by Dan Dalton
In this New York, bodegas sit next to minimarts. Launderettes and cafes I can see from my window in London rub up against diners and bars and pharmacies. Traffic lights conduct empty streets. Pigeons pigeon. I feel tired. Exhausted. Weak. My head hangs heavy, sleepy. Lightning needs water. I need to find her, I say. Lightning snorts. Listen. Laughter on the wind. A child’s laugh. What we need to do, says Jon, is find where you’ve put the end. He looks over both shoulders, pushes his glasses up his nose. And stay vigilant. This city’ll lie to you.
A billboard above us shows my body, blue, swollen. It reads: You’re too late.
I’m nine, learning what suicide is. A neighbour shot himself with a pistol he kept from the war. Mum says he was sad. I ask her what about. Everything, I suppose, she says.
I’m fifteen. A girl in our class has slashed her wrists. Everyone says she cut the wrong way, that you’re supposed to go with the vein. Curious, I try it in maths class with the point of a compass. I don’t get very far, hurts like shit. I decide if I ever kill myself I don’t want it to hurt.
That thing you read about lethal injections. They use three drugs. The first shuts down the lungs. It’s all they need, really. The second and third are overkill. Three deaths for the price of one.
I say: Shouldn’t you know where the end is.
Jon say: Not if you don’t want me to, ace.
The end should feel both surprising and inevitable. I know this because Jon keeps telling me. Come on, he says. Where would you put an ending in a city like this. The first place I think to look is the New York Public Library. Even though I’ve never been I feel like I know it, I’ve seen it in those pictures everyone always shares. Jon nods. Seems like the kind of thing you’d do.
This is a city stitched together from a thousand photographs. From maps I studied on my road trip. From TV and movies. From the lyrics of songs. Knowledge I’ve never had chance to contextualise. I don’t know how most of it fits together, but I know that the Lincoln tunnel drops us on 10th Avenue. I know that Central Park is pretty much central, that Times Square starts at West 42nd Street. And I know the general aesthetic. How wide the avenues are. What the buildings look like. The columns and cornices. I know the stoops and sidewalks, the steam vents. The classic yellow cabs. The fire escapes.
I know I’d have fallen in love with it, given a chance.
The city I’ve conjured is a dream. Vanilla Sky empty, disintegrating fast. The streets are littered with glass and stone, cars covered in concrete dust. At Bryant Park we dismount. Take stock. Time’s almost up, chief, Jon says. You feel it. I nod. It’s like I’m falling slowly asleep.
Lightning drinks from the fountain. Jon stretches. I find Sophia sitting on the library steps, head in hands. This isn’t the end, then, I say. She shakes her head. He took Fisher, she says. I’m sorry. I park myself next to her, pistons creaking. I tell her not to worry. You shouldn’t listen to him, she says. He thinks he can do a better job of being you. But he’s not you. I pick at a hole in my Cons. He’s the voice I hear when I close my eyes, I say. He’s every doubt. Every failure, every defeat.
You can’t let him win, she says.
I won’t, I say. Promise.
She’s tired too, fading. I see it in her eyes. What is it you pine for, she says. We weren’t perfect. I kick at a step. I love you, I say. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I look at her now, try not to lose myself. She holds my eye a moment. I wish I could believe you, she says.
The first time I told her I loved her, she asked me to tell her again. She smiled, glassy-eyed, as I repeated the words. I love you, she said. I love you. Better men have melted for less.
Perhaps we have to finish this thing together, I say. I stand, offer to help her up. I tried to tell you that on the train, she says. She climbs to her feet unaided. I know, I say. I wasn’t ready to listen. I put my hand out again. I am now. She thinks about it. You’re such a tote bag, she says.
We slap hands, bump our fists, flip each other off. A handshake we used to share in secret.
