Katie was sitting on the couch, watching something or other on the tube: a commercial, at the moment. Infidel, Meryl thought. No sacred rituals for you. The lowly couch potatoes of the world would tremble when Princess Daly, High Priestess of Broadway, unleashed the terrible secrets of the darkroom.
“Hi,” Katie said. She still looked pretty gloomy. “I guess you’re still unpackin’, huh?”
“Guess so. Have you seen the X-Acto knife?”
“Is this it?” Reaching for the Day-Glo-orange unit that was, sure enough, on the coffee table.
“Yeah. Thanks.” She leaned over the back of the couch, and Katie handed it over. What followed was a somewhat awkward moment of silence in which Meryl realized several things: (a) that Katie was feeling very lonely and out of place here; (b) that Meryl wasn’t doing a thing to help; and (c) that she wasn’t very likely to in the immediate future. It gave her a little pang of guilt that she didn’t know quite what to do with. For a moment, she contemplated inviting her guest to investigate the mysterious box with her.
Then the tiny voice of self-interest piped up, saying, uh-uh, that puppy is yours, thrill to the disappointment yourself and then come play with her if you’re still feeling guilty. It seemed like a good plan.
“Umm… what are you watching?” she asked, a token gesture of concern.
Katie brightened a little. “The Haunting,” she said. “It’s this great old haunted house picture…”
“Wow. Yeah, I love that movie.” Meryl smiled. “Especially the scene where the two women are in bed…”
“. .. and one of em thinks they’re holding hands…”
“… but it’s really the ghost. Yeah, great scene.”
“Well, if you want, I could scoot over a little…”
“Uhh… not right yet.” Meryl stalled; she’d almost forgotten her quest. “I really have a few more things I gotta do …”
“Okay…” Playing down her disappointment with admirable style.
“… but let me finish up, and maybe I can get back in time to watch whatsername wrap her car around that tree, or the gate, or whatever the hell she does.”
“Gotcha,” Katie said, as the commercial block ended. “You better skedaddle fore the movie starts, and you get caught up.”
“Yeah. See ya.”
“Later!”
Well, that was painless, Meryl thought as she made a rapid beeline back to the darkroom. The fact was that Katie was a very nice lady; maybe when the smoke cleared and the dust was swept away, they could settle into the kind of buddy-buddy thang that her roommate seemed to so desperately want. It was always good to have a friend; at least that was the rumor. Meryl didn’t have one whole hell of a lot of them, but she’d heard that they were swell.
Meanwhile, back to the task. She had her magic blade in hand, and in two shakes she was back in the darkroom. The box was still just sitting there.
“It’s Doomsday,” she said.
And sliced it open.
For a moment, it looked like a case of much ado about nothing. She had been correct in guessing paper, and lots of it; beyond that lay the heartbreak. No photographs. Not even any magazines. Just dozens and dozens of manila folders, holding reams and reams of what appeared to be plain old typing paper.
Great, she mused. No wonder it said DO NOT OPEN 'TIL DOOMSDAY. A little boredom would probably be just the ticket when the world blows up. Take your mind off your troubles.
The folders were all hand-labeled. Just for the hell of it, she decided to inspect them. At this point, she expected to see nothing but TAXES and RECEIPTS, maybe GRANDMA’S FAVORITE RECIPES. The folder in front was a skinny little item. She pulled it out and held it to the light.
The label said NIGHTMARE, NYC.
“Huh,” she repeated. Another surprise. She opened it up and read the opening page:
NIGHTMARE, NEW YORK CITY
Tales From the Last Days
Of the City of Dreams
by
John Paul Rowan
“Wow,” she said, scrutinizing the page. Nice paper. Good thick bond. The typing and alignment were clean and dark and flawless, though she imagined it would be pretty hard to fuck up eighteen words on five lines of type.
She turned the page, saw a table of contents. There was a lot of scribbling on this one, names of stories or whatever crossed out and interchanged, little arrows, etc. She scanned it quickly, then flipped to the next. It started out with INTRODUCTION: WAITING FOR THE GIANT TO AWAKEN, then went on with a full page of type.
