The Future Won't Be Long

by Jarett Kobek

  I blushed. An easy mark?

  —My name is Adeline, she said. On occasion, I stay here.

  I started telling her my real name, but then I thought, why should anyone know my real name? I moved to New York for the same reasons as anyone else. To escape myself, escape the past, escape all previous knowledge.

  —Call me Baby Baby Baby, I said.

  —May I call you simply Baby?

  I thought for a second.

  —Okay, I said, but only as a nickname.

  —Baby, then.

  Footsteps echoed downstairs, coming toward the front of the building. Two people, a boy and a girl, both very drunk, stumbled through the hallway beneath us. We couldn’t see their faces. The boy started shouting:

  BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKLLLLLLLLLYNNNNNNNN. BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKLLLLLLLLLYNNNNNNNN. BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKLLLLLLLLLYNNNNNNNN. BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKLLLLLLLLLYNNNNNNNN. BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKLLLLLLLLLYNNNNNNNN.

  BROOOOoooOOOOOOOoookklyn.

  —I’m going outside, I said to Adeline. I only came into town a few hours ago.

  —Walk to Avenue A and then head two blocks south. You simply must see Tompkins Square. It’s one of the eight wonders, darling.

  —I hope we’ll talk later, I said.

  —Perhaps we will, said Adeline. You know where I may be found.

  Back in Wisconsin, I’d studied maps of Manhattan. I knew if I was over by Avenue C, then the river was the eastern border, making navigation easy. But I panicked and forgot what I’d memorized. With neither the Empire State Building nor the Twin Towers visible, I got lost.

  I hadn’t paid any attention on the way in, not with my tunnel vision. Moving now in what seemed like all directions, I really saw the area and oh god, this was not the New York of my dreams. David’s neighborhood was more like the television news footage of Beirut. About a fourth of the buildings were demolished, empty lots filled with rubble and long grass growing high. Another fourth were abandoned, boarded or bricked up and left to rot. Even the pavement was broken and destroyed, the sidewalks crumbling. Dogshit was everywhere.

  One empty lot looked as if its building had exploded, obliterating the walls and ceilings while leaving the interior contents unscathed. Piles of doors and furniture and bathtubs and the scattered plastic of people’s lives, trash all mashed together. There was no fence, no barrier between the street and the remains.

  My family had been poor, but we were the working poor, people who lived off our land. The citizens of Alphabet City were something below that, living on the streets, in abandoned buildings, in empty lots, in burned-out cars. There was a ghost town quality that would be hard to believe today when every block is crammed with hundreds of people no matter what hour. In those days, the streets were empty. And the few who were there? Well.

  I forced my face into a blank, not wanting to betray my shock, letting some of my hair fall down past my forehead. The homeless wouldn’t scare me. The punks wouldn’t scare me. Neither would the people that my relatives would have called Spanish. Nor the Blacks. I kept my honky blue eyes forward, straight ahead, hoping no one would sniff me out.

  After an hour of wandering, I came upon what I assumed was Tompkins Square. Anyway, it was square. What other park could be in the area? I checked the signs and, yeah, it was Tompkins Square. The park was a city of homelessness, a sea of tents and makeshift shelters, with as large a population as my Podunk little town.

  People lived up against the fences, sleeping on the benches and its pathetic grass. A large group camped inside a giant concrete structure alongside the 7th Street perimeter. On the side of this structure was a mural of a woman in red surrounded by arcane symbols, but I didn’t understand their significance. Months later, someone told me that this rectangle was a band shell. The mural, they said, was called “Billie Holiday and Family Planning.”

  A teenage girl, kind of heavyset with dirty hair, wearing denim clothes covered in patches, walked over right in front of me. She stopped at a leafless tree, squatted down, and started pissing.

  This was no delicate release of urine, not like my own modest streams or the soft tinkling that the patriarchy would imagine for a lady, but rather a deluge, a torrent that dropped from her body like bombs from the bay of a B-29 bomber over a nameless German city.

