Miss Subways: A Novel

by David Duchovny

  “I don’t think you are.”

  “You’re not just saying that? Maybe you wanna get off this train right now before I take it all the way to Crazytown.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “So my visions—whether they’re visions or reality or dreams—don’t matter to you?”

  “Might matter.”

  “Might matter, right you are, okay. But these visions offer up a world and a world that has rules, and these rules say you can’t just make up your own rules. That’s when society breaks down, all hell breaks loose, and chaos reigns.”

  “Cats and dogs living together?”

  “What?”

  “Bill Murray? Tootsie? I’m desperate.”

  She felt like she should tell him the secret. He deserved it, or she deserved to say it out loud and tell him.

  “I think you’re a poet and you’re just beginning to know it,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Maybe we can collaborate.”

  Emer had had enough of this banter, and yet she felt she hadn’t even begun to partake of this familiar stranger’s sweetness. She straightened her shoulders. “Yeah, why don’t you come home and collaborate with me,” she said, “now.”

  She could still pull the emergency brake at any time. Sure she could.

  MEET THE GANCANAGHS

  THE ODD THING ABOUT HAVING A DOORMAN in your building was that they became surrogate parents in a way, without the power. All censure and no agency. Mostly mute witnesses to your life, without the authority to intervene. Like a Greek chorus without lines. You could only guess at their judgment and opinion, as Emer could guess Papa was judging the shit out of her as she walked Con past him on their way to their afternoon delight. Trying to show she had nothing to be ashamed of, rather than scurry by with her head down, she stopped to bump fists with Papa as usual. He dutifully and mirthlessly gave Emer some dap, but then again, that was his job.

  On the elevator up to her apartment, Con kissed her. Even though Emer knew there was a video camera in the elevator car, one that broadcast to the front desk, and god knows where else. Mid-kiss, she opened her eyes and looked at the camera; she was thumbing her nose at all authority, real and imagined, at all those who would take away what she, for once, knew she wanted. Bug off, eyes of the prying world.

  They stopped and kissed in the hallway before they got to Emer’s door. Fuck you, any neighbors that might possibly empty the trash right now. None did. They kissed when she inserted the key in her door, but before she turned it. Fuck you, uh, everybody else. Once inside, Con spun her back to the front door and pressed up against her. She could feel how hard he was again. She wanted him inside her as fast as possible, because she didn’t want to get caught up in whether this was wrong or right. She didn’t want to think at all, she just wanted to do, to be. There would be time later for dwelling. She stopped the kiss, put her finger up to his lips to quiet them, grabbed his hand, and led him into her bedroom.

  THE SALMON OF KNOWLEDGE

  EMER AWOKE ALONE. She raised herself on an elbow and listened for Con in her apartment. Nothing. He probably had to get home to Mama. That was reality. Already reality, so soon nipping at the heels of reverie. It occurred to her that this was like one of those old movie cutaways in the age before they could show you everything on screen. The couple kisses, a door shuts, a train goes through a tunnel, fade to black, the sun rises, the girl wakes up, the man is gone, her virtue compromised forever. The best bits happened offscreen, but they were fresh on the screen of Emer’s mind.

  She went to the fridge and got herself some après-sex ice cream. Oh yeah, she was all about “all decadence, all the time” now. There was a piece of salmon in there so she downed a little protein before her treat, ever the responsible girl. She opened her computer to “Godsforsaken,” and started writing about what had happened. Or so she meant to. Her fingers took on a life of their own, and she found herself watching them type from some place above her head, just letting it fly in free association, the trippy words appearing on the screen like an articulated lava lamp. Deep into the wee hours, when the cawing of a crow shook her out of a trance.

  She whipped around to see Corvus on her windowsill, something in his mouth. The black bird dropped whatever it was and flew away. Emer approached the window, and in the moonlight, she could make out a baby mouse (rat?!) or squirrel, bloodied, tiny, badly injured, squirming, hopelessly broken—its head twisted, neck partly snapped. Emer picked the poor creature up in her hand, its speck of a heart fluttering against the sappy bones of its almost transparent breast. It was a baby squirrel, she saw now. A beautiful creation in miniature.