Intrigued now, Meryl began to read:
I have lain awake in the City of Dreams and listened to its breathing. Long after the others have gone to sleep, staggered home from their jobs or their nights of debauchery; long after the streets have been reduced to canyons bearing only the echoes of the day’s cacophonous rat-race patter; long after all but the last of the lost have closed their eyes and shut out the world beyond their skin, I have lain awake.
And listened to its breathing.
The city stands: a million trillion tons of cold, unblinking concrete and glass and steel. Eight million people, day by day, scuttle across its flesh and hurtle through its bowels. Like parasites, like crumbs of food, like microscopic organisms, they eke out their existences within the body of a host too enormous for their comprehension.
It tolerates their presence.
It has reasons of its own.
The city is alive. Countless billions of dollars and lives, over centuries, have more than seen to that. Over two hundred years of human hopes and dreams that fed and fouled, nurtured and polluted the sleeping giant. Now it has dreams of its own. I can only begin to guess at their nature. I may never know for certain.
But as I lay there, my own tiny lungs bellowing within the confines of my own four walls, I know it is the city’s breath I hear. It rushes in and pulses out; steaming on the rain-slick summer streets, spinning ice-devils down the frozen boulevards. The city’s breath: equal parts carbons monoxide and dioxide, oxygen, dust, rust, blood, and sweat. The city’s breath: carrying with it the passion and pain, the labor and love, the life and death that have given it sustenance and form. I taste of these things as I lay in my bed.
Listening to the sleeping giant breathe.
And waiting for the day it will awaken.
“Jesus,” Meryl exclaimed, closing the folder. “Who is this guy?” She checked the front page once again. John Paul Rowan. It didn’t ring a bell.
All sorts of questions were rising up now, vying for her attention. Was this the original manuscript for some famous book she’d never heard of? Was this the original manuscript for some great lost work that she’d just discovered? Was this a box full of useless drivel that was better off stuck in that corner forever?
And why had it been left behind?
DO NOT OPEN 'TIL DOOMSDAY.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Whatever the case, Meryl knew one thing for certain: this was pretty darned interesting. She could feel the mystery sweat begin to prickle at her pits. The impulse to drag the box out to the middle of her room and do a full-scale excavation was almost irresistible.
Then she thought of the picture underneath, and that opened up a whole nother batch of questions. Was John Paul Rowan the keeper? Had this been his studio? What else was he into? Were there any other pictures where you could actually see his face? Where the hell was he now? And did he know that this box was still here, or what?
Too many questions, and not enough answers … at least not until she got down to the digging. She couldn’t really drag the box if she wanted to get that picture flat: a result she hankered for more than ever. “Well, damn,” she muttered. “My kingdom for a simple solution.”
The best thing, for now, was to grab a handful of the front-running folders and toddle off into the light with them. This she did. There was a chair in her room that she cleared off in seconds; the box that had been sitting there made a dandy footrest.
“Oka
y,” she said. “Let the nightmares begin.”
As she opened the first of the stories…
THE LONG RIDE
by
John Paul Rowan
The man in the backseat is a haughty little fart who smells of Brut excess. He keeps holding his watch up to check it in the passing streetlight, as if the future of humanity itself hinged on his punctuality tonight; but Harry knows that the guy is no big deal. Neither hot nor cold, this lukewarm man will be spat out into the New York City night… hocked like a phlegm-wad from the back of Harry’s cab … and it won’t make any difference at all.
But you couldn’t tell that to this guy, overdressed at the center of his own universe. He wipes an executive amount of sweat from his forehead and checks his watch again. “How far away is this place?” he whines, desperation latching hold of his face.
Without a glance to either side, Harry answers, “This is 57th Street. You wanna go ta Penn Station, right?” The guy digs around in his brain for a second, mumbles a high-pitched affirmation. “Okay, that’s on like 33rd Street. So you figure it. We got twenty-some-odd blocks to go, right? We’ll be there in a coupla minutes…”
“Can’t you go any faster? Jeezis!” He squeals like a pig with a corncob up its ass, and for some odd reason it makes Harry think about the country. Ain’t seen nothin’ but dogs, pigeons, rats and cocka-roaches for years, he muses, an’ I probably never will again.
