The Nervous System

by Nathan Larson

  Bullets and dirty rain slap the surrounding area, but I pay this no mind as I grasp the sill and haul myself up, thankful that I’m a scarecrow-assed motherfucker. I come up over the side and put my legs down on a wood bench, then tumble forward onto the floor of the ferry.

  Rose is crouched next to me. Talking again. “… so fucking scared. I am so fucking scared.”

  So am I, Rose. But that’s not the part of me in control at the moment. I rarely let that pussy drive. Drives scared, and that gets you dead.

  Move. We’re up, swaying toward the stairs. This particular Circle Line boat probably dates from the 1960s, an elder in their fleet, and the deck slopes at a thirty-degree angle. Noxious rain and river water has pooled up on this side of the boat, as well as soaked cardboard boxes of Cracker Jacks and M&Ms and a large number of various floating soft drink bottles, bobbing in the shallow lake.

  I believe it’s one of those triple-decker affairs. Rose goes down and I manage, only just, to catch her by her forearm, which feels childlike, insubstantial. Vaguely register her protestations but I’m getting progressively dizzier, motherfuckers, I need to keep hitting it while I’m still capable of movement.

  Find the stairs, everything at fun-house angles, attempt a quick look back at the terminal but my vision, my vision is … dim, things seem to be contracting like the end of an old film as the curtains move in from the sides. Gotta hurry this up.

  Two flights up and we’re out in the open again, the rain pelting the deck and tickling my hot skull. Rose slips and falls onto one knee, I haul her back up, she slips again. I’m blinking, blinking against the wind and rain, again I steady Rose and we stumble forward, slipping and sliding on the oily surface of the deck, and in due course we are at the plexiglass railing, with nowhere else to go but straight down into the river.

  Fuck me. All indicators pointing to an ugly resolution here.

  “Hey yo!” calls a vaguely familiar voice from behind us, only just audible over the drumming of falling water on metal. Or maybe I’m imagining it.

  Wearily, with scarcely any air in my chest, I turn to face a masked Cyna-corp soldier. And more to the point, I am looking down the elongated barrel of a Colt Python.

  I’ve had it. This has to stop. I am smoked out, people. But my body, on its own accord, has brought my CZ level with the soldier’s bug mask.

  “Do what you gotta do with me here, we gonna tussle, whatever. But the lady walks,” I wheeze. I am not sure if I’m heard.

  The Colt is partially lowered.

  “Bitch-ass nigga,” says the soldier. Sounding triumphant, and very familiar. “Stuck-up motherfucker, look who’s shining now!”

  “Kim!” snaps Rose, launches into a Korean tirade that my spent brain doesn’t decipher straight off …

  Kim, peeling off his headgear. His black hair plastered to his scalp by sweat. Stupid handsome, he wears that dumb grin, nodding at Rose.

  Tune it in …

  “… gonna walk us out of here right now, Kim, you have some fucking nerve.”

  Still nodding, showing us his healthy chompers, the young Kim speaks in English. “Word to God. Miss Hee, with all respect to my shateigashira, you gotta speak a little more respectful to me. Situation done changed, yo. Up in this bitch all ninja, drop it Mission Impossible–style.” And turning to me again. “Hey, how’s it feel …? Hey yo, lower the heater, faggot.”

  I don’t do it. I don’t think that would be wise. Never did exactly trust this kid and now I sense I’m getting confirmation of his shifty-ass loyalties. No soul.

  Kim laughs. “Are you crazy, dog?”

  Rose saying, her arm on mine “… here to bail us out, that’s not a very gracious …”

  “I get it now, so you gonna save us, Kim?” I say. “You gonna fly us home all magically delicious?” Finding a little oxygen, a little booster for my blood, emergency stuff I must’ve had on reserve. “You the real big boss here, you the hero?”

  “Got some nerve, black, I will say that. All backed up against the wall and still beefing—”

  “Not putting my gun down, Kim,” I say, eyes flapping at the rain, wishing I could see straight. “So make your move if you got one, hot stuff.”

