Need

by Nik Cohn

  Willie knew about fires; his Cousin Felix had fought them for his living. Black smoke meant conflagrations that were out of control, white smoke meant containment. But there was no white smoke in view, a nicotine yellow was the best deal going. A Foot Locker was blazing, and a Walgreen’s was belching clouds of mucoid green. Why green? But green it was, and a Burger King was crumpling like blue touchpaper.

  At Columbus Circle the wolf pack swung right, heading for the hotels to the east. Plush pickings inside the Essex House and the Plaza, pirate’s treasure, but Willie refused to be tempted. Instead, pushing north, he travelled Broadway. Though his feet didn’t climb, he felt himself rising up, out of a gulf to higher ground. The crowds were not so hard-packed here, and there were gaps between the fires, he was able to move almost freely. Now that the dark had given way to a murky brown, he could see his own feet in their clown shoes, see what and who they trod on. Next to a Shop Rite five bodies formed a ragged circle. A posse of horse thieves, they must have been, but they must have picked the wrong white mare to ride. One, a woman, sat propped upright in the doorway, the needle still stuck in its vein. A baby was on her lap, crying for the tit, but Willie could not stop, he was running late. Children were breaking in doors with hatchets and picks, cutting through metal gates with blowtorches, and a suffer-head in combat fatigues was brandishing an AK-47, and a burn victim lay stretched upon a pink blanket, black face roasted, no eyes. Ugly way to go, Willie thought, but he had moved beyond.

  A late-model Mercedes that had rammed Nature’s Nurture sat hissing. The driver was still making noises, but the tyres were slashed, the hubcaps already stripped. As Willie fumbled with Anna Crow’s spare key, he heard the man gargle, go croak. Then Willie was inside, he was safe.

  Down the passage and up the narrow steep stairway, sixteen steps; along, then he was in Kate Root’s bedroom. Its floor felt spongy with feathers.

  Straining against the dimness, he saw Kate’s big shape bulging under a white sheet. She seemed to be breathing hard and ragged in there. For a moment he thought she might be crying, but the sound was not right, it was probably just fear. Or expectation, who knows? When she turned to see him standing in his skin, when she realized what he’d come for. But you couldn’t guess from her expression; she looked at him dead flat. “What is the meaning of this?” she said.

  The meaning of this? She owed him, that’s all. Her bill had come due, and he was here to collect. Blunt instruments were hammering on the steel gates downstairs, baseball bats, by the sound of them, and Willie D whipped off the bed sheet, exposed her.

  Splayed like a starfish, that heavy body inside its schoolgirl’s pink nightie with the coy little flowers embroidered at the neck and the hem rucked up high around her hips, she showed him all she’d got. Didn’t even try to cover herself, and what was to hide anyway? The three hairs were long gone, they would never grow back. Though he couldn’t help but sneak a look. In case of a miracle, you never could tell. But the bone-white dime above her ankle was barren. Void.

  By the time he raised his sights, the pink nightdress had been lowered, there was nothing left to see. But this absence only goaded him. One hand ripped at the woman’s belly, the other turned her head. Her green eyes were inches below him, and the gap in her front teeth was almost his: “Have some popcorn,” said Kate Root.

  And he was dead meat.

  It was the apathy that broke him. Scratching and spitting he could handle, he was no stranger to wildcats, but neutrality did him in. The steady way Kate Root was watching him, measuring. That same level look she’d used the first morning he had clapped eyes on her, playing with her parakeet or whatever on the sidewalk. It had paralysed him then, it killed him now. “Put it away,” she said, and she didn’t even sound mocking, you wouldn’t hardly think she had triumphed. Almost conversational, she sounded, and she put her thick fingers to Willie’s face, she touched the bridge of his nose.

  The hammering downstairs was getting more frenzied, now it sounded like steel smashing steel. Still, her fingertips were unhurried, butter-soft. They felt him, shaped him to themselves. And all his rage slid away. All his hungers, and his vengeance. Ask him why he’d come here, he couldn’t have said. To rest, probably. For a great weariness took him. Feeling these fat fingers mould and trace him, smelling Kate’s warm-bread breath on his eyes. Sensing home. Though he had none.

