by Chris Vola
Ryan waited a moment, got up, and squeezed his body through the fence’s opening. He looked down at the freshly ripped holes in his pants, at the concrete dust caking his shoes. He pulled the brim of his cap lower on his forehead, staining it with the rat gunk and other unidentifiable grime that had been collecting on his hands. It was better to look and smell this way, he told himself. The more disheveled you appeared, the more people would go out of their way to avoid you, to quickly look in a different direction.
You were just another crazy bum.
He followed Nicki as she walked along 29th Street toward the island’s westernmost edge, past another hodgepodge of luxury housing, galleries, storage facilities, abandoned warehouses, vaguely industrial structures, and a commercial bus depot protected by a barbed-wire fence. As they approached the West Side Highway and the Hudson River, the buildings began to thin out and the cloudless sky seemed to open up, reflecting the vastness of the river that made the residential towers and marinas on the New Jersey side seem doll-sized and insignificant. Nicki waited for the traffic light to change, crossed the highway and a two-lane bike path, and entered a paved park area dotted with tree boxes, benches, a gazebo, and a small pier jutting out for several yards above the water. The only people in the vicinity were a pair of parks department employees lounging on a green-and-yellow John Deere utility vehicle and an elderly inline skater seated on the ground, stretching his legs. Nicki made a beeline for the pier and the lone bench at the end of it. She sat down, removed her backpack, and took out a large can of Red Bull and a sandwich from the bag she’d been carrying.
Ryan walked past the workers on the golf cart, both of whom ignored him. He sat down at the picnic table under the gazebo, placed his backpack on the table, and laid his head on it, resting at an angle that would be optimal for watching Nicki and would lead any passersby to believe that he was simply napping off a rough night.
Nicki finished eating, unzipped her backpack, and removed a laptop. She opened it and began typing in what looked like a Word document. Every few minutes she would stop to check something on her phone, sip from the Red Bull can, or stare out at the water. Occasionally a jogger or a couple would stroll out onto the pier to take a selfie or a picture of the Freedom Tower. Nicki maintained the zenlike focus of a Ph.D. student. After about three hours, she stood up, walked slowly in a circle around the bench, stopped, and bent over. She did a few yoga stretches, sat back down, and took another Red Bull out of the plastic bag. The typing resumed.
For the first time since he’d started tracking her, Ryan began to fidget, to waver in his concentration. This wasn’t what he had anticipated happening. With every hour that passed, the chances of him finding Jennifer and the chances of him reverting to an incurable, disease-riddled state increased exponentially.
His only viable option to make things right was sitting a stone’s throw away, oblivious and unguarded, surrounded by water on three sides. He could grab her phone and backpack and toss her computer into the river before she could do anything to stop him. He could sit soundlessly on the bench next to her and wrap his arm around her neck, muffle her screams and make it look like a gentle embrace. When he’d gotten the information he needed from her, he could tighten his grip and leave her lifeless and upright; it might be hours before anyone noticed. Even if she didn’t know anything of value, there would be contacts in her phone, new leads he could act on immediately.
As Ryan reached in his backpack to retrieve Arthur’s knife, two city-pale shaggy-haired kids, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, shot by him on skateboards. They skidded to a halt at the pier. One of them took a packet of Skittles out of his pocket and began slinging the candies into the water, trying to skip them across the surface like tiny colored pebbles. The other kid fiddled with his phone, and an egg-shaped speaker in his other hand started blasting a hip-hop beat.
Nicki swiveled around sharply and gave them her best fuck-you glare. They ignored her and began rapping along to the music. She rolled her eyes, shut the laptop, packed up the rest of her stuff, and stood up to leave.
Ryan, still leaning over the picnic table, slid the knife out of his pack and slowly pressed it against his stomach, gripping the bone-smooth handle. He watched Nicki walk the length of the pier, scowl at the skateboarders, and head in a direct line back to the highway that would bring her only a foot or two away from the gazebo.