In our bubble we talked about kids. What it would be like. Afternoon picnics in the park, our daughter walking between us, hair braided like her mother’s. Maybe I did all the talking. Maybe it was me who believed it, who bought every line. Tell a lie long enough it starts telling itself.
A cough. Jon. What’s the play, chief. A column collapses, crashes down the stairs beside us. Then we hear the motorbikes. Exhausts echo through stereo streets. We need to find that ending, Jon says. I take the stairs two at a time. We’ll find it, I say. But I need you to buy us some time.
He removes his starburst sunglasses. You want me to give them the ol’ run around, he says. He throws me a serious stare. It would be my goddamn pleasure. He skips giddily towards Lightning, climbs into the saddle. He might be a figment of my imagination, but he lives for this shit.
Once I find the end, you’ll know. I say.
Yeah and so will he, Jon says.
I’m counting on it.
He puts his sunglasses back on. I thank him. Hey, he says. I’m your Huckleberry. He keeps saying that. I don’t think that means what you think it means, I say, but he’s not listening. He belts out a yee haw, tugs at the reins, and they gallop away. So much for stealth.
Sophia takes point. Any bright ideas, she says. I flip through the buildings I know in the city. Maybe, I say. Just one. Head east. She’s faster than I am. Tired legs don’t carry quick enough.
The street is a gauntlet lined with cliffs of glass. Panes peel from their frames, shattering around us. We weave as we walk, taking refuge under awnings. The motorbikes sound like they’re everywhere at once. On top of us, a mile away. She takes my hand, picks up the pace.
I read that walking is just your body stopping itself falling over.
She once said talking to me is like talking to Google.
As a kid, I always wanted a thing. Some kids broke bones, got a cast. Some kids wore glasses. Some were great at football, or maths. I didn’t have a thing. I never broke a bone, never got a cast or crutches. I wanted a thing so badly I pretended to be deaf for a week or so.
Later, the thing I got was major depression.
Or, you know, the absence of a thing.
Ahead, I see the arched windows of Grand Central Terminal. St Paul’s Cathedral sits across the street. I’m pretty sure that’s not supposed to be there. I’m wheezing, panting. She takes my arm. Come on. My eyes fall on her and I’m lost again. I still have the pain. It’s the poetry I miss.
The slightness of her upper arm. The breath-taking angles of her shoulder. The slow curve of her neck. The crease in her stomach where the skin pinches when she sits. The fuzz around her nipples. Her ribs, the peaks and troughs of bone under soft flesh. The moles, the pimples.
She was poetry to me. Every part of her. She still is.
Depending how your depression manifests you might have co-morbid conditions. Bonus disorders thrown in free of charge: Anxiety, insomnia, OCD.
Co-morbid. People can be like that. Each a symptom of the other.
Sophia helps me through the door, shuts it behind us. Outside, the sound of idling engines; inside, our footsteps echo on stone. I’ve seen the ceiling mural, the constellations, in pictures. Here, I look up to find a swirling galaxy. Greens, reds, arms extending in a spiral.
We climb the steps at the end of the concourse, where the Oyster Bar would be. Instead we find auditorium seats, ripped from a theatre we once visited in London. I don’t recall the play. We were pretty drunk. We sit, slouch in our seats, stare at an empty station. Engines grow distant.
This isn’t the end then, she says. I shake my head. What happens if they catch us. I look at the clock. Four minutes to midnight. Not the actual time. It’s a warning. It ticks over as I watch. Three minutes now. Can’t be anything good, I say.
In our bubble we’re walking home from a bar. She lights a cigarette. Sometimes I’ll take it from her, steal a drag, hand it back. But now I just watch. She inhales, blow
s blue smoke through pursed lips. Suicide in slow motion. It’s beautiful.
Remember when you saw Leonard Cohen, I say.
She laughs. Never gonna let that go, are you.