  Loudhailers and sirens were moving up the block. “It’s been a long night,” Willie said, and he’d started to slide down along the rumpled sheet, he was drifting away with his eyes open, when the gates of the Zoo went in with a mortal crash that made the bed buck and shudder like a startled horse, and a moment later the screaming began. “My birds!” Kate Root cried, grabbing up her stun-gun. Then the screaming mingled with choking, an asthmatic gasping. “My snakes!” Kate roared, and charged.

  Never even stopped to put on her dressing gown. Willie carried it for her, just in case, and followed her spoor down the stairs. In this early light he was struck by the wallpaper. Three gilded petals on a creamy shield, was that what you called a fleur-de-lis? And he turned the blind corner into the Zoo; he walked into an abattoir.

  Three or maybe four kids, dressed up in black as Ninjas and wielding machetes, were slashing at every living thing. The cages had all been opened, and the birds beheaded as they flew out. Their bodies littered the floor, hung from the trees, lay broken against the walls. Some still flurried in midair, headless clumps of feathers, jetting blood; others were piled in the doorway where they’d dashed at the light. And still the Ninjas whirled their machetes, cutting now at the wandering jews, now at the snakes crawling underfoot, now at birds that hadn’t been killed cleanly, only maimed.

  Kate Root kept rushing at them, howling with no words, and they kept taunting her, flirting their weapons in her eyes, slicing rips in her nightdress as she chased them. A blinded bear she seemed, striking out at air, slithering in the blood that lapped at her bare feet. Blood that the kids kicked up like surf, splashing her thighs and groin. They sported like Little Leaguers, tossing the severed heads of kingsnakes and whiptailss back and forth across the Zoo; they might have been playing pepper. And Willie could not intrude. He knew it was expected, but he couldn’t enter that lake of blood. Only stood on the outside gawking, when Kate, with a last despairing lunge, pinned one of the Ninjas in the wreckage of the steel gate and began to crash his skull against a buckled strut. Gouging flesh and matter, body-slamming him, still howling. Not to be prised loose even when one of the child’s homeboys clutched her by the hair and wrenched, slid his blade against her throat.

  Her teeth, white in red, looked like grinning when she looked at Willie in the doorway; then someone threw a dead snake. Twisting in air like a lasso, it flew at Willie’s feet, and splattered Littles Fernando’s loafers. And Willie snapped. Though they might be only borrowed, they were still shoes. Something heavy came in his hand, and he plunged. Swung his right arm once, swung twice, then again and again, feeling bones crack and flesh pulp, hearing screams that were no birds, till the blows hit only air.

  The Ninjas had run off, nobody but Kate was left. She lay in twisted metal and shattered glass, no longer howling, not making any noise at all. Around her a few birds still twitched, one or two snakes lay coiled. Willie recognized the whiptail who’d teased him that night of Osain’s grave. Its yellow-rimmed eye still measured him, ironic, but no body was attached.

  The weight in his hand was dragging at Willie’s arm. When he looked down to see his weapon of choice, it was the toilet seat from the barbershop, the one he’d aimed his blade at. So all things were connected, even here, and he helped Kate to her feet, the two of them slipping a little in the mire, bodies bumping awkwardly at hip and knee.

  When she grabbed at him for balance, her palm left its red double on his shirt front. A perfect imprint, the Line of Destiny, the Girdle of Venus; you could have read her fortune.

  Stumblebums, they staggered as they moved, clasping tight to each other to
keep their feet. The counter was a few steps away, it seemed a distant shore, and when they reached it they clung to it shuddering, gasping for breath.

  Close beside the Zenith lay a cockatoo, pure white, its plumes fanned like an umbrella. At first glance it seemed unharmed. Only one drop of blood blemished it white breast, one drop its beak. And Kate Root at last began to weep. Hid herself in Willie, and he took her in. Harboured her, why not? She was an old woman, after all.

  Afterwards she lit a Camel, then passed it to him, but the blood like smudged lipstick put him off. A time like this, smoke failed to satisfy. And Kate Root must have felt the same way. At any rate she wiped her eyes, she blew her nose. Blood, snot and tears: “I need a drink,” she said.

  “The need is mutual.”

  “If it was mutual, it wouldn’t be need.” But gently, not looking to start an argument. “I have to powder my nose,” she said, and departed.