It would be so easy. All he had to do was reach out and grab her, pull her in and press the knife to her little liar’s throat. The candy-chucking delinquents wouldn’t have a clue as to what was happening. And if she was being watched over by the Manhattan tribe, he would at least have the satisfaction of seeing her eyes go blank before they could do anything about it.
But as she approached the gazebo—raising her smug chin to unknowingly provide an easy target—and walked within an arm’s length of where Ryan was waiting for her, he didn’t make a move. Not because he’d had a sudden change of heart, caught sight of any new potential witnesses, or lost his grip on the blade.
He sat frozen by a helpless panic that he hadn’t felt since he’d seen the pictures of Jennifer for the first time.
He couldn’t smell Nicki.
* * *
The coughing started at night. At first it was minor, a soft wheeze every minute or so, like a tiny piece of lint or food was caught in his throat and needed to be forced out. The spasms gradually increased their intensity until his entire body trembled with every half-stifled bark, with every massive wad of phlegm and blood that he spat onto the vacant lot’s rubble-covered ground. Worse than the coughing was the pain that came with it.
The burning in his throat that made swallowing impossible and breathing a luxury.
The shocks of electricity running from his chest to the base of his spine that caused his jaw to clench to the point where he tasted tooth fragments along with the mucus.
And finally, the snap. The unbearable sizzle of every muscle in his body seizing at once as he plummeted to the dirt, writhing, clutching himself, still desperately trying to focus on the building where Nicki had returned after her trip to the park, as he slipped in and out of consciousness, closer than ever to the true darkness.
* * *
He watched Nicki leave the building, wearing the same pseudo-athletic gear as the day before. It might have been some time in the early afternoon, but he wasn’t sure. She stopped at the deli, came out carrying a bulging plastic bag, and headed in the direction of the park.
Ryan tried to move from the fetal position he’d been in for hours—how long he couldn’t be sure—but he was still too shattered to even feebly kick at the rats that periodically gnawed at his shoes and legs and were beginning to explore the holes in his pants. He could tell that the small bites one of them had made in his calf weren’t going to heal, that they would fester and spread and might cause a serious infection that would take him out quicker than the illness that had returned and would completely overrun his system in the near future.
Paralyzed and feverish, Ryan had entered a place beyond time and physical trauma, where what had happened and what was going to happen fused into a waking nightmare that he could neither touch nor escape. He saw his mother sitting in a shadow-spun room lit by a single oil lamp on a distant mantel, her drawn face and pinched nose hunched over an industrial-size, wheel-driven sewing machine like the ones from the garment factory in Sunset Park where she’d sat for ten years, through four or five miscarriages and daily beatings from a jealous, pitiful man. A man who now appeared in a fleck of light behind her, who gathered the darkness of the room until he consumed it, a cackling specter, shattering the lamp with an empty quart bottle he held in his rough, blackened fist and stepping behind the woman at the sewing machine who still looked like his mother, but leather-skinned and white-haired, far older than the thirty-five years she’d actually lived. The man kissed the back of her head and her belly swelled until it exploded, submerging Ryan in a blinding sea of salt and blood and he wa
s drowning and then being lifted up by two sets of hands and thrust out onto a mist-tinged valley the color of charcoal and gangrene. He looked up at the men who had saved him but there was only one, a towering figure with a sad expression whose shifting features were somehow a composite of Arthur and Frank, who disintegrated into a thick mist when Ryan reached out to grab the man’s leg and use it to pull himself up. He stayed immobile and sightless on the sludgy ground for what seemed like years, lifetimes before finally gathering the strength to get upright, to lift his legs, to take in his surroundings. The mist began to clear and through it he saw dozens of bodies silently trudging toward him, men and women in drab wool coats and seersucker caps, cocktail dresses and smudged overalls, pastel bell-bottoms and black tracksuits. He saw slit necks, gouged-out chests, slick