  Rose is jerking her gaze back and forth between us like she’s at a tennis match.

  Kim’s big dumb grin twists itself into a hard leer. Rose starts to put it together.

  “Don’t fucking tell me you’re … working for them, Kim,” she says.

  The boy jerks her into his chest, she lets out a short scream. The Python is back up and directed at me.

  “Oh, don’t sweat it, Miss Hee. Ain’t nothing really changed.”

  I try to get sensible on the boy: “Don’t be a fucking dumb-ass, Kim. Let her go. This is the wrong route, brother, I’m telling you. These folks have nothing for you.”

  Rose is vibing pissed off and brave. “I’m your family, Kim, and you want to fuck that up?”

  “Listen to Rose, Kim. She’s making some sense,” I say. My gun hasn’t moved out of his face. The better part of me hopes he doesn’t make me do it. Feeling stronger. Don’t know where the extra energy is coming from, but Allah knows I need it.

  Kim laughs again, and it’s a nasty sound. “This nigger.”

  “You don’t get to call me that, Kim. Now let’s back this up and do it right, there’s still opportunity here to do the proper thing. No sweat. Let’s just rewind this shit.”

  Kim is squinting, eyes hooded, and if he’s wavering, I can only tell by his voice, which oscillates only ever so slightly. “Naw. Jal ja, bitch.”

  Me and Kim. We fire our guns at the same time. Doesn’t please me in the least and I think of his asthma inhaler, his basic humanity, but I put one in his eye, or at least I’m pretty sure because in short order I’m distracted by the force of the .357 caliber bullet hitting my vest like an anvil, emptying my lungs, and knocking me back just enough to compromise my footing.

  I slip and go backward over the side of the boat. The foul water comes hustling greedily up to meet me.

  Despite everything that’s transpired, I’m blowing taps, and mourning yet another perfectly good suit. And thinking this Kim kid wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, despite his drive. The punk put his money on the wrong horse. So motherfuck him.

  Hit the poison river like it’s concrete, and the darkness that’s been loitering takes the opportunity to pounce. And consumes me.

  _______________

  At the precinct, seated at a metal table. A coconut Yoo-hoo and a set of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are placed in front of me. It takes my twelve-year-old brain a bit to come to the understanding that this bounty is actually mine to do with as I see fit. To date, it’s one of the kindest things anybody has ever done for me.

  But shit. That bar was set pretty low to begin with.

  The cop with the mustache and the gentle voice straddles the chair across from me backward, like Rog from What’s Happening!! His mustache is salt-and-pepper, brown with some gray in it. Kind of like my dad’s beard looked just before he finally gave up, let it all go.

  “Son,” he’s saying softly, “there’s a lot of things we could talk about. We could talk about all the junk you and your friends have done in the past, the spray paint, the trespassing, the switchblade here, all that, and the trouble you could be in right now. But we don’t have to do that. You know why? Because you’re helping us out, in a really big way. Helping out each and every person in your neighborhood. Especially boys your age. Do you understand that?”

  I nod. I understand.

  “And you understand the difference between telling stories that aren’t true, just cause, you know, it’s fun to make things up; and then telling stories that are true, about things that really happened. You get the difference, right? I know you do.”

  Again I nod. I understand.

  “So when I show you those photos again of all the different men, are you gonna tell me the same thing?”

  I nod. “Yeah. H
e’s not in there.”

  “No?”

  Shake my head. “Nobody believes me.”

  “Well, I believe you.”

  He believes me. I look at him. He says, “Then maybe you can tell me where he is, if he’s not in there.”

  So I tell him. Finally somebody asked the right question.

  I tell him about the man, the super at the Van Courtland Houses. The Boogie Oogie Man, who took me to that building on Crotona with the other kids. I told him what I saw and what he did. Pretty soon there’s a couple more cops in the room, somebody taking notes and glancing anxiously at the clock above my head. People go outside to talk into telephones or radios. I hear people running out in the hall. I get scared, but all through it, the cop with the mustache holds my eyes and says, “Go on. It’s okay.”

  And he makes it seem like it’s okay.

