The Empress of Tempera

by Alex Dolan

  They dressed in identical beige uniforms with MTA badges embroidered on the sleeves and reflective strips looped around their waists and upper arms. To make them look more like authentic MTA uniforms, Rosewood and Paire had crudded up the knees and shins with spatters of paint, which, from a distance, looked like mud. Paire thought they looked a bit like firemen’s uniforms. Their worker boots were heavier than anything she was used to wearing. They carried yellow construction helmets, and each of them toted a satchel: a bulky duffel for Rosewood, and a long black tube for Paire. Nothing big enough to resemble the “suspicious package” that subway riders were warned about.

  A few minutes later, two others stepped off a Brooklyn-bound 2 train. They wore matching MTA uniforms, so even though Paire had never met these men, she knew they belonged to the group. Charlie and Humberto. After another five minutes, a Bronx-bound 3 let off laggard Lazaro. Paire was highly aware that she was the only woman in the bunch.

  The other three were older than Paire but younger than Rosewood, somewhere in their mid-to-late twenties. Humberto had walnut skin and black whiskers hanging off his chin. Charlie was a redhead with freckles on the backs of his hands. Lazaro had insomniac rings under his eyes and a piercing through one eyebrow. They were all thin, and their gender-neutering uniforms draped off them. Paire was nervous their youth would give them away. For example, people might notice that Charlie’s baby skin had never seen a day of manual labor. She’d trussed up her hair to minimize it, but her crown of artificial red seemed like a bullseye tonight.

  “You’re shaking,” Charlie said to Paire. Irish accent, she noted.

  “Am I?” She looked down at her hands.

  “Just a bit,” said Humberto.

  “Try not to do that,” said Lazaro with a scratchy voice, looking around the station.

  Rosewood said, “Act like you belong here. That’s how people get away with it.” He seemed so hungry to be here, more vibrant than she was used to seeing him. She wondered what this gave him that the money and notoriety couldn’t provide.

  He pulled out two-way radios from his satchel, yellow-and-black hunks of disposable plastic that resembled gigantic bumble bees, and handed them out. “Equipment check.”

  Everyone turned knobs until pinpoint green lights glowed on all of them. They spoke into their radios to test them.

  “Hakuna matata,” said Rosewood.

  “Hakuna matata,” repeated Charlie.

  “Hakuna matako,” said Lazaro.

  “What’s that?” Humberto asked.

  “It means ‘no ass’ in Swahili.” Lazaro tugged his uniform against his skinny behind and wiggled it.

  “Hakuna matako.” Paire chuckled, and the laughter helped settle her nerves.

  Rosewood spoke to them with patriarchal authority. “So I guess these all work.” He was more serious tonight, without the lilting playfulness Paire had come to expect.

  They walked with Rosewood in the lead, marching together in his wake. Surrounded by a team, she felt both safer and more conspicuous. Her steps started to bounce again, as if she were walking across a trampoline. She fingered the collapsed spring baton in her uniform’s roomy side pocket, the one she’d dug out of Rosewood’s closet. Rosewood himself had advised her to carry it, just in case.

  They trotted up the stairs to the mezzanine, which looked similar to the platform level, but with no trenches and more light—essentially a long corridor of white tiles, dusty from knee-level down. They carried their gear to the corridor’s midpoint and set down their bags.

  Rosewood pointed at the boys with his radio as he designated roles. “Humberto, Charlie—spotters. There and there.” He sounded more serious than she’d ever heard him.

  They strapped on their plastic yellow helmets—Humberto had scratched his up to make it look used—and jogged out to the far ends of the walkway. They stood like sentries, looking out for cops, MTA security, or concerned citizens.

  Rosewood addressed Lazaro. “Let’s set up the scrims.” Then to Paire, he said, “Unpack the goods.”

