Whip-poor-will
Rebecca Fifield
New York chewed me up and spit me out around 1:00 a.m. this morning. I had climbed into the piece of rust that passes for my car, clutching a few pairs of underwear and the words I wish I hadn’t said. Somehow my rusty ’97 Jetta didn’t collapse and leave my ass somewhere on the NJ Turnpike. Back in New York, my viciousness was surely still wreaking havoc on our relationship, like a bullet that has not yet fully lodged itself in the heart.
But I’m not there. I’m sitting in Philadelphia’s Independence Park. There is no reason to be here. I have no friends or family in Philly. I didn’t come here for the museums or to learn about the American Revolution. I have no place to stay. When I thew open the door to our apartment, North, West, Canada—all were possibilities. After I emerged from the Holland Tunnel, this is where the interstates dumped me. Philadelphia is far enough to be serious about leaving and, theoretically, close enough to New York to turn around.
I sat down on this bench around six this morning. Philadelphia Freedom. Earlier today I might have looked like a tourist, but now it is clear that I’m just a loiterer. Ben Franklin has passed my bench at least four times. This morning he shouted to me, “Good day, madam!” Now he looks suspiciously at me from under his stringy white hair. The history on offer here is all too tidy, with its modern sewage system and educational signage. If this place was truly authentic, I mused, shouldn’t the streets be made of dirt and shit, compacted by the feet of market-bound men and beasts? Tourists shuffle past me. The urban sidewalks are disorienting to them and they are uncomfortable without their cars, TVs, and gas grills. They seem truly incredulous that our nation was founded within a city, and not some Midwest cornfield or church sanctuary. Instead, the tourists shuffle through modest Independence Hall, observe some empty chairs, and maybe they get a hot dog from the street vendor before looking at the Liberty Bell. This is how our nation honors the rich white men who sat arguing over a piece of paper and sweating into their summer linen.
But finally evening is coming on and yet I’m still here. Right now, it is hard to see anything beyond this too pretty park. The roads leading back to New York might as well be severed. I severed them. It might as well be the eighteenth century. I have no clue how I might ever get home. If I get to call it home anymore. Clearly, it is going to take more than a road.
~ ~ ~
Saturday night is shifting into high gear in the nearby bars. I can’t keep sitting in this park and picking at last night’s scabs, so I drift toward the music. The sidewalks are rank with old liquor and vomit and I’m disgusted with this place and myself. Trumpets and car horns are both blaring. Should I have a beer? Go have dinner? Pick someone up in a club? I look at my phone. Yes, asshole, you did drive to Philadelphia. Also, there’s no message. No text.
A partygoer slams into me, then evaporates into the crowd as if he were smoke. Blow-dry girls pass me on their way into a restaurant. Their hair is the same, their eyebrows are plucked to the same peak, their high heels wreak the same torture upon their ankles, and their volume is all at the same level: loud. I have to give them credit though: I couldn’t walk across those cobblestones in those shoes without tripping. A gaggle of bros emerges from a bar, honking like geese. They are oblivious to my presence on the sidewalk and I stumble as they step right in front of me, whipping out cigarettes, shouting about some motherfucker. The din of the street, upon reflection, seems strangely silent, perhaps because the noise is so persistent and uniform. Or maybe it is just because I am alone.
Market Street is ahead; I’ll get some ice cream at that place on the corner, the one where the women in 1940s snoods and perfect dresses laugh and eat ice cream sodas with long, thin spoons. And I’m imagining what the board listing all the flavors will say once I finally step inside, when I’m finally close enough to give my order to the man in the paper hat. Maybe Mint Chip, Maple Walnut, Peach…
A brutal hand reaches forth from the crowd of dancers and my ice cream fantasies crash like a dropped cone splattering across the pavement. The hand clamps painfully onto my wrist, my bones crackling under the pressure. I do not see what is attached; there is no body, no face, but it’s using me to pull itself from among the grinding bodies. His face finally emerges, unsmiling and skeletal with hard living and sunken cheeks covered with skin tanned like leather. His eyes may have once been blue but seem to have been bleached nearly white by staring into the sun. “Come on!” he growls as I yank my arm away from him. This asshole doesn’t care if I want to go with him or not. He has me by both arms and is pulling me toward the darkly vast and writhing interior of the club.
