The Syndrome

With a yip, Jack bolted through the living room to the hallway where, once again, she could hear him scrabbling at a door—this time trying to get in rather than out. She followed the dog, thinking how silent the apartment was with the electricity out. The only noise was the faint hum of traffic, and the scratching sound that Jack was making. Then he began to bark, and a shaft of light crashed into her eyes.

“I found a flashlight,” Ramon told her.

Adrie

“I’ll get the dog,” she said. “You get the lights.”

Ramon nodded, and strode toward the kitchen, taking the flashlight with him. Adrie

From habit, she flipped the light switch on and off, then on and off again, but nothing happened. Jack was mewling a few feet away, and the only sound was the drip, drip, drip of water. “Nikki?” Silence. Nothing.

And then, the doorman calling from the kitchen—“Got it!” Suddenly, the lights flashed on, and a lonely trumpet accelerated from 0 to 80 decibels in half a second, pealing through the now bright air above where Nikki lay, drowned and burned in a tub of gray water. Eyes wide in a look of mild surprise.

The moths rose up in her stomach—even as the world fell away from her feet, and Adrie

When she awoke, a policeman was sitting in a chair at her side, talking quietly into a cell-phone. The lights were on. Her head was pounding. And she was lying on a couch, with a pillow under her feet.

“Hey,” she said, complaining and entreating, all at once. Leaning on an elbow, she sat up. Slowly.

“You hit your head when you fainted,” the cop explained.

Fainted? What ‘fainted’? She’d been standing in—the bathroom. Suddenly, she remembered the long, peeling jazz horn, and the image of her sister’s eyes flashed before her own. A sob rose in her throat.

“There was nothing anyone could do,” the cop told her. “It must have been instantaneous.”

She made a noise somewhere between a groan and a whimper. Her head dropped into her hands, and the tears rolled.

“The doorman called 911. My partner and I were just up the street.”

For the first time, she noticed a second policeman standing near the doorway, talking quietly with Ramon.

“The M.E.’s on the way,” the cop added. “And an ambulance. Though…”

The M.E., Adrie

She had to get her out of there.

The blood drained from her head as she got to her feet and stood, suddenly dizzy, swaying on her feet, head pounding like the bass drum in a high school band. She felt the policeman’s hand on her arm. “We have to get her out of there,” she said, and took a step toward the bathroom.

“No.” Ever so gently, he sat her down on the couch.

“She’s cold!” Adrie

“No, she’s not cold. She’s—” The policeman looked wildly around, as if to find someone who could help him explain. But there was no one else. “She’s okay now,” he said. “Whatever it was, she isn’t hurting anymore.”

Adrie

Getting to her feet, she went into the kitchen and made a cup of strong coffee with the plastic cone and paper filters that she used. Sitting down at the kitchen table, she thought, That’s it. There isn’t anyone else. Now, I’m really an orphan. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she blinked them back, almost angrily. Who are you sorry for? she wondered. Yourself or Nikki? Then she sipped her coffee and looked at the clock. 6:02. The first gray light of morning.

Her head hurt from where she’d fallen, banging it against her sister’s sink. She supposed she was still in shock, and wondered what she was supposed to do. Make a list, she told herself. She was big at making lists and, anyway, that’s what lawyers always did in a crisis: they made lists. Removing a pen from a Hoya’s mug beside the telephone, she found a pad of Post-its, and began to write:

1. Funeral Home

The medical examiner had said there would be an autopsy—probably in the morning. He’d given her his business card, and told her to call that afternoon. Unless something unforeseen arose, they’d release “the remains” later that day. So she’d need to find one.

2. Call the M.E.

3.

She hesitated. What was 3.? Then it occurred to her that 3. was the shrink who’d killed her sister. Duran—that was his name. Jeffrey Duran.

But, no. She’d deal with that son of a bitch later. There were more immediate priorities than revenge. So 3. was something else. Like, a memorial service. She sipped her coffee, and wondered what Nikki would have wanted. And then she remembered: a funeral barge, piled high with flowers. They’d talked about it once, half-joking, and that’s what she wanted: a burial at sea.

Adrie

Jesus Christ, she thought. Jack!

There was a key to Nikki’s apartment hanging from a hook under the cabinet next to the sink, where she liked to keep her keys so that she’d never have to look for them. The poor dog! Adrie

She left her apartment at 6:35, and walked east on Lamont toward 16th Street, where she could expect to find a cab. The day was brightening now, as early risers came out of Heller’s Bakery, attaché cases in one hand, cups of coffee in the other. Half a dozen people waited at the bus stop, while a ragged Hispanic man snored in the doorway of Ernesto’s Taquería.

It took her a while to hail a cab, but the ride was a quick one, with the cabbie heading west on Porter, then south on Wisconsin to M. She got out in front of the Watermill, half expecting to find a fleet of squad cars, but there was nothing unusual to mark her sister’s death. Just people leaving for work, oblivious to the tragedy of the night before.

She didn’t know the doorman on the morning shift but it didn’t matter. He was reading the sports section of the Post, and merely nodded to her as she passed. The elevator doors opened with a cheerful ding. And then she was on the third floor, walking down the silent corridor toward her sister’s apartment.

She had almost expected the doorway to be crisscrossed with yellow police tape. But there was nothing. Just the door itself—and her, standing in front of it, looking blank. Only a few hours earlier, they’d carried her sister out on a gurney, her body covered by a sheet. She remembered the water dripping on the floor, a little trail from the bathroom to the front door, but it was gone now. Evaporated. Like Nikki.