Chapter 1 - Behind Schedule

Late.

I was always late.

Any other day and it wouldn’t matter. No one showed up to Carson-Lawless, the PR firm where I worked, until at least ten o’clock — and that was on an early day. The epitome of a workaholic, my job was twenty-four-seven. Each and every one of my clients expected me to be at their constant beck and call. Regardless of whether I was sleeping or at a family member’s wedding — or even in the stirrups at my annual gynecological exam — I had to drop everything to help them avert every crisis from adultery to alimony, assault to arrest.

At 8:49 I was charging down the street, swiftly fighting my way through the dazed crowd to the offices on Eighth Avenue and Thirty-third Street. Dirty slush covered the sidewalk — remnants from last night's snowstorm. I wondered if another storm would blanket the city in white for Christmas, which was only a few weeks away. With my cell phone cradled between my ear and shoulder, I listened to the latest voice mail from my boss.

Kate, where the hell are you? The Jackson Cassius account presentation is at nine o’clock, and if you’re not here in exactly thirteen minutes, you might consider moving to Yemen because you’ll never get a job in this country—

I struggled to balance a vanilla latté in my right hand, with a bagel and cream cheese perched on top, as I snapped the phone shut, tossed it into the black hole known as my purse, and began digging frantically, searching in vain for some much-needed lip balm.

Why was Sam freaking out? Jackson “Casual” Cassius, as he was known to everyone in New York, was not one for watching the clock. Even if I showed up at quarter past nine, Sam and I would probably stare at each other over the conference room table for another half hour or so while Jackson sauntered his way over from the Upper East Side.

I jerked to a stop in the middle of the intersection. My purse slid down my arm to land in the bend at my elbow, dooming the bagel to its asphalt-y destiny and sloshing the latté, causing it to splash down the front of my skirt. A very small part of my mind was processing this while it happened, but my attention was primarily fixated on the bus stop at the corner, where a bald-headed, full-bearded man wearing a tutu was doing a grand plié, and he had a snake around his shoulders. A big snake.

This shouldn’t have surprised me. I mean, this is New York, right? The only city in the world where you can leave a haughty fund-raising soireé at a Park Avenue penthouse, walk less than a half mile, and happily end your evening at a back-alley dive bar with a bunch of transvestites who gladly practice the art of tucking and insist on telling you how fabulous you look.

My reaction on this Thursday morning was unexpected.

I stopped. I gawked. I snorted.

And I lost track of where I was.

I continued to stare at the butch ballerina, and I wondered why his expression, so carefree and pleasant a moment ago, had flickered to one of confusion before it suddenly contorted to one of pure horror. A horn honked somewhere nearby as I heard the piercing screech of rubber licking the pavement.

As he bounded off the curb, he swiftly unwound the reptile from his broad frame and tossed it into the air.

That was the moment I realized where I was: standing in the middle of the intersection at Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street, crazed holiday shoppers buzzing around me as they headed to Macy’s and the Manhattan Mall, and the light had changed to green.

My life didn’t flash before my eyes like everyone says. I was too focused on the fact that he was wearing black lace-up boots that reached his knees. And the fact that he was flailing his brawny arms in the air. And the fact that I really needed some lip balm. And the fact that he was getting closer and it didn’t look like he was slowing down.

His eyes darted to the left and back to me in a split second, and I could see the anguish in them.

Why hadn’t I moved yet? Wasn’t it obvious I was in danger? Why else would this curiously dressed man, whom I had never seen before in my life, be barreling toward me with such a tortured expression?

Everything went black.

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