Crisscross

"Hey, Creature." He gave a thumbs-up. "Nice."

"Better be, after what it cost to rent it." Jack's voice sounded at once muffled and echoey inside the mask.

"How about a snort of ice-cold Ketel One to keep you going?"

"I'd need a straw."

The guy laughed. "Not a problem."

Jack waved and started moving after the kids. "Have to take a rain check. Thanks for the thought, though."

The guy called, "Happy Halloween," and closed his door.

Vicky ran back from where her friends were climbing to the next door. With her black pointed hat, flowing dress, and warty green skin she made a great mini Margaret Hamilton.

"Look, Jack!" she cried, digging into her bag. "He gave me a Snickers!"

"My favorite," Jack said.

"I know." She held it up. "Here. You can have it."

Jack knew she was allergic to chocolate, but was touched by her generosity. He was continually amazed at the bond they'd developed, and wondered if he'd ever be able to love his own child as much as he did Vicky.

"Thanks a million, Vicks, but"—he held out his gloved hands with their big webbed fingers and rubber talons—"can you hold it for me till we get home?"

She gri

Vicky trudged back down the steps and looked up at her mother with teary eyes.

"She wouldn't give me any candy, Mom."

"Maybe she ran out, hon."

"No. I saw a whole bowlfull inside. Why won't she give me any?"

Suddenly it felt a lot warmer in the Creature suit.

"Let's go find out."

"Jack," Gia said. "Let it go."

"I'm cool, I'm cool," he told her, though another look at Vicky blinking back tears made him anything but. "I just want to satisfy my curiosity. Come on, Vicks. Let's go check this out."

"No, Jack. Leave her here."

"All right."

He climbed the stairs and rang the bell. The same young woman, maybe thirty, answered.

"Mind telling me something?" He pointed to Vicky standing at the bottom of the steps. "Why did you stiff that little girl?"

"Stiff?"

"Yeah. You gave her friends candy but not her."

She began to close the door. "I don't think I have to explain my reasons to anyone."

Jack held the door open with a taloned hand. "You're right. You don't, but there's the right thing to do and there's everything else. Giving her an explanation is the right thing to do."

The woman's lips tightened into a line. "If you insist. Tell her it's because I don't approve of this so-called holiday in the first place but, just to be a good neighbor, I put up with the indignity of it. However, I draw the line at rewarding paganism. That child is dressed as a witch, a pagan sorceress. I won't encourage paganism or sorcery."

Jack felt his jaw working behind the mask. "You gotta be kidding!"

"I assure you I'm not. Now please get off my steps or I'll have to call the police."

With that she closed the door and turned away.

Jack raised his hand to knock again—cops or not he wanted to tell her a thing or two—when he heard Gia's voice.

"Jack—"

Something in her tone made him turn. When he saw how she was bent slightly forward, her hand over her lower abdomen, her face pale with pain, he ran down the steps.

"What's wrong, Mom?" Vicky was saying.

"Mommy doesn't feel too great. I think we have to go home now."

"I think we have to go to the hospital," Jack said.

Gia grimaced and shook her head. "Home. Now."

10

While Gia closed herself in the master bathroom upstairs at the Sutton Square place, Jack did his best to put aside his fears and fill the half hour until the parents of Vicky's friends showed up. He stayed in costume and told them the story of The Creature from the Black Lagoon. None of them had ever seen it. Jack once had persuaded Vicky to watch it but she'd lasted only ten minutes. Not because she was scared. No, her complaint was, "There's no color! Where's the color?"

He half told, half acted out the story, going so far as to lie on the floor and imitate the Creature's backstroke in its fabulous water ballet with Julie Adams.

His audience's consensus: Great performance, but the story was "just like Anaconda."

Finally the parents started arriving and Jack explained that Gia wasn't feeling well—"Something she ate." When the townhouse was cleared, he ran upstairs and knocked on the bathroom door.

"You okay?"

The door opened. An ashen Gia leaned on the edge of the door, hunched over.

"Jack," she gasped. A tear ran down her left cheek. "Call the EMTs. I'm bleeding. I think I'm losing the baby!"

"EMTs, hell," he said, lifting her in his arms. "I'll have you in the ER before they even start their engines."

Terror and anguish were icy fingers around his throat, making it hard to draw a full breath, but he couldn't let any of that show: Vicky stood at the bottom of the staircase, fist jammed against her mouth, eyes wide with fear.

"Mom's not feeling good, Vicks," he said. "Let's get her to the hospital."

"What's wrong?" she said, her voice high-pitched, barely audible.

"I don't know."

And he didn't, really, though he feared the worst.

11

Throughout the nail-biting two-hour wait outside the Mount Sinai ER, while interns, residents, ER docs, and Gia's obstetrician did whatever it is they do in these situations, Jack tried to keep Vicky occupied. Not necessary. Before long she found another girl her age to talk to. Jack envied her ability to strike up a friendship anywhere.

He tried to take his mind off Gia and what might be happening in that treatment room by shuffling through some leftover section of the Times. He spotted a familiar name in the Sunday Styles section: "New York's most eli-gible bachelor, Dormentalist Church guru Luther Brady, was observed in close conversation with Meryl Streep at the East Hampton Library Fund charity ball."

Not exactly an abstemious lifestyle.

He looked up as a nurse approached. She started to speak, then broke into a laugh.

"What's so fu

"I'm sorry. When your wife said to look for a man dressed like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, I thought she was kidding."

By now Jack had gotten used to the stares from the other people in the waiting room. He'd left the mask, gloves, and feet back at the house, but still wore the green, fi

"It is Halloween, you know. How is she?"

"Dr. Eagleton will tell you all about it."

They followed her to a treatment room where they found Gia propped up on a gurney. Her color was better but she still looked drawn. Vicky darted to her side and they hugged.

As Jack hung back, letting them have their moment, a tall, slim woman with salt-and-pepper hair stepped in. She wore a long white coat.

"You're the father?" she said, eyeing his costume. When Jack nodded, she held out her hand. "I'm Dr. Eagleton."

"Jack," he said. She had a firm grip. "How's she doing?"

Dr. Eagleton didn't look exactly comfortable discussing this with a man in a rubber monster suit, but she bore with it.

"She's lost a lot of blood, but the contractions have stopped."

"She's going to be okay?"

"Yes."

"And the baby?"

"Ultrasound shows no problem—good position, steady heart rate."

Jack closed his eyes and let out a relieved breath. "Thanks. Thank you very much."

"I want to keep her overnight, though."

"Really? Is there still a danger?"

"She should be fine. The further along the pregnancy, the less likely a miscarriage. Gia's in her twentieth week and it's rare after that. So I think we're in good shape. Just the same, I'd like to be sure."