  Gazing into her vacant eyes, with her sodden puddling in my ears, it came to me that, at long last, I had escaped the American Middle West.

  *

  I walked back to David’s place, my body shaking on wobbling legs, wracked with the dead awful sense of freedom, of absolute and unregulated liberation. Not America’s bullshit foundational principles, but a freedom more primal, the freedom to live beyond the margins. A great tug pulling off the scab. The blood flows and reveals daily life as a collection of lies, reveals the bruised, bleeding flesh, the meaningless of human endeavor. You could die, it would be a shame, but your death will not matter. Nothing matters. Nothing ever matters. You cannot achieve a single thing of consequence. No one you know will ever achieve consequence. Your family is as meaningless as empty air. And so are you. That’s freedom. That’s a teenage girl in rotten denim, squatting beside a tree, making water like a giraffe.

  The sun set into blue light. A cold rose up. People were bundled, rushing down the street. Wimps! Cowards! I thought. Try wind blowing off Lake Superior on a January morning, an ice chill running through your body at 6 am while you handle the livestock.

  Back at David’s place, the front door was still unlocked. I went upstairs. The building’s power had returned, offering illumination from a few exposed lightbulbs.

  David’s room looked the same as before, but now I could see the stains. The pile I’d put over my bag had shifted, become formless. The cupcake wrappers were gone. I dug through the clothes, trying not to smell them. My bag was missing. So was David.

  I waited.

  Every detail of those low hours burned into my brain. People came in and out of the house. Some yelling, some crying, some storming around in rage. One girl wandered through the front door singing. Her slurring words stuck with me, I remember their sound to this day: Something told me it was over / when I saw you and her talking / something deep down in my soul said cry girl cry / when I saw you and her walking by.

  Laughter, a sick laughter, erupted from upstairs. I thought about seeing who was laughing and why, but I didn’t want to miss David. A girl popped her head into the room. —Bobby? she asked before she caught sight of me and turned away.

  I have no idea how much time passed before David came back. When he did, his stagger told me everything. I wasn’t angry, exactly, because I’d been smart enough to keep my money on my person. But there were some good clothes in that bag. The bag itself was a gift from my mother.

  —Where’s my bag? I asked.

  —Who are you? asked David.

  —You know who I am, you rotten thieving son of a bitch, I said. I’m from our Podunk little town. I set our school’s records for the fifty- and hundred-yard dashes.

  —Right, right, right, he said. You. Yeah, when’d you get in?

  —Where’s my bag, David?

  —What bag? he asked.

  David flopped on a pile of mattresses. The springs coiled beneath him, a squeaky sound like mice trapped within a wall.

  —I want my bag, I said.

  —What bag? he asked.

  —You know perfectly well what goddamned bag, I said.

  He rolled to his side and rested his head in his hand, his watery eyes shining from the forty-watt bulb.

  —Look, man, he said, fuck your bag. If it ain’t here, it ain’t here. You can’t moan about something that’s gone. That won’t get you anywhere in this life.

  I walked to the bed. His pants clung to his legs, loose from sheer wasting skinniness. Tiny scabs dotted the webbed skin between his
fingers.

  —There were some good clothes in that bag, I said.

  —Yeah, he said, well, they’re gone. If you need clothes, there’s plenty here.

  I balled up my fists. I was going to hit him.

  A >click< sound. I looked down. David had a little knife, its blade extended. He wanted to menace me, but his motor control was so unsteady that the weapon bobbed up and down like breadcrumbs on water. I could have taken it from him, but why bother?

  I went into the hallway and popped my head into the other rooms, looking, I guess, for a fight. People sat around, no one saying anything, maybe drinking beer. Laughter came down again from the third floor. Laughter, laughter. Huh huh ha ha ho ho ha ha hee hoo ho ha ha hee hee ho ho ha ha hee hee. That goddamn laughter.

  There were about ten steps between the two floors. I got halfway up before Adeline crashed into me. We fell over, but we didn’t fall down the stairs.

  —Watch out, you oaf, she said.

  —Adeline, I said. It’s me. Baby.

