by Chris Vola
She walked past him in the direction of the front entrance, intentionally close, her left breast grazing the side of Ryan’s face. He flinched, slightly, but kept staring straight ahead.
A minute later the waiter reappeared. “Dude,” he said in the commiserating tone of a fellow bro, “breaking up sucks, am I right? Same thing happened to me last week, but at least she didn’t drag me out to brunch to do it. Can I get you anything? A shot or something on the house?”
“I’m fine,” Ryan mumbled. He handed him the bill Nicki had left.
The waiter ran it through his fingers, wide-eyed. “Whoa,” he said, “I can’t accept this. At least let me get you a—”
Before he could finish, Ryan flipped over the table that had been bolted to the floor, picked up the Urban Outfitters bag, and exited the building, oblivious to the other patrons’ glares.
10
“… NYPD spokesman says in a newly released statement that the police are pursuing all possible leads in connection with a grisly, possibly gang-related shooting that occurred early this morning on Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights, leaving three dead. Two of the victims, Arianna Velasquez, twenty-six, and Rajakumaran Rupasinghe, thirty-seven, were both Brooklyn residents. A third victim was unable to be immediately identified due to the severity of his injuries and the absence of any identifying documents. Witnesses reported seeing two suspects, a white male of average build and height and a shorter black male, exiting the crime scene in a black BMW sedan shortly before officers arrived. DNA evidence has been collected and is currently undergoing analysis…”
“Can you turn the radio down?” Ryan asked the cabdriver as they turned onto Court Street and continued southward through Cobble Hill.
“Sure, boss, no problem,” the driver said absentmindedly, ignoring his request, returning to the muted conversation—in what sounded like a patois of French and an indistinguishable African dialect—that he’d been having with his earpiece.
Though he was seated, Ryan felt like he was spinning blindly through a vast shadow world, a twisted fun-house distortion of the one he’d known. Any thoughts that managed to materialize in the fog were misshapen abortions of logic, ill-fitting puzzle pieces amounting to nothing.
The only thing he could be certain of, as he clutched the Urban Outfitters bag to his chest, was that he couldn’t hand over the statue to Nicki. Her guarantees about Jennifer’s release were more than likely as hollow as the hole where his stomach used to be.
He needed to get to the safe house before he did something he would regret almost as much as digging up the jaguar.
As much as allowing Jennifer into his life.
“… in another developing story, a ceramic Mayan artifact was stolen yesterday afternoon from the Brooklyn Museum. The effigy vessel, part of the museum’s Arts of the Americas collection, depicts the head and torso of a human figure wearing a jaguar-skin costume. Security footage released by the NYPD shows a male suspect wearing a dark suit approaching the vessel’s display case and using a small, laser-powered tool to cut through the glass. The suspect is described as being between five feet ten inches and six feet tall, of indeterminate race, and having a shaved head. If you have any information, please contact…”
A sudden wave of clarity washed over Ryan, almost jarring him out of his seat.
The man in the midnight-blue suit outside the Brooklyn Museum, handing off a package to Raj and Arianna in the food truck. Frank had said he was a scientist, delivering a chemical shipment, but Ryan had felt a force that had compelled him to stop, a magnetic energy that reminded him of the vibrations that were currently emanating from the bag on his lap. And it was Frank who had told him about Craigslist, had put him on the path to meeting Nicki.
Another distortion. Another set of mirrors nailed to the fun house wall.
Ryan leaned forward until his head was almost through the hole in the glass partition that separated the front and back seats. “Let me out,” he said loudly.
“Huh?” The driver turned down the radio’s volume.
“Pull over.”
“But my friend, this is not Red Hook.”
“I know.”
Ryan paid the fare and emerged from the taxi onto a street that no longer looked like anywhere he’d ever been, utterly alone.
