Manhattan Is My Beat

You're going to find out I'm not a knight and that, okay, maybe there was some bank robbery money-which I think is the craziest frigging thing I've ever heard-but that it's spent or stolen or lost somewhere years ago and you'll never find it …

She gripped the bracelet firmly, ready to throw it after the others. But then decided, no, she'd save this one-as a reminder to herself. About how adventures can get friends and family hurt and killed. How quests work only in books and in movies.

And here you are pissing your life away in a video store, jumping from fantasy to fantasy, waiting for something you don't even know what it is.

She slipped the last bracelet back on her wrist and slowly returned to the hospital.

Upstairs, the nurses had changed shifts and no one could find Stephanie. Rune had a terrible moment of panic as one nurse looked at a sheet of paper and found a black space where there should have been a list of patients from Adult Emergency Services who'd gone to Radiology. She felt her hands trembling. Then the nurse found an entry that said Stephanie was still upstairs.

"I'll let you know," the nurse promised.

Rune stood at the window for a long time again, then heard a voice asking for her.

She turned. Froze. The doctor was very young and he had a mournful expression on his face. It seemed that he hadn't slept in a week. Rune wondered if he'd ever told anyone before that a patient had died. Her breath came fast. She gripped the bracelet maniacally.

"You're a friend of the woman hit by the cab?" he asked.

Rune nodded.

He said, "She's transitioned from a deteriorating status."

Rune stared at him. He stared back, waiting for a response.

Finally he tried again. "She's in a stable situation."

"I-" She shook her head, his words not making sense to her.

"She'll be okay," the doctor said.

Rune started to cry.

He continued. "She has a concussion. But there isn't much blood loss. Some bad contusions."

"What's a contusion?"

"A bruise."

"Oh," Rune said softly.

Stephanie, who didn't want to get bruised for her audition.

She asked him, "Is she awake?"

"No. She won't be for a while."

"Thank you, doctor." She hugged him hard. He endured this for a moment then retreated wearily back through the swinging doors.

At the nurses' station Rune asked for a piece of paper and a pen.

Rune wrote:

Steph:

I'm leaving. Thanks for everything. Don't come near me, don't try to contact me. I'll only get you hurt again. Love,

R.

She handed the note to the nurse. "Please give this to her when she wakes up. Oh, and please tell her I'm sorry."

Ru

Looking behind her, as often as she looked forward. Past garbage cans, litter on the street, puddles. Past the fake, gaudy gold of the Puck Building in SoHo, surrounded by the sour smell of the fringe of the Lower East Side. Ru

Air flooded into her lungs and stung her chest.

A block from her loft Rune pressed against the side of a building and looked behind her. No one was following. It was just a peaceful, shabby street. She checked out the street in front of her loft: No police cars, even unmarked ones. Familiar shadows, familiar trash, the same broken-down blue van that had been there for days, plastered with parking tickets. She waited until her pounding heart calmed.

If Emily and Pretty Boy found out about her place, would they come here? Probably not. They'd know the police would be staking it out. Besides, they were probably gone themselves. She'd been the fall guy they needed; their job was done. They'd probably left town.

Which is what I'm going to do. Right now.

Round on the ends and hi in the middle, it's O-Hi-O.

Rune walked around the block then snuck through the plywood fence of the construction site. Workers in hard hats came and went.

She walked past them quickly, into her building. She started up in the freight elevator, smelling the grease and paint and solvents. She was already sick-from exhaustion and fear-and the scents turned her stomach even more.

The elevator clanked to a stop at the top floor. She unhooked the chain guard and stepped out. No sounds from the loft upstairs. But there was a chance somebody was there. She called, "Rune? It's me. Are you home?" No response. "It's your friend Je

Nothing.

Then up the stairs, slowly, peering out of the opening in the floor. The empty loft stretched out around her. She raced to her side of the loft, grabbed one of the old suitcases she used for a dresser, opened it. She walked around the room, trying to decide what to take.

No clothes. No jewelry-she didn't own much other than her bracelets. She picked some pictures of her family and the friends she'd met in New York. And her books-twenty or so of them, the ones she'd never be able to replace. She considered the videos-Disney, mostly. But she could get new copies of those.

Rune noticed the tape of Manhattan Is My Beat. She picked it up and flung it angrily across the room. It crashed into a table, shattering several glasses. The cassette itself broke apart too.

She found a pen and paper. She wrote:

Sandra, it's been radical rooming with you. I've got the chance to go to England for a couple years. So if anyone comes looking for me, you can tell them that's were I am. I'm not sure where but I think I'll be somewhere near London or Edinborow. Hope your jewelry makes it big, your designs are really super and if you ever sell it in London I'll buy some. Good lox, Rune.

She folded the paper, left it on Sandra's pillow, and picked up the heavy suitcase.

Which is when she heard the footsteps.

They were on the floor below.

Whoever it was hadn't come up via the elevator. They'd snuck up the stairs. So they wouldn't be heard.

The only exit was the stairway-the one the intruder was now coming up. She heard cautious feet, gritty.

She looked across the loft to her side of the room-at her suitcase and leopard-skin bag.

No time to get a weapon. No time for anything.

Nowhere to run.

She looked around her glass house.

Nowhere to hide.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

He took the stairs one at a time, slowly, slowly.

Pausing, listening.

And struggling to control his anger. Which throbbed like the pain in his face-from when that fucking redhead had nailed him in the subway. Listening above him and listening below. He was out of his uniform now-.he'd ditched the meter reader's jacket a while ago, before | he trailed the little short-haired bitch to Brooklyn-and I downstairs some of the construction guys had given him | some shit about just walking into the building. He'd just I kept walking, giving them a fuck-you look and not even I bothering to make up a cover story.

So, listening for somebody laying in wait for him 'upstairs, listening for somebody following.

But he heard no footsteps, no breathing, no guns being racked.

Pausing at the top of the stairs, head down.

Okay… go!

Walking fast into the loft, eyes taking in places he could go for cover.

Only he didn't have to worry. She wasn't there.

Shit. He'd been sure she'd come back. If only to get her stuff before she took off. Pointing the gun in front of him, he made a circuit of the loft. She'd been there- there was a suitcase half filled. There was that God-ugly purse of hers. But no sign of the bitch.