NO. I’m sure I said it, and his sneer acknowledges my defiance. NO. Nothing is working. I pull at him. Push him. My skin is being imprinted with his metacarpal clench. A scream rattles in my ears; it must be coming from my mouth. He grasps me by the neck and ass and crushes me into his withered body, rank with a pickle of liquor, cologne, and cigarettes. Maybe embalming fluid. I’m not certain he’s even alive.
“Get the fuck off of me!” The specter-man’s howls punctuate the club music as I scrape his shin with my shoe and stomp on his foot. I free an elbow just enough to jam it back into his ribs. Sliding from his clench, I sprint out of the club. People object “Hey!” as I shove my way down the sidewalk. I run past lovers, restaurants, bars. I am hallucinating. I am afraid. My phone is gone. And who exactly can I call? Who will answer me now?
I slam through the antique doors of a bookstore, sending the bell above the door into spasms. I dive into the stacks, seeking refuge in case I’m being followed. I sneeze a long agonizing sneeze, the kind where your nose just burns while you wait for release. The shelves tower upward toward the coffered tin ceiling. Searching for a moment of peace, I slump against some World War II and gardening books, but I certainly do not feel fertile, or even literate. I slump down onto those screeching stools you find in places where books reside. Tom. His name feels almost disciplinary on my tongue. Back in New York, maybe he was commiserating with Chuck and his other friends. Maybe he was packing my things and I’d find them on the stoop when I got home. I wanted to fight, and the fight worth having is sitting on the couch in our New York apartment. I imagined that argument, glancing at its watch, checking its phone and waiting for me to call. Instead I am out here getting molested by drunkards.
Then I am on the street again. Some street again. I do not know what street. I cannot tell if I have seen this street before. At a heavy old oak bar, my mouth opens, but I say nothing. I cannot string the words together just to beg for water. The Saturday night crowd turns up the din raging through the streets, their gaiety ricocheting within my skull like thousands of BBs.
I bolt. My feet feel nothing, yet I fly through the manicured national park, past the worn jewelry shops and the darkened Automat where only the sign glows neon in the night. My heart sears, threatening to burst for want of capacity. I am running—from an assailant, from my partner, because I can.
My toe catches the edge of a concrete curb. No matter. Up again, with bloodied palms and knees, and onward, onward. Horns blare. My feet move fast. Or they move slowly. It doesn’t matter, and I can’t tell; a shifting city landscape passes my face, and I know I am moving.
I can run this fast. I can leave him. I can leave myself.
~ ~ ~
Why do my bronze companions not shiver as I do? I rest my hand against the nearest bronze torso, our bodies soaked from the fountain spray. There is nothing in our habitat but water, concrete, and bronze. No man would follow me in here. I am too slippery to be held. I will hold their faces down under the surface as they bubble and thrash.
This could be my new normal.
An officer has stopped to consider me. His metal badge twinkles in the fountain’s illumination, the light searing into my already aching head. I place a hand over my eyes and peer at him through my fingers. He deserves nothing from me. There is no reason I must explain my presence in this glorious fountain. I will not. Will not explain.
“You okay, ma’am?”
Must I form words around that query, of being okay? How have you earned that, transient officer?
“Yes. I’m quite fine, thank you.” Strong, yet pleasant. He continues to observe me and my bronze kin.
“Being in the fountain is legal, but we patrol more at night. Stuff happens.”
“I imagine it does. I’m good. Really. Thanks.”
He obviously wants to pick me out of the fountain, wrap me in a blanket, and call someone. Someone who had wanted to marry me a few days ago.
That officer has probably had a long night. He turns and walks away.
~ ~ ~
I check into a hotel by City Hall near midnight.
“Rainstorm, caught me completely by surprise,” I say to the desk attendant to explain my sodden appearance. “What, you didn’t get rain here?”
My hotel windows overlook nudes lounging on the roof of City Hall. Why don’t we build that way now? If we were an honest people, our government buildings would be ornamented with bags of money, barrels of oil, and syringes, along with the naked and the nude.
Twenty-four hours since I left New York. The sheets are smooth and clean.
I reach over to the bedside lamp and switch off the light. Beyond the foot of my bed, the Philadelphia night plays out in halftone patterns of dark and light, shifting with the habits of night dwellers.