11
The buildings of Lower Manhattan—a jagged hodgepodge of residential and commercial structures showcasing more than a century’s worth of architectural styles and upgrades, everything dwarfed by the Freedom Tower’s glass-skinned middle finger to anyone foolish enough to challenge America’s will a second time—shimmered in the brilliant, cloudless afternoon.
From the Bedford Avenue rooftop where he’d been waiting for the past two hours, Ryan tried to trace the evolution of the glistening skyline’s metal teeth but found it to be an almost impossible exercise. Though the island had always been an inescapable presence, lurking less than a mile away across a narrow, polluted, and easily traversed river, it had remained as foreign to him as Pittsburgh or Europe. His visits to the city as a boy and a young man had been brief and mostly unremarkable, tainted by the claustrophobic stench of fermenting sweat and manure, the wearying slum life that seemed to be little more than a jacked-up version of his own upbringing.
Another murky portion of his memory, like so many others, that he’d decided wasn’t worth keeping.
Since he’d been turned, and until he’d met Jennifer, his knowledge of his smaller, more famous neighbor had been gathered by watching movies and television clips, skimming newspaper—and later, Internet—headlines, and listening to people bitching and moaning about this politician or that cable provider, conversations that could have easily been between two Brooklynites if the proper nouns had been changed. Manhattan was inaccessible to him but far from exotic, only vaguely entertaining when viewed through the lens of a fictional zombie apocalypse or a gold-digging housewife’s plot for revenge.
He’d only recently begun researching Manhattan’s current state of affairs because he hadn’t wanted Jennifer to think he was a totally uncultured recluse. But what he did know—where to find the best falafel in the East Village, which neighborhoods had the highest yuppie-to-hipster ratio, the economics of surviving as a Midtown psychic—was trivial, abstract, and opinion-based. Nothing close to resembling a genuine experience, and therefore totally unhelpful in quieting his unease about the trip he’d be making.
The nervous paranoia that had been vibrating nonstop since the previous evening when he’d tucked Arthur’s statue into a crevice in the truss that supported the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge gave the day’s perfect weather a sinister tint, another trap he’d be letting himself walk into.
Ryan checked the time on his watch, lowered his gaze, and rested his palms on the rooftop’s ledge. Nicki was thirty-two minutes late and counting. He looked down at the intersection of Bedford and North 7th, focusing on the foot traffic going in and out of the Starbucks across the street, his view of the shop’s interior obscured by the rays of sun reflecting off the all-glass façade.
“Where the fuck is she?” he mumbled to himself, suppressing the urge to check his phone again.
Instead he reviewed, for the fourth time, a mental checklist of what he’d packed in the Patagonia hiking bag that was strapped to his back, making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. The pistol Frank had given him and six clips of ammo, the deer-antler knife from the cemetery, the spray bottle that had fallen out of the dead girl’s pocket at Natalia’s, an IV needle attached to a small collection pouch, a notebook containing several addresses that he’d also saved in his phone, his phone charger …
… and then he smelled her.
Coming up the subway stairs on the far side of the intersection and moving quickly in his direction. He saw her when she was about fifty yards from Starbucks, wearing Wayfarer sunglasses, a burgundy leather jacket, and a white and black party dress, carrying a small handbag and power-walking in a straight line on the sparsely
populated sidewalk. Like she knew she was late. She tossed a half-finished cigarette onto the street and opened the coffee shop’s door in one rushed motion, without slowing down or checking her surroundings before going inside.
Ryan watched the street for the next few minutes, looking for any signs that she might not be alone, looking for anyone wearing black, anyone randomly posted up and acting weird or nervous. But even with better-than-perfect vision and ears that could pick up every heartbeat in a quarter-mile radius, it was difficult to be one hundred percent certain about anything from four stories up. He put on sunglasses, adjusted his throwback Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap, and headed for the roof’s fire exit. Inside the building, he bypassed the stairs, hopping over the handrail and landing silently on the lobby’s tiles, a few feet from where a woman was checking her mailbox, a leashed French bulldog by her side.