  On their knees, Lazaro and Rosewood hastily unzipped the small pile of black bags and cases, their expressions reminiscent of surgeons cutting out a tumor. Segment by segment, they pulled out hollow aluminum tubing that they twisted together in seconds. Paire guessed they had done this so many times that by now it had become rote. The tube segments jointed together until they created two rectangular frames. As if pulling a magician’s handkerchief from a bottomless pocket, they drew lightweight silk out of the bags and fitted it over the frame until it was taut. Within a minute they stood the structure upright so each one served like a changing screen. The scrims obscured them from the ends of the passageway. Neither of the men looked anywhere but at their work, but Paire couldn’t help but occasionally peek from behind their screens, up and down the corridor to make sure Charlie and Humberto were still at their posts, keeping them safe.

  While they set up the scrims, Paire unzipped her own duffel and pulled out supplies. First, the bucket of paste that she and Rosewood had boiled up the night before. Unlike traditional wheat paste, the secret ingredient was Teknabond, which Rosewood explained made the work “hurricane resistant.” His words. She pried the lid off the small plastic bucket with a screwdriver. The mixture was still grayish blue and had the consistency of chowder. Another bad association with Maine.

  Out came the brushes, rollers, and paint tray. By the time she laid out the painting materials and poured the paste in the tray, Rosewood and Lazaro were already finished assembling the scrim. Lazaro moved with the fluidity of a short-order cook.

  She had just finished sliding the fuzzy foam tubes over the paint roller cages when the men took them, slathered them in the paste, and began spreading a thin coat on the tiles.

  From Charlie’s end of the corridor, Paire heard the distant pounding of heavy heels. Then yakking. When she looked, Charlie was talking to a drunk couple. She couldn’t hear words, just complaints as Charlie redirected them to a detour. The man was in his fifties and wore a leather motorcycle jacket. His companion was a woman in clunky combat boots that rose above the knee and purple lipstick that glowed, even at a distance. She was rocky on her heels, and he had trouble standing in place, staggering back and forth as he argued with Charlie. The couple might have fallen over if they hadn’t been supporting each other.

  “Don’t pay attention to them,” Rosewood muttered. “Eyes on the prize.”

  While they painted, Paire uncorked the long black cylinder and laid out the panels they had printed back in Brooklyn. First drawn, then scanned, enlarged, and printed, the full design measured twenty feet across. They’d had to cut it into five panels to transport it, trimming the edges with X-Acto blades. She unrolled each panel and configured them on the ground.

  Having finished slopping on the paste, Lazaro and Rosewood took each panel and carefully applied it to the wall, rolling more paste over it to glue it to the tiles.

  This was going so quickly she could barely keep up. She unzipped a flat parcel and took out the stencils. Drawn, traced, and meticulously cut apart with blades, she handled them as delicately as lace. Two designs. Three panels for one, two for the other. She laid them on the floor. The first design was six feet long, the second just under four feet. This was the part she had needed to practice at his studio multiple times until she got it right. To the right of the boys’ wheat pasting, she chose an open space of tile, and while considering for the moment that this would be the moment she was truly breaking the law, jiggled an aerosol can and sprayed a coating of adhesive to the paper stencils. Lazaro and Rosewood were affixing the fourth and fifth panels while she mounted her stencils on the wall, panel by panel. The tall one the size of an adult. Next to it, the short one the height of a child. Not so firmly that they’d tear when they peeled off the stencils, but firmly enough to give the designs firm edges and prevent overspray.

  A man in his thirties stumbled into view. His face soot-stained and sporting a jungle of beard,
he wore an outer layer of military fatigues. Paire tried to ignore him, but he was louder than the drunk couple. He shouted obscenities at Charlie and gestured wildly, cocking his arm as if threatening to punch him, but not actually taking a swing. She assumed he was crazy. Frustrated that he couldn’t walk down the hallway, he paced in a circle in front of Charlie, who held his arms up to blockade the man, as if fending off a bear. At the other end of the corridor, Humberto looked on with interest, but didn’t leave his post.

  The pasted portion of the mural hung in place, the goop drying and cementing it to the tile. Rosewood stepped back and cocked his head to make sure the panels had come together properly. Paire handed him and Lazaro two cans of black spray paint, and they rattled them to stir up the mixture. The final touch.

  The man in the fatigues barked something at Charlie and stormed off.