On. A security patrol.
Off. The custodian moves to another space.
On. A couple tumbles into their hotel room and draws the curtain.
The city lights’ limitless spread cushions the roar of car engines circling City Hall, the last thing I consider before unconsciousness.
~ ~ ~
I relinquish the hotel key, but I’m no closer to knowing what’s next.
My car sits in a parking garage on Race Street. I go to it, unlock the door, and put the key in the ignition. But it does not speak to me. I sleep in the driver’s seat. I survive.
I cannot bring myself to leave Philadelphia. The days multiply and yet there is no sign of what is next. I stay in decent establishments, posh establishments, and some nights I am a tough broad and seek hard lodgings. I lock each lock, string every chain, and prop furniture against the door. I sit the night through, staring at that fragile door and eating takeout on my lap.
~ ~ ~
Bells herald my arrival as I push my way into an Old City bookstore. The air within is a mix of old commercial building, toasted paper, and mold. Shadows of readers disappear behind ceiling-height shelves, those repositories of occasionally wanted knowledge.
“You again. You look better than the last time I saw you.” The proprietor looks down her nose at me as I walk past her register.
My mouth drops open. “I imagine so. I’ve never been in here before.”
She scoffs. “Your memory must not be too good. Not surprising. You threw up in the History section. Cold War. Usually, the drunks don’t come looking to puke in our store. Usually, just looking to take a wiz.”
I glance around. “I’m so sorry. I have no memory of being here.”
“I had to throw out a couple books on Patton. Ah, well, they weren’t high value and weren’t moving. You okay now?”
“Appear to be.”
“Sit. These ladies don’t bite.” The three seated women look up with red-rimmed watery eyes. They are silent and soon return to consuming the words on the pages. “Now, the knitters? They’re a different story. Completely rabid.”
I sink into a corduroy upholstered armchair with well-worn wales.
The proprietor’s hands move slowly over the countertop, arranging cards and pamphlets, writing prices in books. She rarely looks at her work. Instead, she stares intently at me.
“Stay and read a while.” There are no other customers, besides the ladies who do not move. The bell on the door does not ring or clatter against the glass.
“What shall I read?”
“You could let the book choose you. You could read this one.”
She slides me a thin volume. Albert Camus. The Stranger.
“Or this.” The House of the Dead. Dostoevsky.
“Or this one will do.” Foucault’s Discipline and Punish.
No. I push the books aside and sail for the door. Its latch yielded to the pressure of my thumb, and the door makes a terrible clatter as I throw my body against it. I expect it not to open, but it gives way and I tumble out onto the sidewalk. When I turn, I’m uncertain exactly where the bookstore had been.
~ ~ ~
I spend an afternoon sunbathing in 30th Street Station. Sunlight drenches the vast travertine room; it’s as good a place as any to people-watch while wearing sunglasses and a rank dress. An announcement. People scurry to the staircases and drain from the station floor, down to where the engine heaves through the station below. Those people are gone and cease to matter. Another clot of passengers forms. The Solari board churns with destinations and times; its letter-clatter prompts travelers’ heads to pop up expectantly. The Miami trains are five hours, thirty minutes late.
Electricity ripples again through the board, and the letters land with a thud:
NEW YORK
~ ~ ~
The brothers are finally done with me, and I have had enough of this city’s love. My car engine sputters; it has been a week since I turned the key, and nothing is certain with the wreck I drive.
I shout at the red lights to hurry. Buses coming from New York City roll toward me like waves coming ashore. The city’s pull is unavoidable, even at this distance. With nightfall, the skyscrapers to the east bloom with their night-sparkle. Black iron rises into the night sky, sending cars flying above the marshes. We tangle in New Jersey’s slalom of mind-numbing lane shifts, then swirl around the Lincoln Tunnel’s helix, into the City.
I ditch my car in a garage; I do not have hours to search for parking tonight. Down in the subway, the clink of distant switches echoes through the empty station. I hear scuffing feet somewhere down the platform but see nobody. A man sits doubled over on a wood bench, oblivious to anything but the drugs coursing through his veins. Here we wait, for release to come, for release to end.