  I get sleepy and close my eyes for a second and now the cops are gone. The sounds are different and it’s extremely bright. I squint and look down. No longer a child, I wear a black uniform. See my boots, black as well, beat, a soldier’s boots.

  The cop with the mustache again, grayer, thinner, but the same man. He’s not a cop anymore and wears the same clothing I wear.

  “All right there, son? Lost you for a minute.”

  I nod. He slaps me on the shoulder.

  “Yeah, yeah, we’re all tired. So let’s do this fucking thing and go back to the hotel, huh? That’s my boy.”

  I nod. He’s moving off across an area covered in a light dusting of sand. Me standing there in military regalia, assault rifle in hand, sand camo, turning now to address my crew, mouth open, and our orders are …

  Get sleepy again, close my eyes for a moment, and the light is different. The sound … muffled music nearby. I’m in a complex with many small rooms. Next to me is a beautiful girl. She could be Japanese, but I don’t think so, and she wears a black silk dress with a dragon print. Her long hair is in a single thick braid that lies across her right shoulder, covering her right breast.

  “Song Ji-Wong?” I’m positive it’s her. It’s got to be her. I need it to be her.

  She leans into me, giggling with her mouth covered. “So cute! I told you my name, it is Kiki.” She knocks on my head like it’s an empty shell. “Kiki Oda. Come on, we sing a song!”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “First I sing you a song?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  She claps her hands together, snatches a black cordless microphone off a glass table. There’s a small bowl of lychee fruit, and another of those Japanese crackers. Two martinis. Mine is cloudy, hers is not.

  I am smoking a cigarette, a menthol. The box is on the table as well, the brand is called Zest. I stub it out in a nearby ashtray. Don’t like menthols.

  Music starts, and on a large flat-screen TV an ’80s-looking video, a white couple with big hair enter a glass elevator in a huge hotel, turn to each other with dreamy expressions.

  “They say give you this too. Okay?” She looks at me shyly, holds up a folded piece of paper, kisses it, and hands it to me. “Now I’m gonna sing.”

  Okay, I think. She sings and it’s achingly beautiful, I want desperately to keep listening and just fall into it but the sound fades as I smooth out the paper on the tabletop.

  Her lipstick marks the corner. The sheet comes into focus and I recognize it instantly. It’s a faded Xerox of the floor plan for the New York Public Library. The number 18 is at the top of the page. Small x’s are drawn in throughout the building. Evenly spaced. Placed next to … placed next to exits. Next to supportive, weight-bearing columns.

  This can’t be right, I think.

  I hear the voice of the cop with the mustache saying, “… can’t overstate the importance of this job. It’s historical stuff, boys. We can only be honored to …”

  Song is shaking me. Smiling her geisha smile.

  “You fell asleep. Maybe drank too much. Don’t fall asleep here. No sleeping. Wake up. Wake up, mister.”

  I look at her face. Her smile disappears. She’s simply staring at me. I am watching her true face, hard but warm, hardened from exposure to horrors I couldn’t even come close to imagining.

  “Wake up,” she repeats. And I do.

  _______________

  Vomiting thick cloudy water into thick cloudy water. Another wave comes sideways and smacks me in the face. Gargling, choking on the taste of it, which is indistinguishable from the stench of it, I am suspended in viscous liquid waste. This, the most irredeemably polluted river in the western hemisphere.

  The temptation to panic is great. Won’t bullshit. In the best of times I am no great swimmer. I kick at nothing, mouth going under, back up, gasping, hacking up liver cocktail and rankness.

  To call this seething mass “water” … opaque wetness with the awful complexity of wine, I detect meat, some sulphur, mercury, and an iodine/pus finish. Like sipping a liquefied corpse. I am made a cannibal. All of my precautions for nothing. Sliding in and out of my wounds, filling my lungs, my stomach, my skin absorbing its contagion. No sea life can survive this, let alone us land mammals.

  No. Only microbes. Bacteria. Amoeba. Carcinogenic particles. Single-celled parasites, seeking out my heart, my stomach, where they might grow larger and stronger until the day they begin eating their way out.

