardize my case if we ever get to a trial. I don’t need to go on
Oprah.
I just want the chance to stand up and say, ‘Hey, everybody, this is who I am. This is what I look like.’ I’m not afraid of them anymore. If somebody asks me what I want to say to Adair and Collins, I’ll just say something like, ‘I was afraid of them for a long time but I’m not afraid of them anymore. So don’t anyone be afraid for me.’ ”

Hannah felt herself smiling. It didn’t happen too much in here. Maybe because it was the truth-telling place.

Beth said, “It won’t be enough for them, Hannah. You have to understand that.”

“Maybe not. But the way it’s set up now, it’s not enough for me. It’s crazy. Maybe it’s crazy that Adair’s name is out there and Collins’s name is out there. But if people are going to talk about me, let them talk about
me.
Let them see who I am.”

Beth did the head-tilt, looked quizzical.

“It’s important to you, people knowing who you are?”

Looking straight at Hannah, with pale green eyes. It was the way babies looked at you, eyes wide and direct, as if they could somehow see everything.

“I don’t want to be famous, if that’s what you mean.”

“Who said anything about being famous?”

Hannah, feeling a little defensive all of a sudden, off balance, said, “If you’re suggesting I’m in this for the publicity, you’re wrong. I don’t need those things.”

“Those things?” Beth said, brightening. “Could you be more specific?”

“The stroke,” Hannah said. “The attention. Walking into places for the first time in my life and having people say, ‘There she is.’ ”

“Yet you want to put your picture on the front page of the newspaper and on every news show.”

Hannah stood up again.

“I don’t want to be the
victim
anymore.” She made a brackets motion with her fingers after “victim.” “I’ve done some reading the last couple of days. I don’t
want
to be another episode in the series.
Patty Bowman Desiree Washington Hannah Carey. I don’t want to feel like I’m behind some stupid dot on Court TV.”

“You’re not on television yet.”

Hannah said, “But don’t you understand? The dot’s already there. In place. It’s all supposed to be for my benefit, and it’s as humiliating as anything. You know what I was thinking when they chased me at the Vertical Club? I was wondering if the dot
travels.
”

“ ‘As humiliating as anything,’ you said.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No one knows the Central Park jogger’s name to this day, Hannah.”

“That’s different.” She saw her own reflection in the window behind Beth.

“How so?”

“Oh, come on, it just was. That was about some pack of wild animals. She was going to have the public’s sympathy. She wasn’t up against the happy face from the cereal box and the Fresh Air sneakers commercial.”

“You said most of the media has been sympathetic to you. Why would you think people in general wouldn’t be?” She wrote something down.

“I think most people are going to take their side. Have you seen what the sportswriters are writing?”

Beth, pursing her lips, frowning, said, “Why in the world would you care what sportswriters think?”

“I believe they speak to the way most men think about something like this. And so many women it would surprise both of us.”

“It’s not a sports story.”

“Yes,” Hannah said, “it is.”

The clock, a small travel alarm, was facing Beth. It started to make light beeping sounds, one a bit louder than the next. They were out of time.

Beth said, “Will I see you again before you make up your mind? Or was it made up before you came here today?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What are you really thinking about doing?”

“Calling a press conference.”

There it was.

Beth got up and came around the desk, brushing past her, opening the door, not even five feet tall. “Well then,” she said, and Hannah said, “To be continued.” They shook hands the way they always did, all business, and then Hannah was out on Eleventh Street, thinking: She doesn’t get it.

She started to walk toward Sixth, then started jogging. She had decided this would be her run today, even through city streets, all the way to Jimmy’s. If she saw anybody who looked like media, Jimmy had showed her the back way into the building.

Hannah ran and thought to herself, When had anybody gotten it?

Ever?

He was sitting on some steps leading up to a brownstone next to her brother’s building, wearing sunglasses and some kind of long-billed baseball cap with no logo on it that Hannah could see, so she didn’t get a very good look at his face. Not that she wanted one. He was just this skinny guy in jeans, part of the scene on West Seventy-first, until he got up and started walking toward her, casually, tossing the newspaper in a wire bin behind his back.

Hannah didn’t realize it was Richie Collins walking toward her until he took the cap off, pulled the sunglasses away from his eyes.

That was when she dropped the Food Emporium bag, hearing the bottle—apple juice? fruit punch Gatorade?—shattering on the sidewalk, sounding to her as if the bag had been tossed off a roof.

“We need to talk,” he said. “Or whatever.”

Hannah stood there, not wanting to stoop for the bag at her feet. She looked down there, saw the puddle beginning to form. Red. It had to be the Gatorade.

It’s the middle of the day, she told herself. It’s the middle of the block, the sun’s out, people were all around them.

She didn’t know what to do, though.

She couldn’t make herself go anyplace.

It was Collins who bent over, cap stuck in the back of his jeans now, sunglasses in the pocket of the T-shirt, surveying the mess on the sidewalk, trying to pick up the bag, hearing the broken glass in
there. He held the bag in front of him. The Gatorade was dripping out the bottom.

“Yo, I think you busted something in here,” Collins said. Hannah stood there, staring down at the back of his head, which seemed to be shaved almost bald. A Spanish-looking guy in some kind of blue custodian’s outfit walked past them, whistling. Then a blond woman, with groceries of her own, and behind her a black kid with a basketball under his arm, the kid wearing a T-shirt that came down all the way to his knees and baggy shorts that showed a little under the T-shirt, not even noticing that it was Richie Collins down there taking things out of the Food Emporium bag: salad in a plastic container, Baggie filled with fresh plums, Newman’s Own salad dressing. A blue box of goddamn maxi pads. With the wings.