My gaze darts back and forth as I watch the track. More riders trickle down the stairs from the street above. The lone ones are silent. A screamer enters, reveling with several pals. They roll into the station like rivulets of coffee dumped on the subway floor. In that humming tunnel darkness, I wait impatiently for the growing rumble and screech, steel electrified without electrocution, a conveyance to possibilities terrific and terrible.
And then the train is taking me, underneath the revelers staring up at jumbotrons, which are just upsized versions of their television screens at home; through the hat district; through places where people had done hard labor, but now they just dwell in luxury apartments because there is no way to pay for anything made here anymore. Because we don’t love workers the way we should, so we need to find other workers to hate, overseas, where we can’t stare them in the face as easily. And, hey, those kids drank too much and forgot they left the karaoke bar Oh Sherrie and they think they’ll join the march tonight, but I haven’t heard any news report to know what else has gone wrong, much less what we are protesting, and now I’m here.
I press the button marked “9.” Just doesn’t seem right to use my keys.
The buzzer has a very sick wail. No voice asked who I was.
It’s a winding five-flight climb, and I pitch forward on the landing for three hard breaths. Tom is standing there, bare chested, arms folded, and beautiful. He’s leaning in the open door and saying nothing as I gulp for air. I look inside our apartment; my stuff appears to still be there, how I left it.
“Come with me?” He leads me up the stairs and out onto the roof, into the middle of the Manhattan night. Around us, the city’s onward mechanical roar rages. Lights glitter in tessellation, spreading outward toward the rivers and flinging upward toward the faint stars above.
Tom stares west, out over SoHo. He is the astronomer of our urban constellation. I can’t resist the urban shimmer, the shouts from the street, the trill of affection that rattles from my city’s core as I behold her.
For a long time he says nothing as he watches the skyline. I feel my elopement has earned me silence, so I wait.
He peers into my face and back out over Mott Street and beyond. “This city is painful. It’s a mess, but it’s beautiful. It didn’t used to look like this, of course. It used to just be a forest. All this, this city, it’s intentional, and none of it is intentional.” He slides his hand into mine, the heat of his fingers warming my own. “When I wondered where you had gone, why you were no longer here, this is where I came. To understand what happened to us. What arguments we need to have. If we should keep saying them.”
And I began to sing into the sparkling night.
Rebecca Fifield
New York chewed me up and spit me out around 1:00 a.m. this morning. I had climbed into the piece of rust that passes for my car, clutching a few pairs of underwear and the words I wish I hadn’t said. Somehow my rusty ’97 Jetta didn’t collapse and leave my ass somewhere on the NJ Turnpike. Back in New York, my viciousness was surely still wreaking havoc on our relationship, like a bullet that has not yet fully lodged itself in the heart.
But I’m not there. I’m sitting in Philadelphia’s Independence Park. There is no reason to be here. I have no friends or family in Philly. I didn’t come here for the museums or to learn about the American Revolution. I have no place to stay. When I thew open the door to our apartment, North, West, Canada—all were possibilities. After I emerged from the Holland Tunnel, this is where the interstates dumped me. Philadelphia is far enough to be serious about leaving and, theoretically, close enough to New York to turn around.
I sat down on this bench around six this morning. Philadelphia Freedom. Earlier today I might have looked like a tourist, but now it is clear that I’m just a loiterer. Ben Franklin has passed my bench at least four times. This morning he shouted to me, “Good day, madam!” Now he looks suspiciously at me from under his stringy white hair. The history on offer here is all too tidy, with its modern sewage system and educational signage. If this place was truly authentic, I mused, shouldn’t the streets be made of dirt and shit, compacted by the feet of market-bound men and beasts? Tourists shuffle past me. The urban sidewalks are disorienting to them and they are uncomfortable without their cars, TVs, and gas grills. They seem truly incredulous that our nation was founded within a city, and not some Midwest cornfield or church sanctuary. Instead, the tourists shuffle through modest Independence Hall, observe some empty chairs, and maybe they get a hot dog from the street vendor before looking at the Liberty Bell. This is how our nation honors the rich white men who sat arguing over a piece of paper and sweating into their summer linen.
But finally evening is coming on and yet I’m still here. Right now, it is hard to see anything beyond this too pretty park. The roads leading back to New York might as well be severed. I severed them. It might as well be the eighteenth century. I have no clue how I might ever get home. If I get to call it home anymore. Clearly, it is going to take more than a road.