In our bubble we took the day off, booked a karaoke booth. Got roaring drunk. After, we’re stumbling around Soho in search of cigarettes and mischief when she thinks she spots noted Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen in line at Starbucks. She’s determined to say hello. She’s also five gins deep on an empty stomach. The man who might be Leonard Cohen orders something fluffy, the kind of coffee people who hate coffee drink. He turns around, waves at a woman who might be his wife. It’s clearly not noted Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. I doubt Len drinks anything fluffy. Seems more of a black and bitter kinda guy. That’s definitely him, I say. Quick. She nods, trots over, introduces herself. When she returns she hands me a coffee, frowns, slurs. Wasn’t him. The man who might have been Leonard Cohen walks by, tips his hat, apologises again for not being noted Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. Hallelujah, I say, and Sophia spits flat white all over the pavement.
Later, my mouth on her cunt, I hum ‘Hallelujah’ as she writhes, giggles, tells me I’m out of tune. I laugh, try ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ instead. I hold her hip bones, keep her still, slowly roll my tongue over her clit, let my fingers slide inside her until her orgasm soaks us both.
Here, now, I ruin the moment by telling her I miss making her come.
You can’t help it, can you, she says.
And what, you never think about it, I say.
Of course I do, but it’s not all I think about.
We fall silent again. I know she thinks about me. She sent me a text once, a month or so after we broke up. I can’t stop thinking about fucking you. A low moment. It didn’t go anywhere. She apologised straight after, continued seeing him. But I know I’m still in her head too, somewhere.
The clock ticks over. Something clicks. A thought, an idea. A decision. I know where it ends, I say. I stand, start to move, feeling buoyed, newly energised. She follows behind. We have to be quick, I say. Now I know, he knows too.
On the concourse, light falls through the windows in great columns, the way it did in old photos I’ve seen. The way it can’t any more. Nowadays, skyscrapers built around the terminal block out the sun. We ruin all the best things. At least here I can see it the way it should be.
I try to lighten the mood. Sophia tells everyone her first album was Elliot Smith, but that isn’t true. It was Roxette. I laugh. What, she says. I shake my head, smiling. The thought catches up to her. I hate you, she says. She makes an angry face and I sing a bar of ‘The Look’.
I’m eleven, running away from home. I walk into the woods, climb a tall tree, sit there a while. I decide I’ll build a treehouse. Forage from the land. Then darkness arrives. I’m cold, hungry. I get home late and Mum asks where I’ve been. I blame the tree. I blame the night. It’s not lying if you’re trying to spare someone’s feelings. Truth is just the lies you choose to believe.
When she broke up with me I did what I do best. I ran. I quit my job, threw myself into casual flings, tried to flush her from my mind. It didn’t work. I didn’t work. I couldn’t get hard for anyone else. Sometimes, if I closed my eyes, focused, felt their legs tense around my face, I could convince myself they were her. For a little while at least. Just enough erection to perform.
At the door, we stop to check the coast is clear. The thing that really pisses me off, she says, is that you think it was a lie. I did love you. And I meant all the things I said. About us. About family. You’re fun and funny and kind. But you left no room for me. I didn’t leave because I didn’t love you. I left because I needed to look after myself. I couldn’t do that with you.
I say: I loved you. I love you.
She says: Then believe me.
A billboard sells Occam’s Brand Razors: The simplest shave is usually the right one.
I’m thirty-two, lying on the floor of my one-room flat. Breath slow, vision blurred. I’m scared. Ketamine makes the lights dance. It feels like I’m falling asleep. If I survive this, I’ll tell them it was an accident. I’m sorry, I’ll say. I was trying to fix myself. It’ll sound better. But I’m tired. It’s time.
The final two things she told me. I love you and I can’t do this any more. She meant both.
On a billboard across the terminal: We will misremember it for you, wholesale.
I said the last time I saw Sophia was two weeks ago, but that isn’t true.
The last time I saw Sophia, she told me she was pregnant.