  Willie D didn’t care to stay in this place by himself. This boneyard. Bumblefooted in another man’s shoes, he groped his way through the chasm where the Zoo’s door had been, looked out into the street. Already the main body of looters had passed, only scavengers were left. The sirens and the mob’s raging sounded a few blocks north, zigzagging towards Harlem. The Ansonia was burning, Willie saw, a wedding cake with its candles blazing. A flock of black birds streamed from its blazing turrets. And one brighter colour among them. A flurry of vermilion over turquoise, it looked like a cockatoo.

  The escape artist, it must be. Must have hit the door too swift and wild for the Ninjas to cut it down. The notion crossed Willie’s mind to go out searching for other survivors, but he hadn’t the strength left, or the will. Besides, he’d done enough. One true thing. It was all any man could deliver.

  Through the velvet curtain in the barbershop, he perched on the high chair like a throne and rested himself, watching the striped pole spinning on the wall. The weariness was on him again, that same slow drifting he’d felt in Kate’s bed. The sense of home, against all meaning.

  It lulled him to sleep.

  And at last he dreamed.

  He was in church, it was dead of night, a black stormy night full of lies, and he’d come to the chapel to pray. But his prayers came out all jumbled, back to front, and he was too tired to set them straight. He felt spent, no flicker of energy left.

  Sitting by himself in this empty church, with only a solitary priest for company. But this priest did not regard him. He was kneeling at the altar with his back turned, robed and cowled like a medieval monk in Robin Hood. From where Willie sat, the priest’s face was hidden but he seemed to be making secret signs with his hands. Telling his beads, maybe, or casting a spell. Then Willie stood up, came close, and the priest turned. The light was bad and the angle of his hood covered up his eyes, but his attitude was stiff, intimidating, like somebody else’s father.

  When Willie looked closer, he saw that the priest had a bandit’s moustache, he was dressed up like Zorro underneath his robes, and you could tell that he wasn’t so harsh or cold after all, that was just his front. Willie snuck a glance beneath his cowl, and the priest’s eyes were teasing, flirting. It was obvious that he hadn’t been telling beads, not casting spells; what he’d been doing with his hands was creating a paper aeroplane. Exquisite workmanship, indescribably intricate. Willie bent close to inspect the details, and the priest spoke to him in a low voice.

  The words could not be distinguished, but they altered everything. Instead of examining the paper plane, Willie was now riding inside it, first class, and the priest was drinking whiskey sour. A perfect gentleman, he asked Willie what he’d like for himself, and the way he smiled when he offered this, Willie knew he could ask for anything in existence. Just give it a name, it would be his. But no single word came to his mind; there seemed to be nothing he needed. Not now, not any more. So he shook his head, no, and a bowl of clear soup appeared. Then the priest raised Willie by his throat, not roughly or unkind but irresistible, and pushed his face beneath the surface.

  Instantly, all his weariness washed away. He caught a glimpse of the priest reflected in the soup, and the priest had turned into a young girl, though he kept his bandit’s moustache. Seeing Willie watching, he peeled down his monk’s robe to show his breasts. His whole body was laid bare, offered up. Willie pillowed his face against the rounded hummock of the priest’s pussy. The red hairs smelled wild like jungle flowers.

  Waking, he felt rested but antsy; his business here was over. When he stepped out on the street, it had begun to rain. Nothing hard as yet, but you could smell a drenching on its way.

  Broadway in daylight was no man’s land. Huge tangles of barbed wire rose at every corner, blocking off the side streets, and the areas between were minefields. Camouflaged manholes, smouldering trash-fires, unexploded tear-gas canisters. A garter snake and a gecko were lounging outside the Chemical Bank. The clock above them read 9:43, then 104°.

  The late-model Mercedes had been removed from Sweeney’s doorway. In its place was that man Anna Crow had told him about, the one who lived in the attic. Squat, he believed the name was. A dancing man, anyway, and he was dancing now. Reeling drunk, an open pint in his meat hand, he was doing a soft-shoe shuffle. Leaning way forward as if listening to something way downtown, he kept swaying, almost falling. Still his feet were light; you could see he knew the steps. A sand-drag, a pigeonwing, then a long slow rubber-legged spin, his arms flapping like a demented flamingo: “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen,” he said.