~ ~ ~
Saturday night is shifting into high gear in the nearby bars. I can’t keep sitting in this park and picking at last night’s scabs, so I drift toward the music. The sidewalks are rank with old liquor and vomit and I’m disgusted with this place and myself. Trumpets and car horns are both blaring. Should I have a beer? Go have dinner? Pick someone up in a club? I look at my phone. Yes, asshole, you did drive to Philadelphia. Also, there’s no message. No text.
A partygoer slams into me, then evaporates into the crowd as if he were smoke. Blow-dry girls pass me on their way into a restaurant. Their hair is the same, their eyebrows are plucked to the same peak, their high heels wreak the same torture upon their ankles, and their volume is all at the same level: loud. I have to give them credit though: I couldn’t walk across those cobblestones in those shoes without tripping. A gaggle of bros emerges from a bar, honking like geese. They are oblivious to my presence on the sidewalk and I stumble as they step right in front of me, whipping out cigarettes, shouting about some motherfucker. The din of the street, upon reflection, seems strangely silent, perhaps because the noise is so persistent and uniform. Or maybe it is just because I am alone.
Market Street is ahead; I’ll get some ice cream at that place on the corner, the one where the women in 1940s snoods and perfect dresses laugh and eat ice cream sodas with long, thin spoons. And I’m imagining what the board listing all the flavors will say once I finally step inside, when I’m finally close enough to give my order to the man in the paper hat. Maybe Mint Chip, Maple Walnut, Peach…
A brutal hand reaches forth from the crowd of dancers and my ice cream fantasies crash like a dropped cone splattering across the pavement. The hand clamps painfully onto my wrist, my bones crackling under the pressure. I do not see what is attached; there is no body, no face, but it’s using me to pull itself from among the grinding bodies. His face finally emerges, unsmiling and skeletal with hard living and sunken cheeks covered with skin tanned like leather. His eyes may have once been blue but seem to have been bleached nearly white by staring into the sun. “Come on!” he growls as I yank my arm away from him. This asshole doesn’t care if I want to go with him or not. He has me by both arms and is pulling me toward the darkly vast and writhing interior of the club.
NO. I’m sure I said it, and his sneer acknowledges my defiance. NO. Nothing is working. I pull at him. Push him. My skin is being imprinted with his metacarpal clench. A scream rattles in my ears; it must be coming from my mouth. He grasps me by the neck and ass and crushes me into his withered body, rank with a pickle of liquor, cologne, and cigarettes. Maybe embalming fluid. I’m not certain he’s even alive.
“Get the fuck off of me!” The specter-man’s howls punctuate the club music as I scrape his shin with my shoe and stomp on his foot. I free an elbow just enough to jam it back into his ribs. Sliding from his clench, I sprint out of the club. People object “Hey!” as I shove my way down the sidewalk. I run past lovers, restaurants, bars. I am hallucinating. I am afraid. My phone is gone. And who exactly can I call? Who will answer me now?
I slam through the antique doors of a bookstore, sending the bell above the door into spasms. I dive into the stacks, seeking refuge in case I’m being followed. I sneeze a long agonizing sneeze, the kind where your nose just burns while you wait for release. The shelves tower upward toward the coffered tin ceiling. Searching for a moment of peace, I slump against some World War II and gardening books, but I certainly do not feel fertile, or even literate. I slump down onto those screeching stools you find in places where books reside. Tom. His name feels almost disciplinary on my tongue. Back in New York, maybe he was commiserating with Chuck and his other friends. Maybe he was packing my things and I’d find them on the stoop when I got home. I wanted to fight, and the fight worth having is sitting on the couch in our New York apartment. I imagined that argument, glancing at its watch, checking its phone and waiting for me to call. Instead I am out here getting molested by drunkards.
Then I am on the street again. Some street again. I do not know what street. I cannot tell if I have seen this street before. At a heavy old oak bar, my mouth opens, but I say nothing. I cannot string the words together just to beg for water. The Saturday night crowd turns up the din raging through the streets, their gaiety ricocheting within my skull like thousands of BBs.
I bolt. My feet feel nothing, yet I fly through the manicured national park, past the worn jewelry shops and the darkened Automat where only the sign glows neon in the night. My heart sears, threatening to burst for want of capacity. I am running—from an assailant, from my partner, because I can.