  —Oh, Baby, she said. Baby, I’m leaving. I shan’t ever return.

  —Who’s laughing up on that third floor?

  —Never ask about the third floor.

  We stood up. She used my arm, revealing the fragility of her body, how light she was, how little weight she had on her frame.

  —Are you crying? she asked.

  —David sold my things, I said. All I have are the clothes on my back.

  —This place hasn’t done either of us much good, she said.

  She started down the stairs. I watched her, wondering if there was something I should say. I couldn’t think of what. Don’t go! Don’t leave me! Please! Not among strangers!

  Adeline turned back. I sucked in a breath.

  —Where are you from? she asked.

  —I’m an old Wisconsin boy, I said, exhaling. Don’t hold it against me.

  —Wisconsin. Where’s your accent, Baby?

  —I lost it, I said, to seem more sophisticated.

  I’d adopted the dry, flat voice of television, but I never could tell if the ruse was successful. The only evaluative criteria were comments from kids in my high school. But they were hayseeds. You can’t trust the opinions of hayseeds.

  —You’re here all alone? asked Adeline.

  —Wisconsin didn’t end too well, I said.

  She wasn’t wearing any shoes or socks. Her bare feet were exposed. I cringed at the thought of her toes curling in the debris.

  —What happened to your yellow shoes?

  —Forget them, she said. Why don’t you come with me?

  —Where?

  —To my dormitory, she said. I have a single, but there’s a spare bed. Come and stay for some little while.

  —Okay, I said, but where are your shoes?

  Sometimes you can get these intuitions, glimpses of truth that are pure inspiration. I knew that her shoes were on the third floor.

  —They’re upstairs. I left them with Bobby.

  —Who’s Bobby? I asked.

  —Bobby is, or rather, I thought that he was, my boyfriend. Right now he’s upstairs screwing another girl’s brains out. He started right in front of me, Baby. Screwing her brains out. I left the shoes.

  —Wait here, I said.

  I started back up the stairs. Adeline grabbed my arm.

  —It’s not worth it, she said. He’ll murder you.

  I made a mocking sound, a cinematic laugh.

  —I worked my father’s farm, I said. I’ve seen more death than you can shake a stick at.

  —Please, she said. Mommie Dearest is loaded with dough. She’s swimming in cash. I can afford more shoes.

  I shrugged her off and climbed to the third floor. The layout was identical to the second. The same rooms. The same clutter and decay. I located Bobby by the sounds of him screwing someone’s brains out, an irritating high-pitched female whine paired with a substrata of male groaning. I went into the room and flipped on the lights, and there, sure enough, was a girl on top of a guy.

  —Are you Bobby?

  —What the shit is wrong with you? Get the fuck out of here.

  The girl jumped off. She was the same girl who’d stuck her head into David’s room. For a moment Bobby lay there, flat on his back, stark naked, his cock still hard and glistening. He was skinny and dirty like David, but old. He must have been thirty. I could see that he was much lower on the social ladder than Adeline.

  —I came for Adeline’s shoes.

  —Are you fucking juiced or something?

  I bent over and picked up the shoes. Bobby rose from the bed.

  —Don’t go near Adeline again, I said.

  —Or what? he asked.

  —You won’t like what happens.

  —Let me tell you what’s going to happen, man, he said. I’m going to finish fucking this broad and tomorrow I’ll find Adeline and fuck her too. And there isn’t nothing some dumb fucking good Samaritan faggot from Westchester can do about it.

  Another vision. Beneath the dirt and drugs, I saw Bobby as a scrawny boy in tenth grade, wearing a black t-shirt that read SUGARLOAF, praying not to be noticed by the bigger, meaner kids, biding his time until he could drop out of school and get away from his family. God knows, I should have sympathized, I should have been there with him, the queer kid cowering in fear. But I’d set the school records for the fifty- and hundred-yard dashes. I’m a natural athlete. People loved me. I was popular. Bobby’d been in the city for too long, enraptured within his little egalitarian heroin heaven. He couldn’t remember high school. He’d forgotten that life has a natural pecking order. No one had ever called me faggot.