The dog tilted its head at Ryan in disbelief, then began yelping. The woman looked up, gasped, and dropped the letters she’d been holding. “Geez, you’re quiet,” she said sheepishly, as he squatted to pick up her mail.
“Not quiet enough, apparently,” he said, reaching out to pet the dog, who immediately backed away until its nonwagging stub of a tail bumped against its owner’s legs. It let out a low growl, baring its teeth at him.
“Careful,” the woman said, “she doesn’t like to feel like she’s being forced into a corner.”
“No one does,” Ryan said, forcing a smile as he handed her the letters and walked out of the building.
Part of him wanted there to be an entire squad of assholes waiting for him on the street, one last opportunity for him to fight with the confidence of knowing they couldn’t hurt him, that he might be slowed, but never brought down. Instead, North 7th Street was tranquil, its scarce pedestrians moving slowly and quietly in the midafternoon heat. The only abnormally fast heartbeat that Ryan could detect came from an old man passing by in spandex shorts, jogging on the sidewalk while carrying a five-pound dumbbell in each hand.
The calm before something, Ryan thought, but what?
He started walking in the direction of the subway station so that he wouldn’t be directly across from the Starbucks and stopped in front of a building that was currently occupied by a massage therapy practice. He sat on a bench outside the office and took out his phone. Another four missed calls, all from an unknown number that had been steadily inundating his call history since he’d connected the charger.
The first image that came up, after he unlocked the screen, was one of the photos of Jennifer that he’d been sent. He scrolled through those, the original picture of Seamus, the red M, looking for something that might tie them together, any kind of clue as to their location, any identifying details of the kidnappers, anything at all, but the only thing he could be sure of was his increasingly uncontrollable desire to rip the condescending smirk from Nicki’s face, to make her understand what it was like to truly suffer.
Fifteen minutes later, as she emerged from the Starbucks looking as tense as she had when she’d entered, he would have that opportunity. But he needed her alive, at least for a little while longer.
He tried to relax as she passed him on the other side of the street, unclenching the muscles that were poised to launch. He turned off his phone and stuffed it in his pocket. He took a deep breath, caught the unmistakable B-negative aroma, and held it, felt his trembling rage diffuse and change into pure, unbreakable focus. When she was a block away and out of sight in the sidewalk traffic, he got up, crossed the street, and followed her scent. When it suddenly weakened and disappeared, he knew she’d gone underground, en route to Manhattan.
As he approached the subway station’s entrance, he paused for a second, expecting to be overcome by some kind of life-flashing-before-your-eyes mental slide show followed by a powerful moment of clarity, something that would either confirm that his sacrifice was the right course of action or cause him to reevaluate everything that had happened in the previous forty-eight hours, and by default, the last six months. But in that second, nothing changed. There was no doubt or anxiety, no increased fear at the prospect of sudden mortality, and likewise, no sense of encouraging, righteous certainty.
There was only Jennifer’s dead, hopeless expression, the same one that had plastered itself onto the forefront of his brain since he’d opened the picture on his phone. And the same primal anger that had been surging through him since he’d been shot, coupled with the need to make things right, regardless of what happened to him.
Feeling the underground shudder from an approaching westbound train, Ryan glanced up at the familiar buildings lining both sides of the street, took one last breath of the only air he’d ever really known, and jogged down the stairs.
12
He listened to the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s automated announcement system—This is a Manhattan-bound L train. The next stop is First Avenue. Stand clear of the closing doors please.—that was followed by a chime and the pneumatic hiss of the train’s doors. From where he was standing, clutching one of the three metal poles that bisected the aisle, Ryan had a mostly unobstructed view of the windows and doors that separated his car from the one ahead of him, where Nicki had taken a seat only a few feet away, already frantically scanning the pixilated confines of her phone, oblivious to her surroundings like most of the other passengers.