Twenty
New York / Lies, Part II
There is a sun setting, somewhere. I get the sense this is the last one. The city is caught in the endless afternoon of autumn. Blue skies, cool breeze. Twenty-two degrees. I can barely stand. She’s fading too. We walk, half cut in the dusk light, amid a tapestry of brick ruin. Chunks of city crash down around us. Dereliction plays in surround sound. More Bang than Olufsen. The stuttering subconscious of a faltering life. It’s a mess. If you wait long enough everything falls apart.
Above us, billboards hang from every wall. Some of the billboards have billboards. Several show my face, camera angled down, carefully positioned to highlight my cheekbones, downplay my double chin. Sophia is unimpressed. You’re more handsome when you don’t try so hard.
On a billboard: You’re a joke.
The second time I saw her she was fifty pixels tall. An avatar. She was all smiles, eyes shining under curls of golden hair. She was away for work, so we talked over text in the days after the kiss. We messaged until two or three in the morning, woke up together, slept together. Sexted.
She was always worried I’d fallen in love with an idea. An image. One I could project my desires on to. I always told her I hadn’t. And yet here she is. An avatar. Her words, most of them, are her own. Things she’s told me. But her actions, her desire to leave, they’re mine. I can give her the autonomy, the will to be rid of me. But the game is artifice. I’m playing myself.
I know this isn’t real, I say. But can I kiss you. She looks at me with all the affection and nostalgia I can give her. Even if it isn’t true, she says. I nod. Lie to me, I say. She steps forward, leans in. Her lips are so soft. I run my fingers over them, rest my forehead against hers.
As we part, a shower of meteors burns in the upper atmosphere. Hundreds of them, thousands, flaring in slow motion across the sky. Leonids. The end is nigh, she says. I shrug. An apocalypse isn’t the end of the world. She laughs, half humouring a bad joke. I’m only half joking.
Ahead is where this all ends. The Chrysler Building. A silhouette stands sentry outside, a faceless black shape betrayed by his form. He steps from the shadows, features restless, ever shifting. All of them mine. The Many-Faced Me. He’s flanked by the riders we ran from earlier.
He doesn’t need to introduce them. I know who they are: Shame, Doubt, Embarrassment, Guilt.
Also, their names are written on their shirts.
Look at you, he says. Slumming with the slut. She’s made you weak. She goes for him. I pull her back. He chuckles, looks at me. That cunt ruined your life, and you’re going to help her leave. Behind him, I spot Fisher locked in the revolving door.
Every time he speaks, Shame, Doubt, Embarrassment and Guilt repeat things he says. Cunt, joke, pathetic. They laugh and spit and do their best to intimidate us. He steps out of the way as a chunk of stone lands where he stood. You’re not going to survive this, you know, he says.
That thing your therapist said: Don’t listen to the bullies.
I start towards the door. The horsemen step forward, brandishing baseball bats. That’s not a good idea, he says. He takes a bat from Shame, weighs it in his hands, swings at a chunk of falling stone. You used to be somebody, he says. You blew it, you really fucked it up.
He takes an apple from his pocket, bites into it, chews loudly. I could have left already, he says. I have the key. That’s all I need. I flin
ch at the wet smack of the apple in his mouth. Enthusiastic masticators are my Kryptonite. But I didn’t want to miss this, he says. He spits as he speaks, wiping his many chins with the back of his hand. I wanted to see the look on your face.
I say: That’s not why you haven’t left.
I say: Tell her the real reason.
The Many-Faced Man looks behind me. I see you, he says. Sneaky little shit. We turn to see ten-year-old me hiding behind a car. He steps out, slowly, wielding a plastic sword. He raises it up, points it at The Many-Faced Man’s many faces. All of them are laughing.
Hey, cry baby, the Many-Faced Man says, you still wetting the bed. I can smell you from here.
Shut up, I say.
Everyone knows you piss yourself, he says. Everyone knows you’re weak. Pathetic.