  They dusted black spray paint across the stencils, their hands gliding over the paper. Then Paire packed the paint rollers back in the satchels and hammered the lid back on the paste jug.

  Their radios came to life for the first time. “Heads up,” said Charlie through the speaker.

  Paire’s chest felt icy. At the end of the hallway, a short man in an MTA uniform with a moustache approached Charlie. A real MTA uniform. A real MTA guard. Charlie left his radio on so others could hear.

  Lazaro said to Paire, “Don’t look.”

  “Eyes on the prize,” repeated Rosewood as he sprayed the bottom of the six-foot stencil, unfazed by the confusion. “Almost done.”

  On the radio, they heard the MTA man ask Charlie, “What’s going on?”

  “Light patchwork on the tiles,” said Charlie.

  “Where’s the notice?” More combative this time.

  Charlie stalled. “You got plenty of notice.”

  The MTA man sighed, likely exhausted and in no mood for an argument. “Just show me the papers.”

  Paire heard a ruffle of documents as Charlie procured what she knew were forged permits. If this got to trial, she imagined what kind of sentence she’d get, whether she would see the same judge with the Benjamin Franklin spectacles who’d approved her name change. She worried that in New York impersonating public utilities workers might be misconstrued as terrorism, and whether this transgression might somehow fall under the Patriot Act. She looked down at her hands, and they were indeed shaking visibly. The guys had stopped painting, but were waiting a moment for it to set.

  “We should go,” she said.

  “Just a minute,” said Rosewood.

  Paire heard rustling on the radio. She suspected the MTA man was reading through Charlie’s documents, trying to determine whether they were authentic.

  Rosewood nodded to Lazaro and they peeled off the stencils, rolling them as they went, and stuffing them, crumpled, into a duffel.

  Humberto appeared next to them, making Paire jump. “We’ve got to go.”

  Rosewood said, “Charlie’s taking care of it.”

  Humberto nodded to the other end of the hallway. “Not the permits. We have police on this end.”

  Rosewood said to Paire, “Grab a bag. Don’t look up. You’re exhausted from work.” He looked at the stretched silk regretfully. “Leave the scrims up.”

  Paire took just a second to look at what they had just completed. The twenty-foot pasted mural created the illusion that a hole had been cracked in the wall, giving the viewer a look behind the tiles. Within the crevice, a huddle of stringy, muscular workers clustered together. Their arms pushed up over their heads, they held up riveted girders, which bowed from the weight of the city above. The shape of the opening formed a perverse smile, and the sallow workers with ashen faces seemed like rotted teeth. Beside the crack were two characters, rendered in spray paint, staring into the gaping hole in the wall. The tall one was a fat businessman—not Abel Kasson, but close enough that when Kasson saw it, he’d note the comparison. He stood beside the chasm like a circus barker, with a cane pointed to the exposé. The second character, a boy at the man’s feet, held up a dollar’s admission to the peep show.

  Humberto waved to Charlie with his radio, and when Charlie lifted the talk button, he said as calm as a flight captain, “We’re going to wrap it up here.” Down the hall, Charlie immediately turned on his heels and walked toward them, leaving his fake documents in the hands of the MTA man.

  “Where the hell are you going?” shouted the man, his Queens accent coming out more strongly.

  In a few seconds Charlie reached the others, and they briskly walked en masse back the way they had come, bags in hand. As they rounded the corner, they passed two uniformed officers. They weren’t the same officers who had spoken with Paire the day Nicola Franconi had stabbed himself, but they were similarly bulky, with shaved heads. Rosewood said hello, trying to sound fatigued. Paire wanted to sprint but had to be content with walking at a deliberate pace. Rosewood had told her several times not to run unless they absolutely had to.

  The MTA man, still dumbfounded by what was happening, shouted after them, “Hey!” Possibly he didn’t want to antagonize a group of five, alone in an underground corridor at three in the morning. His voice seemed apprehensive, questioning his own judgment in trying to stop them. But once the team rounded out of sight the police turned the corner and came into view, and he found new courage. “Stop them!”

  “Drop the bags,” said Rosewood.

  He ran, and they followed.