The doors closed and there was no going back. Ryan turned to face the side windows and took a last glance at the subway platform where he’d stood for the second time in nearly forty years. Besides the usual twenty-first-century accoutrements—advertisements for the latest superhero movies, small-batch whiskey, and designer grooming products, digital message boards and LED screens flashing train schedules and the time of day—the gloomy subterranean space looked almost the same as it had on the July morning in 1975 when he’d tried—and failed—to make Vanessa Hawkins stay with him in Brooklyn.
She had just finished her senior year at St. Francis when they’d met, when he was living in Brooklyn Heights and calling himself Charles Vincent and she was putting her creative writing degree to use by “waiting for the inspiration” to finish a collection of poems and crashing on a succession of increasingly seedy beds and couches. The last of those temporary landlords was a pudgy, anemic record store owner named Enzo who lived across the hall from Ryan and whose natural stench was almost as bad as his collection of pineapple-shaped ice buckets that functioned as weed and Quaalude receptacles.
Whenever Ryan left his apartment, Vanessa always seemed to be there in the same faded white T-shirt and skintight jeans, reading a stolen library copy of Rimbaud or Ginsberg, smoking cigarettes with friends from the neighborhood, or screaming at Enzo to quit sniffing her laundry. She’d stop whatever she was doing, ask how his day was going, flirt with him to an extent that was excessive even for the tail end of the free-love era; Ryan rarely escaped without having his ass gently groped or hearing playfully vulgar commentary on that part of his anatomy’s cuteness.
At first he found her advances childish and annoying, but he soon found himself looking forward to them. He couldn’t exactly say why. Outwardly she was just like any other tri-state postadolescent who had listened to Patti Smith’s first album and who had forsaken a God-fearing suburban upbringing—and her bras—for the no-consequence chaos of pre-HIV New York. Her poems all rhymed and had titles like “One Small Step for a Woman” and “Barbie Fucker.”
But her persistence spoke to an outer confidence that was as appealing as it was refreshing, especially in someone so young. And once you scraped off the layer of affected grunge, she was as impressive physically as anyone Ryan had ever met. She was tall, a mane of wind-combed blond frizz, willow-slender with hips that whispered mischief and a dancer’s soundless strut. Her laugh was as deep as the hazel eyes that, if he was being honest with himself now, bore a strong resemblance to Jennifer’s. The first time they kissed, he remembered thinking that her lips were the softest he’d ever felt, nothing like the opium-chap
ped ones he’d tasted in Red Hook brothels as a young man.
And, though her strength and physical advantages were obvious turn-ons, Ryan was equally drawn to her vulnerabilities, the innocence that belied her tough exterior. One night she burst into his apartment, her thick mascara smudged and running, saying she’d caught Enzo dropping powder from a measuring cup into the glass of wine she’d left on the kitchen counter. She suspected he’d been doing it for months. The tears streaming onto Ryan’s shirt and the surprisingly small fingers digging into his back awoke whatever protective instinct existed in the blood that had been passed down to him.
He told Vanessa she was safe with him, walked across the hallway, and removed her possessions from his neighbor’s apartment—Enzo had left for the airport a few minutes earlier, on his way to San Diego to spend some time with a cousin, something about expanding his three-store empire into a bicoastal operation.
Ryan and Vanessa spent the next month in a shared peace that Ryan had never imagined would be possible. Her Lucky Strike butts and half-assed notepaper stanzas littered the nightstand next to the bed they hardly ever left. She seemed to need to eat less than he did. For the first time since he’d been turned, he could embrace someone who wouldn’t pull back in revulsion, who wouldn’t scream, who wouldn’t freeze in terror. When she did moan (and that was frequently), it was never out of fear.
The day Enzo got back into town, he returned to the building and waited in the lobby, sullen and glaring and obviously aware of what had transpired between Ryan and Vanessa. When Ryan came downstairs to check his mail, Enzo shoved an eight-inch fillet knife into Ryan’s abdomen as far as the blade would go, twisting it around a few times for good measure. Ryan flinched a little, removed the knife, and returned the favor.