What happened next was a blur. Apt screamed, and then there was a cracking sound. Actually several of them. Cracking and popping like firecrackers going off all around me, and I turned my face down into the sand like a fed-up ostrich and passed out.
“Okay, okay. C’mon, c’mon. Let’s pick it up.”
I woke up with a start, still lying facedown but staring at the blurring ground. I felt about twenty hands on me, running me across the sand. The face next to mine was Billy Ginty’s, my neighbor, an anticrime cop from Brooklyn. I saw another guy from my block, Edgar Perez, a horse cop sergeant with a disabled kid. There was a big burly son of a bitch in a Mets jersey, and I realized it was Flaherty. He was holding me as gently as a baby, his face red as he ran.
My friends and neighbors, all of them heroes, were trying to save my life.
We suddenly stopped somewhere. I wanted to thank
Flaherty, to apologize, but he shushed me.
“Don’t you dare go out now,” he said. “They’re getting you a chopper. You’re going for a ride on the whirly bird, you lucky dog.”
“Mike, Mike,” Mary Catherine said from far away.
From somewhere close by, I could hear Ricky crying. Oh, thank you, God. He was all right.
“Tell him it’s okay. I’m okay,” I said or attempted to. I gagged as I swallowed blood, salty and thick like metallic glue.
“Stop, Mike. Don’t try to talk,” Mary Catherine said, next to me now.
My cell phone started to ring.
“I got it. I got it. It’s for me,” I gurgled as I reached for it.
Then Mary Catherine took it out of my pocket and tossed it. My eyes fastened on it in the sand where it glowed on and off, ghostly and blue as it rang and rang and rang.
Then I looked up at Mary Catherine. I remembered how magical she had looked that night diving into the water. I wished we could both do that now. Walk down to the beach, hand in hand, go under the waves where it was quiet and dark, quiet and peaceful down in the tumbling warmth.
Epilogue
Chapter 105
I’M AT THE WINDOW in the bedroom of my apartment.
A strange nickel-colored light fills the streets. The streets are empty. No cars, no people. The lustrous light winks off endless rows of empty windows. Off to my right beyond the buildings is the Hudson River, but I can’t see any current. Everything is as still as a painting. The curtains blow in on my face for a moment and then fall back, still, and I know time has stopped.
I’m sitting back against the headboard of my bed, which is funny because my bed isn’t anywhere near the window, only now it is. Then I realize it’s not my current apartment on West End Avenue. It’s actually my old place, the tiny studio Maeve and I rented on a sketchy run of Riverside Drive after we got married.
Just as I realize this, arms suddenly embrace me from behind. I want to turn, but I can’t. I’m paralyzed. Hair stands up on the back of my neck as a chin rests on my shoulder.
Michael, a soft Irish-accented voice whispers in my ear.
It’s my dead wife, Maeve. She’s alive. I can feel the warmth of her hands, her breath in my ear, on my cheek. I check myself, feel my side where Apt stabbed me, feel my face for the dent in my fractured face, but everything is impossibly smooth. An incredible sadness rises in me like an overflowing spring.
No, she admonishes me when I start to cry.
But it’s over, I cry.
No, she says again as a finger wipes away a tear and presses against my lips.
It’s not the end. There is no end. That’s the good part. How are all my babies?
I have trouble breathing, I’m crying so hard.
Baby, you should see Juliana. She’s so brave and capable, just like you. And Brian, he’s this huge, wonderful, polite young man.
Just like you, Maeve says.