  It wouldn’t live. It was in pain. She knew this was a thank-you note from Corvus, but it was gross and sad, and she also couldn’t help thinking of it as a dark omen. She thought back through her studies to the significance of squirrels and crows, but her full-chested empathy for the dying “crater” (as her dad would’ve called it, Gaelic for “creature”) blocked associative recall and memory.

  She thought of cupping it in her hands, running to the bathroom, and flushing it down the toilet, but then hesitated to add drowning to its miserable short stay on this planet. Maybe just toss it out the window? But what if it didn’t die from the fall and only suffered more? Emer apologized to the baby—its features were both remarkably blunt and fine up close. What the hand, what the eye. Pinkish, the eyes barely open, the eyes that would soon close forever. She kissed its tiny bloodied snout, laid the broken body on the floor, put a sneaker on her right foot, and crushed its skull under the instep, brain blood swiping on wood like ominous calligraphy as she cried “sorry, sorry, sorry” through gritted teeth.

  She picked up the carcass, satisfied it was dead, and only then flushed it down the toilet. She mopped away the remnant stain. She went back to her kitchen nook, sat down, and started sobbing hysterically.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been crying when there was a knock on the door. It was 2:45 in the morning. Instinctively, she called out “Con?” as she went to open the door, only, as once before in a dream or another life, to find a tiny doorman there.

  CONNED AGAIN

  IT LOOKED TO EMER as if Sidney was wearing a doorman costume for Halloween, which was months away. She laughed. “What are you doing here, Sidney?” Sidney was not pleased. And then she remembered her evening with Con and hoped to God Sidney didn’t know anything about that.

  “Not Sidney,” said Sidney.

  “Not Sidney what?”

  “Can you invite me in?”

  “Come on in.”

  “Them’s the rules,” he said. She followed him into the living room, scanning nervously that there were no signs that Con had ever been there.

  “What’s with the getup?”

  “This was not the deal.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He turned to look at her, hard. She felt deeply unsettled by his gaze.

  “Stop calling me ‘Sidney,’” he said. “I am Sidhe.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You understand fine. You’re just too nervous to comprehend at the moment.”

  “No, I really don’t understand.”

  “Remember the terms of the deal, and remember who I am.”

  “Sidney, this isn’t funny anymore.”

  “I am Sidhe.”

  He raised his voice; for a small man he had a lot of menacing power. Emer flashed on an image of a superball of concentrated rubber that could bounce dangerously, impossibly high. Like this little man. She was terrified.

  “The terms of the deal,” she repeated to herself, puzzling, gnawing at the phrase. Whatever much was unclear in her mind, hazy shapes from memories and dreams flashing by clamoring for emphasis and attention, what was clear was that Sidney somehow knew that she had seen Con.

  And why not? It’s a city of millions. How did they think they might sit and talk on a crowded subway? All it takes is one piece of bad lu
ck—one relative, or parent, or friend of a friend of a friend who recognizes her or him—and in three minutes, with the help of smartphones, in Afghanistan, Australia, Bumfuck, Idaho, and even Staten Island, all the tweeters and instagrammers know about the fallen schoolteacher and the parent.

  But, she also thought—maybe I should play it cool until I know for sure that he knows. She was terrible at playing it cool, but figured she had nothing to lose and it might buy her some time. She flicked her hair back casually.

  “Why are you wearing a doorman’s uniform?”

  “Because I am a doorman. Of sorts.”

  “Of sorts?” Repeating phrases, treading water—maybe he doesn’t know.

  “Yes, I prevent certain things on one side from crossing through to the other side and vice versa.”

  “Sounds like a doorman.” She laughed a crappy little fake laugh.