My toe catches the edge of a concrete curb. No matter. Up again, with bloodied palms and knees, and onward, onward. Horns blare. My feet move fast. Or they move slowly. It doesn’t matter, and I can’t tell; a shifting city landscape passes my face, and I know I am moving.
I can run this fast. I can leave him. I can leave myself.
~ ~ ~
Why do my bronze companions not shiver as I do? I rest my hand against the nearest bronze torso, our bodies soaked from the fountain spray. There is nothing in our habitat but water, concrete, and bronze. No man would follow me in here. I am too slippery to be held. I will hold their faces down under the surface as they bubble and thrash.
This could be my new normal.
An officer has stopped to consider me. His metal badge twinkles in the fountain’s illumination, the light searing into my already aching head. I place a hand over my eyes and peer at him through my fingers. He deserves nothing from me. There is no reason I must explain my presence in this glorious fountain. I will not. Will not explain.
“You okay, ma’am?”
Must I form words around that query, of being okay? How have you earned that, transient officer?
“Yes. I’m quite fine, thank you.” Strong, yet pleasant. He continues to observe me and my bronze kin.
“Being in the fountain is legal, but we patrol more at night. Stuff happens.”
“I imagine it does. I’m good. Really. Thanks.”
He obviously wants to pick me out of the fountain, wrap me in a blanket, and call someone. Someone who had wanted to marry me a few days ago.
That officer has probably had a long night. He turns and walks away.
~ ~ ~
I check into a hotel by City Hall near midnight.
“Rainstorm, caught me completely by surprise,” I say to the desk attendant to explain my sodden appearance. “What, you didn’t get rain here?”
My hotel windows overlook nudes lounging on the roof of City Hall. Why don’t we build that way now? If we were an honest people, our government buildings would be ornamented with bags of money, barrels of oil, and syringes, along with the naked and the nude.
Twenty-four hours since I left New York. The sheets are smooth and clean.
I reach over to the bedside lamp and switch off the light. Beyond the foot of my bed, the Philadelphia night plays out in halftone patterns of dark and light, shifting with the habits of night dwellers.
On. A security patrol.
Off. The custodian moves to another space.
On. A couple tumbles into their hotel room and draws the curtain.
The city lights’ limitless spread cushions the roar of car engines circling City Hall, the last thing I consider before unconsciousness.
~ ~ ~
I relinquish the hotel key, but I’m no closer to knowing what’s next.
My car sits in a parking garage on Race Street. I go to it, unlock the door, and put the key in the ignition. But it does not speak to me. I sleep in the driver’s seat. I survive.
I cannot bring myself to leave Philadelphia. The days multiply and yet there is no sign of what is next. I stay in decent establishments, posh establishments, and some nights I am a tough broad and seek hard lodgings. I lock each lock, string every chain, and prop furniture against the door. I sit the night through, staring at that fragile door and eating takeout on my lap.
~ ~ ~
Bells herald my arrival as I push my way into an Old City bookstore. The air within is a mix of old commercial building, toasted paper, and mold. Shadows of readers disappear behind ceiling-height shelves, those repositories of occasionally wanted knowledge.
“You again. You look better than the last time I saw you.” The proprietor looks down her nose at me as I walk past her register.
My mouth drops open. “I imagine so. I’ve never been in here before.”
She scoffs. “Your memory must not be too good. Not surprising. You threw up in the History section. Cold War. Usually, the drunks don’t come looking to puke in our store. Usually, just looking to take a wiz.”
I glance around. “I’m so sorry. I have no memory of being here.”
“I had to throw out a couple books on Patton. Ah, well, they weren’t high value and weren’t moving. You okay now?”
“Appear to be.”
“Sit. These ladies don’t bite.” The three seated women look up with red-rimmed watery eyes. They are silent and soon return to consuming the words on the pages. “Now, the knitters? They’re a different story. Completely rabid.”
I sink into a corduroy upholstered armchair with well-worn wales.
The proprietor’s hands move slowly over the countertop, arranging cards and pamphlets, writing prices in books. She rarely looks at her work. Instead, she stares intently at me.
“Stay and read a while.” There are no other customers, besides the ladies who do not move. The bell on the door does not ring or clatter against the glass.
“What shall I read?”