  The temptation to despair is even greater than the temptation to panic. I struggle out of my suit coat, my head going under again a couple times in the process, remove the vest that certainly saved my life, my mouth an “o,” trying to keep it above the river. Lost my face mask. I push my right shoe off, can’t manage the left.

  The System doesn’t have much to say about travel on or in water. I look for help there and find none forthcoming. So I flap my arms like the shitbird I am, try to orient as best I can just eyeballing it.

  Pick a point onshore and focus, get to chilling myself out. I float about fifty feet from the island, apparently having drifted north a good stretch … I see the remnants of the Seaport, Pier 17, and what I reckon has got to be the rear of the old fish market. The mast of the sunken Peking is just visible above the waterline.

  Watch a chopper bank east, headed north. Black, no markings I can see. As it slides out of view, I observe myself as if from above, I am granted clarity.

  Yes, clarity. I chill, I let my muscles slacken. Stop my thrashing. Just float now. Observe the rain hitting the oily, almost gelatinous surface of the water, blinking slowly, allowing myself to be calm.

  In a sense I am relieved. One of my greatest nightmares, being submerged in this river, has now come to pass, and as of this moment I am still kicking back. I still possess the will to continue. Disease may overtake me but I will push on until I can go no further.

  Been treading water for many many years. To be literally doing so now is, strangely, a kind of release.

  Faced down worse than this poison too. Flash on it all: Stress positions. Sensory deprivation. Drug-enhanced interrogation. Probes of all kinds. Injections. Psychic assault. Countless surgical procedures, serving unknown purposes. Niggers sloshing around in my brain. Removing things. Substituting things. Adding things.

  But more than this assortment of tortures, far heavier than my saturated clothing, far more painful than any bullet wounds or broken hands, far more noxious than the water I tread, is the dawning understanding of what happened here, in this town. What has been done to my city.

  And I’ve know it all along.

  My head skyward, mouth agape, cause however tainted, the rain tastes better than the river. Droplets prick at my face.

  I can now say with some certainty that I have been reawakened to the facts surrounding February 14. Almost as if impact with the river itself has jacked open the crypt in my skull within which this information was interred.

  Why this happens now I am not entirely sure, but the man known as Nic Deluccia’s reappearance in my sphere has, very likely, much to do with it.

  I can now face the fact that I m
yself am complicit in the actions carried out that day. I can live with this, only because I now understand that I did not follow through with my portion of the assignment.

  Yes, I have a very good sense of what happened here, and yes, I’ve known it all along. This understanding is so vast that I cannot look at it directly.

  What I do not understand is why.

  But I have a couple of pretty solid theories, y’all. Confimation of which requires keeping myself alive.

  So. This simple decision to live obliges me to perform a slow, zigzaggy doggy paddle, my only dance move when fully submerged. Head toward shore, the rain not slackening an iota. Have the impression that every drop is aimed at my hatless noggin and, as I struggle toward the embankment, that the river wishes me dead, is actively trying to murder me.

  _______________

  Coming up on seven p.m. by the time I’m back at 154 Hester, popping a pill, propped up and patched together. At this hour the street action is heightened a touch, as the work shifts change and folks are either headed home or to their respective job sites.

  There’s just enough bustle that I allow myself to fade into the background, parking myself on the corner of Mott Street in front of a former optical store, now stuffed to the gills with dried fish, vegetables, and herbs. Used to be the smell of such a joint would be enough to make me gag, now the Great Stench overrides everything and renders all neighborhoods olfactorily conformed.

  Spent some quality time with my Dr. Feelgood, who has his base of operations over at the old NYU Hospital Center, since renamed Petraeus Memorial.

  Don’t have the luxury to sob over the loss of my Paul Smith kit. After tossing a J. Crew near the Seaport for some fresh gear (desperate times, yo … the simple gray suit will suffice until I have the luxury of doing some proper shopping), I got up to the hospital having commandeered one of those Chevy Volts down on Front Street. It’s that pukegenerating neon-rust color so popular pre–2/14.