  The wrinkled lines of his flat face were like a map of my shame. Wisconsin, my family, my father, my mother, my hometown, my high school best friend, his mother, that terrible squat, longing for the boys who didn’t know you existed, accidentally hurting the girls who did, David, the loss of my bag, being so lonely, feeling like no one could ever love me.

  I hit Bobby until my hands swelled. Then I kicked him.

  He rolled on the ground, gurgling in his own blood and spittle. The girl watched. One minute she was giving him the time, the next he was collapsed into his own arrogance.

  —Come by tomorrow and look for Adeline, I said. You know what you’ll find.

  I picked up the yellow shoes again, the fingers of my left hand plunged deep beneath the tongues. Traces of my own blood around the swollen knuckles, where I’d split the skin.

  Adeline waited at the bottom of the stairs, standing in this screwball way, left leg twisted around the right, arms coiled in a fold.

  —I have your shoes, I said.

  She took them from me. Her eyes went wide. She dropped the shoes and put her hands around mine.

  —Did Bobby do this to you? she asked.

  —I did this to Bobby.

  Adeline sat on the bottom step and tied her laces. I thought about how strange it is that shoes exist, that we live in a world with shoes, that their purposes of fashion and protection were so often opposed.

  —Follow me, said Adeline.

  She rushed to the ground floor. At the front door, I looked back at this piece of hell on planet Earth. I’d wasted a few Wisconsin weeks dreaming that it would be my home.

  —Good luck, you morons, I shouted at the empty hallway. Don’t forget to send me a postcard, you stupid idiots!

  —Baby, said Adeline, you needn’t be theatrical.

  *

  Back on 12th, the street lights weren’t working. With so many empty lots and abandoned buildings, I experienced a new sort of darkness, a city dark. A homeless guy stood near a wire trash can. He was filling it with debris that he’d gathered, shaking garbage out of a bag that he held over the can’s open mouth.

  —Hey, I said to him, where’d you get tha
t bag?

  —Fuck you, he said.

  —Can I buy it? I asked.

  —Five bucks for you, Dracula.

  I turned my back to him and counted out the bills. Adeline had walked on ahead without realizing that I’d stopped. She noticed that I wasn’t beside her and came back. She stood a few feet away. I got the five bucks together. I held them out.

  —You first, I said. Don’t worry, I won’t rip you off. I’m an easy mark.

  —Take it, he said.

  He threw the bag at me and snatched the money.

  —Where’d you find this? I asked.

  —Trash can on C, he said.

  None of my clothes were in the bag, but of course they weren’t. Fresh stains decorated both the outside and the interior, complemented by a pervasive scent of urine.

  —What the dickens? asked Adeline. Why would you want such a thing?

  —My mother gave me this bag, I said. Do you have a washing machine?

  —There’s a communal one on the fourth floor, she said.

  We reversed the path that I’d taken to David’s place. At Second Avenue, there was a theater on the corner. Its marquee read: HAVE I GOT A GIRL FOR YOU! THE FRANKENSTEIN MUSICAL.

  —Have you seen that play? I asked Adeline.

  —Why, she snorted, would I possibly see that? It’s vulgar, Baby. But do you know, a friend of a friend lives above the theater. The artist David Wojnarowicz. Are you aware of his work?

  —No.

  —It’s très sinister, she said.

  We crossed Second Avenue. A surprising amount of women were on the next block, standing alone, wearing garish makeup and scandalous dresses. A few talked with men, creepy older guys with thick eyebrows.

  —We’ve passed through the veil of a prostitution zone, Adeline said. NYU is building a dorm at Third Avenue. The construction has displaced the hookers. They’ve trickled down, darling.

  The prostitutes weren’t glamorous and many looked very sad, but this was more like the New York of my dreams. Dirty and seedy but not quite as desperate, as empty, as cruel as Alphabet City. Prostitutes! Whores! I couldn’t believe it. The shining sequins on their dresses cheered me up, putting energy back into my walk.