“You could let the book choose you. You could read this one.”
She slides me a thin volume. Albert Camus. The Stranger.
“Or this.” The House of the Dead. Dostoevsky.
“Or this one will do.” Foucault’s Discipline and Punish.
No. I push the books aside and sail for the door. Its latch yielded to the pressure of my thumb, and the door makes a terrible clatter as I throw my body against it. I expect it not to open, but it gives way and I tumble out onto the sidewalk. When I turn, I’m uncertain exactly where the bookstore had been.
~ ~ ~
I spend an afternoon sunbathing in 30th Street Station. Sunlight drenches the vast travertine room; it’s as good a place as any to people-watch while wearing sunglasses and a rank dress. An announcement. People scurry to the staircases and drain from the station floor, down to where the engine heaves through the station below. Those people are gone and cease to matter. Another clot of passengers forms. The Solari board churns with destinations and times; its letter-clatter prompts travelers’ heads to pop up expectantly. The Miami trains are five hours, thirty minutes late.
Electricity ripples again through the board, and the letters land with a thud:
NEW YORK
~ ~ ~
The brothers are finally done with me, and I have had enough of this city’s love. My car engine sputters; it has been a week since I turned the key, and nothing is certain with the wreck I drive.
I shout at the red lights to hurry. Buses coming from New York City roll toward me like waves coming ashore. The city’s pull is unavoidable, even at this distance. With nightfall, the skyscrapers to the east bloom with their night-sparkle. Black iron rises into the night sky, sending cars flying above the marshes. We tangle in New Jersey’s slalom of mind-numbing lane shifts, then swirl around the Lincoln Tunnel’s helix, into the City.
I ditch my car in a garage; I do not have hours to search for parking tonight. Down in the subway, the clink of distant switches echoes through the empty station. I hear scuffing feet somewhere down the platform but see nobody. A man sits doubled over on a wood bench, oblivious to anything but the drugs coursing through his veins. Here we wait, for release to come, for release to end.
My gaze darts back and forth as I watch the track. More riders trickle down the stairs from the street above. The lone ones are silent. A screamer enters, reveling with several pals. They roll into the station like rivulets of coffee dumped on the subway floor. In that humming tunnel darkness, I wait impatiently for the growing rumble and screech, steel electrified without electrocution, a conveyance to possibilities terrific and terrible.
And then the train is taking me, underneath the revelers staring up at jumbotrons, which are just upsized versions of their television screens at home; through the hat district; through places where people had done hard labor, but now they just dwell in luxury apartments because there is no way to pay for anything made here anymore. Because we don’t love workers the way we should, so we need to find other workers to hate, overseas, where we can’t stare them in the face as easily. And, hey, those kids drank too much and forgot they left the karaoke bar Oh Sherrie and they think they’ll join the march tonight, but I haven’t heard any news report to know what else has gone wrong, much less what we are protesting, and now I’m here.
I press the button marked “9.” Just doesn’t seem right to use my keys.
The buzzer has a very sick wail. No voice asked who I was.
It’s a winding five-flight climb, and I pitch forward on the landing for three hard breaths. Tom is standing there, bare chested, arms folded, and beautiful. He’s leaning in the open door and saying nothing as I gulp for air. I look inside our apartment; my stuff appears to still be there, how I left it.
“Come with me?” He leads me up the stairs and out onto the roof, into the middle of the Manhattan night. Around us, the city’s onward mechanical roar rages. Lights glitter in tessellation, spreading outward toward the rivers and flinging upward toward the faint stars above.
Tom stares west, out over SoHo. He is the astronomer of our urban constellation. I can’t resist the urban shimmer, the shouts from the street, the trill of affection that rattles from my city’s core as I behold her.
For a long time he says nothing as he watches the skyline. I feel my elopement has earned me silence, so I wait.
He peers into my face and back out over Mott Street and beyond. “This city is painful. It’s a mess, but it’s beautiful. It didn’t used to look like this, of course. It used to just be a forest. All this, this city, it’s intentional, and none of it is intentional.” He slides his hand into mine, the heat of his fingers warming my own. “When I wondered where you had gone, why you were no longer here, this is where I came. To understand what happened to us. What arguments we need to have. If we should keep saying them.”
And I began to sing into the sparkling night.
