Limitless

A TV NEWSCAST AT TWO O’CLOCK confirmed that Donatella Alvarez, the wife of the Mexican painter, had received a severe blow to the head and was now in a coma. The incident had taken place in a room on the fifteenth floor of a midtown hotel. There were few details given, and no mention was made of any man with a limp.

I sat on the couch, in my suit, and waited for more, anything – another bulletin, some footage, analysis. It was as if sitting on the couch with the remote control hanging limply in my hand was actually doing something, but what else was I going to do that would be any better? Phone up Melissa and ask her if this was the kind of thing she’d had in mind?

Dangerous?

What – as in severe blow to the head dangerous? Hospitalization dangerous? Coma dangerous? Death dangerous?

Obviously, I had no intention of phoning her up with questions like these, but a part of me was riddled with anxiety none the less. Had I really done it? Was the same thing – or something like it – going to happen again? Did Melissa’s ‘dangerous’ mean dangerous to others, or simply dangerous to me?

Was I being hugely irresponsible?

What the fuck was going on?

As the afternoon progressed, I concentrated intently on each news bulletin, as though by sheer force of will I could somehow alter a key detail in the story – have it not be a hotel room, or have Donatella Alvarez not be in a coma. Between the bulletins, I watched cookery shows, live courtroom broadcasts, soaps, commercials, and was aware of myself – unable to help it – processing and storing random bits of useless information. Lay the chicken strips flat on a lightly oiled baking tray and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Call toll-free NOW for a 15 per cent markdown on The GUTbuster 2000 home work-out system. On several occasions during the afternoon, I glanced over at the phone and considered calling Melissa, but each time some override mechanism in my brain kicked in and I immediately found myself thinking about something else.

By six o’clock, the story had begun to flesh out considerably. After a reception at her husband’s Upper West Side studio, Donatella Alvarez had made her way to a midtown hotel, the Clifden, where she received a single blow to the head with a blunt instrument. The instrument had not as yet been identified, but a key question that remained unanswered was this: what had Señora Alvarez been doing in a hotel room in the first place? Detectives were interviewing all the guests who’d attended the reception, and were especially interested in speaking to an individual named Thomas Cole.

I stared at the screen for a couple of seconds, perplexed, barely recognizing the name myself. Then the report moved on, and so did I. They gave personal information about the victim, as well as photographs and interviews with family members – all of which meant that before long a very human picture of the 43-year-old Señora Alvarez had begun forming itself in the viewer’s mind. Here, apparently, was a woman of rare physical and spiritual beauty. She was independent, generous, loyal, a loving wife, a devoted mother to twin baby girls, Pia and Flor. Her husband, Rodolfo Alvarez, was reported to be distraught and at a complete loss for any explanation as to what might have happened. They showed a black-and-white photograph of a radiant, uniformed schoolgirl attending a Dominican convent in Rome, circa 1971. They also showed some home-movie footage, flickering images in faded colour of a young Donatella in a summery dress walking through a rose garden. Other images included Donatella on horseback, Donatella at an archeological dig in Peru, Donatella and Rodolfo in Tibet.

The next phase in the reporting consisted of political analysis. Was this a racially motivated attack? Was it connected in some way to the current foreign policy débâcle? One commentator expressed the fear that it could be the first in a series of such incidents and blamed the attack squarely on the President’s bewildering failure to condemn Defense Secretary Caleb Hale’s intemperate remarks – or alleged remarks, since he was still denying that he’d actually made them. Another commentator seemed to feel that this was collateral damage of a kind we were simply going to have to get used to.

All through the afternoon, as I watched these reports, I clocked up a bewildering number of reactions – chief among them disbelief, terror, remorse, anger. I vacillated between thinking that maybe I had struck the blow and dismissing the idea as absurd. Towards the end, however – and after I’d taken a top-up of MDT – the only discernible thing I could feel was mild boredom.