She feels things beginning to spiral. His fingers are tight on her arm. She pulls against him, short, sharp little jerks. 

     “You can’t take it Kate.”

     She sees his other arm start to move, the fist forming. Seemingly, in slow and fast motion all at the same time. She yanks herself away. Vincent topples after her and they pitch over together. They hit the table, Kate’s shoulder first, they careen, hit the floor. The canvas is run through by the purely decorative cast iron fire place poker in it’s stand. The sound of the canvas tearing is drowned out by the clatter of their fall.

     “Vincent,” she screams, “God damn it.”

     Then banging. Loud. Heavy. A voice from the downstairs apartment. 

     “What’s wrong up there? Shut the fuck up will ya?”

     Vincent shouts back.

     “Mind your own business, asshole.”

     Kate pushes him off of her. She’s scrambling like an insect trying to right itself.

     “You’re crazy. Nobody - No Body Hits Me.”

     “Crazy?”

     The one thing he can not bear to hear about himself because he often fears it is true, or soon will be. She is up now. Sees the torn painting.

     “What do you know?”

     Kate points to the painting, the fire poker sticking through it like a derailed locomotive.

     “Great. Look at it! Fucking great.” 

     Her voice sounds shrill, unfamiliar. Louder than she means it to be.

     “You bitch,” says Vincent. “Look what you did. You stupid bitch!”

      Tears stream down Kate’s face, over the angry red splotches. 

     She bolts for the door, grabs her bags with such fury it seems they will break. She calls back to him again.  Really loud.

     “Fuck you Vincent. You need a doctor.”

     As she rolls her bags down the hall, a head peeps out from behind a door then disappears just as quickly. She gets to the stairs and looks down the four flights. The steps are hard and black and worn down on the right, along the hand rail. 

     “Aw, shit.”

     She tries to carry the bag down but can’t see over it.  Afraid of tripping, she gives up, puts the bag down, wheels on the stair in front of her.

     “Aw, shit.”

     She plunges down the steps, bag cracking obscenely loudly, jolting sharply off each step as she goes, chopping into the one below her with a terrible bang. Each set of stairs has sixteen steps, she counted it once. Now the building resounds with this horrible BANG BANG BANG BANG.  Soon all the tenants are shouting. The man who owns the locksmith shop down the street and lives on the first floor, in the apartment next to Clarice, the landlady, looks up from his television set to his ceiling wondering what the ruckus is about. Clarice just getting home from mass sees Kate burst from the front door. 

     Upstairs Vincent sits on the couch and holds his head in his hands. It hits him that he’ll probably never see Kate again. That he’s made a horrible, horrible mistake.  He leaps for the window, already open. He’s shouting her name. He can see her pounding west along 11th Street. He thinks, she’s not too far yet. He can see the teddy bear strapped to her suitcase jolting with each dip of the wheels as they dip between squares of cement in the sidewalk. 

     Down on the street Kate hears only the smooth rumble of her wheels as she blasts ahead. The sound like old roller skates in Central Park. The dull grinding roar punctuated by the repeating thunk-thunk-thunk as the wheels fall into the narrow hollow strips cut long ago into the wet cement by bricklayers, God knows how long ago. Regular as the ticking of a clock. Whirrrrrrrr thunk  Whirrrrrrr thunk.

     He stares after her. There is the pink bear bobbing on the back of the suitcase. Pedestrians obscure them briefly, then part like water. There they are again. 

     “You asshole. She was the one. She was the one. You fucked it up. God, you Idiot!”

     He grabs a shirt, plunges down the stairs after her, taking the steps two, three at a time. When he gets to the bottom he rushes out the door. Clarice still there glares at him accusingly. He bolts to the end of the block, it is not far. He cranes, squints, calls Kate by name. He sees what he thinks is the back of Kate’s head, her shoulders looking smaller, slimmer already as if she were being transformed before his eyes. He can see the suitcase, now, the Valentine bear, growing smaller and smaller. He starts to run again, into the street. Against the light. Horns honking. A voice yells.

     “Hey! Watch where yer goin’!”

     Vincent’s hand on the hood of a old Renault as he dodges the fender, his body a stroke of paint in blurred motion. An impression. Running after her. He can’t see the bear, see Kate. Her brown hair has vanished. He is on the other side of the street now. Running.

     “Kate.”

His voice falls to the ground, limp in the heat. He can’t see her anymore. Wait, there’s the bear again, small and red, bobbing along above the sidewalk as if it were floating along with this thronging, jamming river of people. Where the hell had all these people suddenly come from he wonders. The bear grows smaller and smaller as it moves away from him till he can’t tell if he’s even seeing it any more or an errant balloon. He squints. Stops again.  Can’t see her at all any more. Can’t see the bear. Kate is gone. 

 THE END