  “Jesus Christ!” he exploded. “He was here. I can smell him, your chemicals together. Your Gancanagh. You were not to have any contact with him, that was the deal.” Busted. Better just come clean.

  “Sidney—I don’t know what to say. I saw Con on the subway and we talked and he came over. He doesn’t love her—whatever she is to him—it’s a loveless thing.”

  “Spare me the human details. You think I give an ancient fuck about your Cosmopolitan magazine analysis of his ‘relationship’?” He said relationship like an exterminator might say vermin.

  “I don’t know why you’re yelling.”

  “You’re shitting me!”

  “You can fire me, or I can quit. I’d prefer to quit. Actually I’d prefer to stay, but if you feel you have to fire me to protect yourself, go ahead. This is not unprecedented. It happens. Shit happens. People fall in love in difficult circumstances. Most songs are about it.”

  She hadn’t prepared that particular line of argument, but was pleased to watch it take shape as it spun out of her mouth. Except for “most songs are about it”—that was rather lame, and of course, Sidney seized upon the weak link.

  “Most songs are about it? Jesus, I’m thirsty.”

  “I’ll get you a glass of water.”

  He laughed scornfully. “Not that type of thirst.”

  “Oh. Whiskey?” Images from a dream came back to her, and she heard herself saying, “Irish whiskey?” Sidney put his finger to his nose in assent.

  As she poured his drink, she took a healthy swig herself. Sidney inhaled his and offered up his glass again. She filled it. “Good money after bad,” he said, and downed the second. It was all coming back to her, but the all was incomplete and confusing. She felt like she was herself and not herself just as this was Sid who said he was not Sid.

  “Okay,” he said, “now I can breathe. And think. Now, lass, you were given a card recently?”

  “A card?”

  “Yes, like a business card.”

  “No. I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “May I check your purse?”

  “Sure. I have nothing to hide.”

  “Please don’t say things like that—so boring.”

  Emer pushed her purse across the tabletop. Sidney rummaged through it. He helped himself to a piece of gum. He examined a lipstick, seeming to disapprove of the color, and then produced a business card as promised. The one that she had picked up off the ground in Central Park by the Alice sculpture on a walk with her dad. She had completely forgotten about it. The one with the impossible address.

  “Here it is,” he said.

  “How did you know?”

  “Let’s agree on a moratorium on questions like ‘How did you know?’ Let’s just say the answer is—because I am Bean Sidhe, that’s how. Okay?”

  “I guess.”

  “Stop guessing and start knowing,” Sidhe said. “Come. Walk with me.”

  23 CENTRAL PARK WESTEAST

  “NOT SO FAST, Giantess,” Sid said, hustling down the hallway of her building, trying to keep up with Emer’s long strides. Nearing the entrance, Sid called out, “There he is, Papa Legba!” Papa lit up to see Sid. It was the first time that Emer could remember ever having seen the man smile. “The once and forever Haitian king.” Sid bowed. “Irish prince,” Papa replied, and bowed back, doorman to doorman. What the hell is this nonsense? wondered Emer.

  As they walked toward the park, Sid pulled out his phone. “Let me bring you up to speed,” he said. “Sometime ago, we made a pact, you and I, the terms of which—this king, this Gancanagh, Cuchulain, would live, but he could not know you and that you would stay away from him. The signs have been all around you, and yet you miss them or consign them to a dream. This is not a dream, Huge Woman, or if it is, it’s the dream you are waking into now.”

  They entered the park, heading southeast. Sid kept on, “Everything. The bird, your father, the old-people orgy at the reservoir—now that was somewhat untidy, I’m sorry—the dreams—how dense are you gonna be?”

  Had he been following her all this time? Had he hacked her computer?

  “How steadfast is your belief in what you think of as real going to be before you can see it for what it is—merely a version, and a lesser version at that.” He offered her his phone. “Press play. Take a look at that. Maybe you’ll remember more.”

  Emer pressed PLAY and watched as Con and Mama Waters walked holding hands and appearing to kiss through what looked to be a SoHo street in the rain.