cavities where jaws should have been, all of the wounds he’d inflicted to satisfy his hunger, to prolong the solitary drudge of his life, to get what he wanted. And walking behind the corpses were taller, smooth-skinned men wielding spears and bows, naked except for animal-skin cloths around their waists and the feathers and seashells that were woven into the braids of hair that hung nearly to the ground. Their eyes were emerald pits of pure fire. They were the original tribe, coming to take back what he had stolen from them, to punish his failure. He turned to run and the ground morphed into an impassable jigsaw of pits and swamps bordered by two rocky hills that were rising in the distance, buoyed by some invisible force. At the summit of each stood a pale, beautiful woman, the same woman, one version young and wild-haired, the other older and withered, both of them holding a glowing stone object that shone with the intensity of a furnace. At first they were smiling, calling out to him in a language that he’d never heard before but one that pulled at him with its musicality, a song bathed in love. But when he tried to walk toward them, his feet snagged on an unseen root and he went tumbling into the slushy muck that had spread and was pouring over him like a chemical-choked river, boiling, burning through his skin. The women’s faces distorted into grimaces of pain. Their words turned into guttural wails, pleas for him to continue, to rise and meet them above the gathering storm.
But weighed down and sinking lower into the muddy refuse—the foul mixture of everything that had come to define him, the painful glimpses of lives he might have had, and the possibilities he had yearned for but would never come to know—he was unable to crawl to either of them.
* * *
When he woke again it was night, orange-tinted but darker in the shadows under the overpass. He felt a cold wetness seeping down his forehead and pooling above his lips and wondered if it had rained, before realizing that the salty fluid was his own sweat.
His throat ached and his limbs felt like they were coated in rust, inside and out, but nevertheless, it was an improvement from the last time he had experienced anything close to a moment of clarity. He was able to wipe the crust out of his eyes and the foul-smelling residue that had congealed around his mouth and ease himself into a sitting position. When his vision cleared enough and his eyes adjusted to the monochromatic gloom, he saw his backpack resting on its side, the murky ground near his legs where puddles of dark liquid had dried and cracked, the constant scurrying of rodents along the base of the fence.
The building across the street was quiet, devoid of color and life. The deli was shuttered and the closest streetlight was broken, further obscuring Ryan’s view. The only break in the monotony came from an open third-floor window where Nicki could be seen leaning against an unseen counter or table, naked, fondling one of her large, dark brown nipples and running the fingers of her other hand through the black, close-cropped hair of a head that was tucked firmly between her abundant thighs, bobbing in a slow, circular rhythm. She closed her eyes, tilted her own head back, allowed her tongue to escape the corner of her mouth, and let out a squeal of pleasure that was loud enough to shatter the silence of the slumbering block.
Ryan felt a sudden surge of adrenaline, a violent jolt of energy that allowed him to pull his backpack onto his lap, take out the pistol and tuck it against his waist, sling the pack over his shoulders, and crawl to the fence, causing the rats to scatter and his chest to heave with a series of wet, body-shaking coughs. Breathing heavily, spitting the remnants, he waited a few moments before gathering what little strength he had left and gripped the chain links, hoisting himself up into a standing position, trying not to scream at what felt like power drill bits boring into every inch of his feet when he tried to take a step.
He staggered along the edge of the lot, using the fence to support himself, until he reached the opening next to the overpass. Somehow he was able to slip through the gap without catching any more of his tattered clothing on the metal protrusions that had stabbed him during previous exits, or without face-planting onto the pavement. He leaned against the street-facing side of the fence as another coughing spell worked its way through his sunken frame, while his stomach tried to expel something that wasn’t there.
He looked up at the window to see if Nicki or her fuck buddy had heard him. If they had, it hadn’t stopped them.