  It was a point of view. Made a ton of sense, when you took time to think. But Willie had no time, he could not afford that luxury. This was his day, he mustn’t waste it.

  Across the street a shoe store stood wide and gaping. The wolves had already gone through it, stripped it almost bare. But one pair had been overlooked. A pair of calfskin laceups, glossy nigger brown, absolutely plain. No armadillo or lizard-skin, no ostrich trim or Spanish tonguing. Just a handful of lines, a few curves. Maybe that was why they’d been spared, they were so simple and understated that no one had noticed them. Only Willie. Who took one look, and stood rapt, too dazzled almost to claim them. Peering down at the label to see who the designer could be, Manzio or Berkeley Musser, Roscoe de Llama, Miami Mort Amity maybe, but it was none of those, the creator was not even listed. Dark Brown, was all the label said. Man’s Shoe.

  These were the titles of birds: Calliope, Ariel, Frilled Coquette, Sainson’s Doubtful Toucan, Red-capped Babbler, Turquoise-browed Motmot, Malachite Sun-bird, Sappho Comet.

  The stairs were smothered with their feathers, her room was full of feathers, too. Blue Creeper, Ant Tanager, White-footed Racket. She couldn’t stay here. She could never sleep in that bed again. A feather even stuck to Fred Root’s portrait. Crimson Topaz Hummingbird. She swept it aside, but then it clung to her nightgown instead, as others clung to her arms and legs. Abyssinian Ground Hornbill, Mexican Diglossa Honeycreeper, she couldn’t stay here.

  Outside Ferdousine’s door, instead of a Welcome mat, lay a tangle she could have used for a mop. King Bird of Paradise: red head, white breast, and a ring of green throat ruffle; white and fawn wing feathers, green-rimmed, which can spread downwards like a fan; and two thread-like tail feathers which cross each other and possess green snail-like veins at the tips. Its call sounds like the mewing of a kitten.

  She had a thought to rap on that mahogany door, seek refuge in a cup of Earl Grey, but this was no morning for Melba toast, and anyhow Ferdousine would never hear her knock. These last days and nights he had been consumed by cricket, huddled over his short-wave radio, listening on earphones to the Test Match in London. England and Australia at Lords, in his mouth it sounded like a cathedral, and until play had ended, no earthquake or mere apocalypse would shift him.

  No comfort there, not a hope, so she climbed more stairs, steep and strait, up above the feather-line, until she arrived at Anna Crow’s.

  She had not entered this room since Anna moved in. Why would sh
e? A trifling piece of work, that one. Forever wheedling and twisting, slavering after a new pair of pants. Needy, it was the ugliest word. But what was she herself, after all? What else had brought her here, fumbling at the poor bitch’s door, and when it gave way, sneaking in to snoop? Knowing well that Anna couldn’t be home, she would never have stood her ground through such a night. A woman who screamed Fire! any time you struck a match. No more intestinal fortitude in that girl than would fuck a flea. Still, she had some nice things in here. God forgive her so many self-portraits, and that hand-tinted pink bridesmaid was obscene. But the ornaments looked well, ornamental. The spice pots and the Chinese slippers. A Claddagh ring, she hadn’t seen one of those in years. A French shoe-last, that would fit well in her own room. And these silk scarves. And …

  God’s holy trousers, forgive me.

  How could she be so crass? So perverse? These last weeks and months, she’d lost all sense of fittedness. Gravitas, that was the right word. Talk about trifling, she herself had taken out the patent. Self-defence, but no excuse. Spying on Anna Crow this way, she might have perished for shame. So she slid across the landing, and spied on Maguire instead.

  This was another room she did not frequent; it was too full of Godwin. Poor boy, she felt responsible in a way, she never should have let him take that job, but how was she to know? Those were the days she was not seeing, she’d had no suspicion. And he had been so happy in his work, the long white apron, the chef’s toque and all. How many midnights she’d spent in this same room, waiting for that little tubby body to trundle up the stairs with the evening’s pie. Chicago deep-dish, Sicilian, she liked them both, but you couldn’t beat straight Brooklyn, lean and mean, the crust slightly charred, with extra mushroom and anchovy. Plus some loose scraps in a bag for Pearl. Foccaccia for the bird, and hold it right there. No more waterworks. Or she’d never stop.