  “When was this?”

  “Wrong question.”

  “I’d like to know.”

  “Today.”

  She couldn’t believe Con had been lying to her today. Didn’t want to. “Impossible. I was with him today.”

  “Aha!”

  “Dammit.”

  “He loves her. He lied to you.”

  “I don’t believe that. When are these pictures from?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “No. I call bullshit.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “What?”

  “Yesterday, today, tomorrow, right now. All of the above. I told you it was the wrong question. Keep watching.”

  Emer watched on the screen as the scene played out like a movie, it was even scored like a film, the jaunty piano, old-timey rom-com music segueing into a darker synth-horror mode as the lovers walked down the street and a car suddenly sideswiped them, hitting Con and throwing him in a slo-mo stuntman-flailing arc fifteen feet in the air.

  “Jesus! What is that? What just happened?”

  “That is what will happen if you continue to see him and break your deal.”

  “You’re sick, Sid.”

  “I am fair, but you are trying me!”

  They stood beside Alice. Sid took out the business card. “So what you just showed me,” Emer asked, “could happen?”

  “Did happen.” She tried to take it in and square it like a math proof, but it was beyond her. “Has happened. Will happen.”

  “You make no sense.”

  “It happened and it unhappened, and it will happen and unhappen again. It’s happening and unhappening right now. Until you put an end to it. Till you stop the eternal return.”

  “How? How would I do that?” There were actually crickets in the park, which stopped their chirping en masse just now as if signaled to hush by some cosmic conductor. How wonderful and sad, stranded as they were in a little patch of green surrounded by an asphalt moat.

  “Educate yourself. Reeducate yourself. Know the gods that came before your mind.”

  “Why can’t you just tell me instead of speaking in riddles?”

  “I am telling you, Gargantuana, you’re just not listening with your dream ears. Wouldn’t it be too easy for me to just give you the answer? And it would sound ridiculous. A child’s fantasy of adult life. Fucking humans, you race of time-bound fools, want it all spelled out for you. No wonder you like the big boss, union-busting Jehovah.”

  Sid’s rant, and the crickets that took up again, merged to wash over Emer like the roar of the ocean. She was less in the act
of piecing things together rationally; it was more like she had a sense of one reality transposing itself over another, as if one part of her brain was being folded into the other, or a world of dreams was being layered over a so-called real world to form a hybrid whole. And as you might, when your left brain folds over your right, Emer felt a little dizzy.

  “I’m not sure you’re taking me seriously,” he said.

  “I am. I’m trying to.”

  “Are you? Just because I’m funny doesn’t mean I’m not lethal.”

  He extended his arm like a falconer awaiting a falcon. Emer felt a powerful shudder behind her head, and her hair flew to the side. A large black bird landed gracefully on Sid’s shoulder.

  “Oh my god! Corvus?”

  The bird walked down Sid’s shoulder to his hand, perching there like a pet parrot. Sid offered Corvus to her, saying, “The proverbial bird in the hand. For we are in the land of proverbs now.”

  Corvus delicately hobbled from Sid’s hand to hers. She felt an immediate and profound reconnection to this being, and through him, to all living things. She felt her chest tighten. Corvus extended his cold hard beak to her lips.

  “I missed you,” she said to the bird. Sid gave them a moment, and then extended his hand to receive the bird again. Corvus, like a trained act, high-stepped from Emer’s hand, back to Sid’s.

  “It was a beautiful thing you did. Saving this crater.”

  Emer was now tearing up.

  “But it was against nature, against the overall deal. He was weak and was meant to die.”

  The bird looked to Sid and cocked its head curiously to the side, as if to say, “Really, bro?” Sid nodded. Corvus puffed his chest out and rose to his full height, turning his head toward Emer, and then continued to keep turning it, till he had made a full Linda Blair 360 revolution and snapped his own neck. The sound made Emer gag. The bird fell off Sid’s hand to the ground, motionless as a black stone, dead.