No bus shelter. No little shops. There were the steps going up to Hammarskj?ld Plaza, where a few late lunchers were still sitting with their brown bags, but the ghost-woman hadn't come from there, either. The fact was this: when Trudy Damascus put her sneaker-clad left foot up on the curb, the sidewalk directly ahead of her was completely empty. As she shifted her weight preparatory to lifting her right foot up from the street, a woman appeared.
For just a moment, Trudy could see Second Avenue through her, and something else, as well, something that looked like the mouth of a cave. Then that was gone and the woman was solidifying. It probably took only a second or two, that was Trudy's estimate; she would later think of that old sayingIf you blinked you missed it and wish she had blinked. Because it wasn't just the materialization.
The black lady grew legs right in front of Trudy Damascus's eyes.
That's right; grew legs.
There was nothing wrong with Trudy's powers of observation, and she would later tell people (fewer and fewer of whom wanted to listen) that every detail of that brief encounter was imprinted on her memory like a tattoo. The apparition was a little over four feet tall. That was a bit on the stumpy side for an ordinary woman, Trudy supposed, but probably not for one who quit at the knees.
The apparition was wearing a white shirt, splattered with either maroon paint or dried blood, and jeans. The jeans were full and round at the thighs, where therewere legs inside them, but below the knees they trailed out on the sidewalk like the shed skins of weird blue snakes. Then, suddenly, they plumped up.Plumped up, the very words sounded insane, but Trudy saw it happen. At the same moment, the woman rose from her nothing-below-the-knee four-feet-four to her all-there height of perhaps five-six or -seven. It was like watching some extraordinary camera trick in a movie, but this was no movie, it was Trudy'slife.
Over her left shoulder the apparition wore a cloth-lined pouch that looked as if it had been woven of reeds. There appeared to be plates or dishes inside it. In her right hand she clutched a faded red bag with a drawstring top. Something with square sides at the bottom, swinging back and forth. Trudy couldn't make out everything written on the side of the bag, but she thought part of it was MIDTOWN LANES.
Then the woman grabbed Trudy by the arm. "What you got in that bag?" she asked. "You got shoes?"
This caused Trudy to look at the black woman's feet, and she saw another amazing thing when she did: the African-American woman's feet werewhite. As white as her own.
Trudy had heard of people being rendered speechless; now it had happened to her. Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth and wouldn't come down. Still, there was nothing wrong with her eyes. They saw everything. The white feet. More droplets on the black woman's face, almost certainly dried blood. The smell of sweat, as if materializing on Second Avenue like this had only come as the result of tremendous exertion.
"If you got shoes, lady, you best give em to me. I don't want to kill you but I got to get to folks that'll help me with my chap and I can't do that barefoot."
No one on this little piece of Second Avenue. People - a few, anyway - sitting on the steps of 2 Hammarskj?ld Plaza, and a couple were looking right at Trudy and the black woman (themostly black woman), but not with any alarm or even interest, what the hell waswrong with them, were they blind?
Well, it's not them she's grabbing, for one thing. And it's not them she's threatening to kill, for anoth -
The canvas Borders bag with her office shoes inside it (sensible half-heels, cordovan-colored) was snatched from her shoulder. The black woman peered inside it, then looked up at Trudy again. "What size're these?"
Trudy's tongue finally came unstuck from the roof of her mouth, but that was no help; it promptly fell dead at the bottom.
"Ne'mine, Susannah says you look like about a seven. These'll d - "
The apparition's face suddenly seemed to shimmer. She lifted one hand - it rose in a loose loop with an equally loose fist anchoring the end, as if the woman didn't have very good control of it - and thumped herself on the forehead, right between the eyes. And suddenly her face was different. Trudy had Comedy Central as part of her basic cable deal, and she'd seen stand-up comics who specialized in mimicry change their faces that same way.
When the black woman spoke again, her voice had changed, too. Now it was that of an educated woman. And (Trudy would have sworn it) a frightened one.
"Help me," she said. "My name is Susannah Dean and I...I...oh dear...ohChrist - "
This time it was pain that twisted the woman's face, and she clutched at her belly. She looked down. When she looked back up again, the first one had reappeared, the one who had talked of killing for a pair of shoes. She took a step back on her bare feet, still holding the bag with Trudy's nice Ferragamo low-heels and herNew York Times inside it.
"Oh Christ," she said. "Oh don't that hurt!Mama! You got to make it stop. It can't come yet, not right out here on the street, you got to make it stop awhile."
Trudy tried to raise her voice and yell for a cop. Nothing came out but a small, whispering sigh.
The apparition pointed at her. "You want to get out of here now," she said. "And if you rouse any constabulary or raise any posse, I'll find you and cut your br**sts off." She took one of the plates from the reed pouch. Trudy observed that the plate's curved edge was metal, and as keen as a butcher's knife, and suddenly found herself in a struggle to keep from wetting her pants.
Find you and cut your br**sts off,and an edge like the one she was looking at would probably do the job. Zip-zoop, instant mastectomy, O dear Lord.
"Good day to you, madam," Trudy heard her mouth saying. She sounded like someone trying to talk to the dentist before the Novocain has worn off. "Enjoy those shoes, wear them in good health."