  The boys all ran faster than Paire, and she had to push herself to keep up. They had longer legs, and more practice dodging the police. The boots didn’t help. They clambered down the stairs to the subway platform, their uniforms rustling.

  When mapping their exit, they’d anticipated a couple of routes. One would be to step on the next train out of the station. The other was to exit the station up the stairs to the street. Neither option availed itself. Paire could hear shouting behind them: the two cops and the MTA man. They were only a few seconds behind them.

  Rosewood looked up and down the platform, scanning the scenario for a blink before he said, “Onto the tracks.”

  He hopped into the trench. Their accomplices dropped down into the tracks as well. Spurred by the shouts of men behind them, Paire planted her hands on the yellow safety line and climbed down. Her boots sank into slippery, packed dirt between the ties. The practice on the rock wall helped a little with her balance, but she still fumbled for footing. They started down the tracks, all of them careful where they placed their boots. She tried to plant her feet on the railroad ties but didn’t always find them. Her boots sank in the loose aggregate and debris—soggy newspaper, an empty Coke bottle, brown paper bags, and empty cardboard coffee cups. She looked over her shoulder and saw the two uniformed officers charging at them, with the moustached man catching up on the stairs. Running as fast as the tracks would allow, she slipped, and rocked off balance. She would have fallen if Rosewood hadn’t caught her arm.

  “Keep to the right,” Rosewood urged, cautioning her to avoid the electric rail. Had she fallen, she would have braced herself on the electric current.

  They sped forward, down the length of the platform. Behind them, the officers jumped down into the trench, possibly intrigued by the challenge. She heard the sound of their boots crunching gravel and garbage.

  She could hear her own breathing and feel her lungs begin to pinch, but she was so frightened she wouldn’t dare stop. Lazaro was out in front, followed by Humberto, then Charlie. Rosewood had trailed behind with Paire to make sure she could keep up. She charged as fast as she could without risking another tumble, and they made it all the way to the end of the station and disappeared into the shadows. The subway tunnel turned into a mineshaft, sparsely lit by the dimmest bulbs.

  They all slowed in the dark. In the lead, Lazaro crept daintily on the ties as if tiptoeing on lily pads. Paire kept her arms stretched to the sides so she wouldn’t slip, using the weak tunnel lights as beacons.

  The men behind them shouted after them, the predicta
ble “Stop!” and “Police!”

  Once they were in the darkness, their shouts bounced around the tunnel, making it hard to determine the point of origin. Hard breathing from the rest of the group blended into a symphonic wheezing. Someone coughed, maybe Charlie. The air tasted damp. Her nose dripped.

  They kept going in silence for another minute before Rosewood said, “Slow down.” Under a faint light, she saw him look back the way they had come.

  She looked and listened.

  “They’re not following us. It’s too dangerous. They don’t want to get shot in the dark, and they don’t want to get hit by a train. They’ll call it in.” She could still see a pinpoint of light where the tunnel behind them opened into Wall Street station. She expected to see flashlight beams bouncing around in the dark, but the officers had climbed out of the trenches.

  Her lungs stung even more now that they slowed down to a walk. When she caught her breath, she asked, “So why are we still on train tracks?”

  “We’re finding an exit.”

  They rounded a bend, after which they lost the light from Wall Street station.

  They hadn’t prepared for this, and Paire had no idea if anyone knew what they were doing. When they passed under the next tunnel bulb, she looked to the others to see if they had the same confidence as Rosewood. Humberto seemed at ease, while Charlie and Lazaro looked edgy.

  The acrid smells in the corridor mixed mildew, rubber, hard water, and charcoal, as if she were standing inside an abandoned smokestack. She tried to calm herself by listening to their footsteps, scuffing along the trash and gravel. Their boots tramped through more water, a section of subway that had flooded, or never drained. They sloshed through a two-inch marsh. The liquid seeped in through the worn stitching in her heel, and she felt cool moisture dampen a sock. Paire imagined the liquid might be brown as milk chocolate.

  Then she heard a new noise. Scratches on the wooden ties. Small creatures moving hesitantly, scrambling as they scurried away in the dark. Paire kicked something soft with her boot and gasped.