The Last Minute

53

And my foot landed on… scaffolding. This side of the building was under remodeling. Jack, arm pinwheeling, screaming, grabbed at an upright bar but I yanked him away from life, from safety. I saw his fingertips brush the metal pole and miss. The balls of my feet hit the edge of the scaffolding and I pushed beyond, my hands gripping his arm.

Into air. Gravity slipped its fatal embrace around us. Jack Ming’s scream rose and rushed hard into my ears.

Three stories. It’s not far to fall but it’s enough. The images of the alleyway below burst through my mind, a memory that would only imprint for a moment before death.

I can’t see the asphalt of the alleyway.

Parked in the space between the buildings are big dump trucks.

Blue canopies. More scaffolding on the sides, now behind us.

The renovation gear crowded the alleyway. We plummeted toward blue canopy, a surprising pond. Jack wrenched free from my grip. Two more seconds and we hit, ripping the thin plastic sheet, but it slowed our fall, like rain striking a leaf before dripping onto the mud. The canopy tore, yawned like a sleepy mouth. Metal rods snapped loose from under the canopy, cracking like bones. Then the tearing fabric, having cocooned us, spat us both free in a slow, awkward tumble. Just below us was a truck, its load covered in black plastic.

We tore through the plastic and hit sand. A metal rod clanged against the back panel of the truck. Pain gripped me, shook my already hurt arm. A drift of canopy settled on me like a blanket. I realized I was still breathing. Every inch of me recategorized pain, but I still breathed. I kicked the shredded canopy off me. Sand abraded my face.

‘What the hell!’ a guy exclaimed; he stood on scaffolding, six feet away from me and seven feet above. He hovered over me, inspecting me as though he couldn’t believe I’d fallen out of the sky. ‘What the holy hell?’

If I’m still alive then so was…

I saw Jack, scurrying off the sand at the front of the truck, on the driver’s side of the cab. The sand had scraped his face raw, he bled from his ears. He fared better in the fall than I did. He dropped out of sight but moments later the truck gave a little shift, like a door had opened and slammed closed.

‘Stop,’ I said but there was hardly any breath in me. My arm – the same one Jack had nailed with the heavy ceramic pot – didn’t feel right. ‘Stop him.’

The engine started and the truck jerked forward. Jack bulldozed the truck through the detritus of construction: the canisters of paint, the stacked drywall, the wooden barriers erected to keep out the curious and the sticky-fingered. He blared the horn, skidded the truck out into the Brooklyn traffic.

I gripped the edge of the truck with my good arm. Holding on for the ride.

The sand truck smashed along the cars parked on the side of the street. Metal crunched, glass shattered. I tried to get to my knees on the sand.

And then the back of the truck’s bed fell open. I didn’t know if Jack got clever and resourceful – he was already that, he’d thought of stealing the truck before I did – or if he just hit the wrong switch, or if the rods that hit the truck when we fell damaged the catch that kept the hinge of the bed in place.

The sand spilled, as though from a broken hourglass, and carried me with it into a slide onto the street. Cars behind the truck braked as the sand exploded out onto them. Which was good because I tumbled out with the sand and I landed on a heap of it, approximately three feet in front of a honking cab. I leapt forward and the sand stopped the cab’s bumper, just short of my shoes.

I tried to scramble to my feet.

Jack hammered that sand truck through the traffic, leaving a swath. I saw him barrel through a red light, turn, and he was gone. I pulled myself out of the sand heap. I saw the cab that nearly hit me was empty and so I kicked the sand heap smooth.

Back toward the building where we’d fallen there were multiple police units and officers racing down the sidewalk.

I felt certain someone was going to point at me at any moment. I did not care to have a discussion with the police. So I got into the cab. There was no one in the back seat.

‘Hi,’ I said to the cabbie. ‘Are you for hire?’

He stared at my sandy self, turned around in the seat, gaping. My once-sleek Burberry suit was a ruin; I was bloodied and holding my arm awkwardly, and I still had that black eye.

I glanced at his name on the cab permit. Vasily Antonov. Russian. So I said to Vasily, in Russian, ‘Can you take me where I need to go?’

Speaking Russian must have reassured him. Cars behind him were honking so he inched forward, over and through the sand. The cops stormed past us, toward the intersection where Jack had turned. ‘Where do you need to go?’ he asked me back in Russian.

We pulled up to the intersection where Jack had turned with the truck. ‘Turn right, please.’ Still in Russian.

‘You want me to follow the sand truck?’ he answered.

‘That would be great.’

‘This man stole your truck?’

‘Yes.’ Sounded as good a reason as any.

‘You look like you put up a good fight for your truck.’

‘I tried,’ I said.

Six blocks down the truck was pulled over. The door stood open, the cab empty.

Jack Ming was gone. My arm was broken. He knew my face. He knew I was hunting him and intended to kill him. And the police swarmed everywhere. I had to retreat. Daniel, I’m sorry. Dad is so sorry, baby, wherever you are.

‘Take me here.’ I gave him The Last Minute’s address. I had to hope Leonie had made it there as well.

‘Nice bar, yes, I’ve gotten fares there.’ He glanced at me. ‘So. Where in Russia are you from?’ I guess I had no accent he could detect.

‘I once lived in Moscow.’ It was easier to lie than to explain my globetrotting childhood, salted with a dozen languages before I was even sixteen.

‘Ah, I did not know a Russian speaker owned that bar. I will recommend it to the tourists.’

‘And you are always welcome to come in for a drink. When off duty.’

‘Ah, thank you.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, and leaned back against the upholstery. The cabbie slid in a tape of Russian pop music to pass the time. Electro-style, sounded like Tatiana Bulanova. So thoughtful. It had a beat and you could dance to it.

I did my best not to pass out.