She was facing the street, red-faced and smiling, bent over with her arms splayed outward and her hands resting on the window ledge, her chest heaving and her skin glistening with a wet red sheen as a bronze-skinned guy in his early twenties with the no-fat, hairless physique and requisite chest tattoos of a mixed martial arts fighter thrust into her from behind, his hands clamped tightly on her shoulders, a thin line of red fluid dribbling from his mouth and pooling onto her back. Staring at an unknown point in the distance, his unblinking, straight-lipped expression exuded, even from where Ryan was standing, an uncanny amount of both calmness and intimidation.
Exactly like the tribal elders whom he had seen pursuing him in his vision.
The tattoo on the man’s right breast was a series of black swirls and dashes that extended over his shoulder and across his bicep, a design that reminded Ryan of several of the drawings from Arthur Harker’s crumbling papers. On the other breast was a gleaming red M. The man was either a member of the tribe or going all out to do a convincing impersonation.
Maybe Nicki was his donor, or he was her human bodyguard, trying to earn enough respect from the tribe to be turned himself. A well-placed exit wound would answer those questions quickly. It would be a relatively straightforward shot, Ryan tried to convince himself, as long as he could keep his crippled arms from shaking for a few seconds.
He moved along the fence, pausing for a moment to listen to Nicki’s choked grunts. He sized up the angle, visualized the trajectory the bullet would need to take while trying to steady the nerves that he hoped hadn’t already been frayed to the point of uselessness.
“Relax,” he said to himself, even though he knew that would be impossible. It was now or never. There was no benefit in waiting for a perfect moment he didn’t have. This was his last and only real chance to enact some small measure of revenge, to make his death at least a little meaningful.
As he reached under his shirt and fumbled for the gun’s handle, he heard footsteps quickly approaching from the east end of the block. “I’d think twice before you do anything else stupid,” a baritone voice growled.
He turned to face a scowling, barrel-chested black man wearing a backward baseball cap and a lightweight black jacket. The man’s softball-sized fists were clenched in a show of strength that was unnecessary for Ryan to realize that he would have no way of defending himself if things got physical.
Ryan’s forefinger traced the pistol’s magazine, clicked off the safety, and rested next to the trigger. “Fuck off,” he heard himself mumble in a voice he barely recognized.
The man sighed, rubbed his stubbled jaw, and nodded at the window where Nicki had moved out of view even though her moans had increased in volume. “This ain’t a peep show, dude,” he said. “You can’t just grab your shit and rub one out on the street every time you catch a glimpse of some freakiness. Those two should at least pull down the curtain, but
until someone calls in to complain, there’s nothing I can do about it. And it doesn’t make what you’re doing down here any less disgusting or illegal. Frankly, I’m surprised to see you walking around. Figured you’d still be in the dirt sleeping one off or hustling for another fix somewhere a little more, uh, economically viable.”
“You can’t—” Ryan sputtered before being cut off by another cough attack that ended with him doubled over and spitting blood on the sidewalk. Blood that didn’t show any signs of dissolving.
The man reached into his back pocket, pulled out a wallet, and flipped it open to show Ryan an NYPD badge. “I could have taken you in for trespassing hours ago,” he said, putting the wallet back into his pocket and brushing back his jacket to reveal a holstered sidearm. “But this site’s been empty for months, some kind of zoning snafu between the city and Van Pelt or one of those other big construction companies. You weren’t bothering anybody.”
Ryan stared at him blankly, gasping for air.
“Not that you give a shit about that. Believe me, I know what withdrawal is like. I’m four years sober next Tuesday. And the only thing that I hate more than the fact that I’ll always have the desire to get high is paperwork. So get out of here. Go to a shelter, your favorite trap house uptown, I don’t care. Just don’t make me think I wasted my goodwill on a fucking pervert.”
Ryan stood for a moment, weighing his options. He stared at the unflinching cop, then up at the building, where Nicki’s window shade had finally been pulled down. If he’d had any options, they no longer existed. “Thank you,” he managed to croak out. “I’m … going now.”