Then he shrugs. So he and Betty never got their house in the boonies. So what? One of life’s little regrets: too little, and too late, to worry about.
Harry drives a cab, and he probably always will. Right now, a fragrant little man in a big hurry is playing backseat driver. Harry pulls himself back and decides to have a little fun.
“Sure,” Harry says. “Sure, I can go faster.” Before them, the light is as yellow as they come. Harry leans on the horn and steps down hard on the gas. The cab shoots forward. The light turns red.
“Look out!” the man screams, as a garbage truck and a station wagon surge out from 56th Street and straight for them. On the passenger side, no less, Harry notes, resisting the urge to laugh. Instead, he just floors it and veers slightly to the left, making it close enough to set the guy back in his seat a little without ruffling anyone else’s hair in the least.
Harry’s cab screams like a bullet down Seventh Avenue. When a red light at 48th finally forces them to a grinding halt, the little man doesn’t say another word.
“Almost there,” Harry deadpans.
Not another word.
Harry’s cab spits the guy out in front of Penn Station and sits there, purring, at the curb. Harry pops the sweaty ten-spot in a clean white envelope, pockets it, and chuckles, patting the dashboard lovingly. They are two old friends, sharing a treasured and time-honored joke. I love ya, old crate, he thinks as the engine purrs back at him, and is amused by his own sappy sentiment.
Betty’d have to laugh, seein’ me like this, he thinks. The smile saddens. If only…
Then a rap on the passenger side brings him out of it. A long-haired kid is playing his knuckles across the window and peering in. “Anybody home?” the kid mouths, his voice lost in the hummmm of the city.
Harry motions the kid inside, then watches as two young cuties pile in behind. Hoo boy! A blonde and a brunette! Lucky bastard, he thinks ruefully. No more chicks for Harry, by gum. Then he pictures Betty, on the day that they were married, and he shrugs again.
No regrets.
The three of them are in now, with the door closed behind them, and they are wrassling with their backpacks for space. The cab is filled with their laughter and commotion. “Wait a minute,” says Blondie, in the middle of everything. She’s up to her elbow in a jumbo handbag, digging for something.
“Where to?” Harry asks, though in no particular hurry.
“Yeah!” says the kid, with a trumped-up southern accent. “Where in Sam Hill are we goin’, Bessie May?”
“I said wait a minute,” she responds curtly, then adds, “Don’t call me that. It sounds like a cow.” The girl keeps looking. A minute drags past.
“Umm … I think it’s on Saint Monkey’s Face, or something,” says the kid, feigning helpfulness.
“Oh, shut up, Tom!” yells the brunette. Blondie rolls her eyes. Tom cowers. They all start laughing.
These are good ones. I can feel it. Good kids. Harry thanks God that he can still feel. It makes the long ride go down easier.
Blondie, meanwhile, finds a scrap of paper. She unfolds it, and her face lights up. “All right!” she exclaims. Everyone turns. “We’re going to… uh… 124 St. Marks Place. Is that right?”
“Right,” says Harry, switching on the meter and then sliding out into the street. “Here we go.”
“New York City!” yells the brunette, rolling down her window and howling like a coyote. This seems to strike her friends as a good idea, and within seconds they have practically raised the roof right off the cab. Harry shakes his head, laughing as he taps their maniac glee. Then Brownie leans back inside and says, “Hey, Mr. Cab Driver! I thought you guys were supposed to drive like… like crazy?
“You want a ride? Harry yells back at her, mischief in every line on his face. His passengers let out one loud unisoned “Yahhoooo!” and…
… Harry takes a banshee left on 28th, zips over to Broadway and gives them a full-frontal shot of the Flatiron Building, its breathtaking cutaway design. “Oldest skyscraper in New York,” he informs them as they gasp with awe. Tom mutters something about “a wedge of cheese from heaven“ and they laugh some more, while Harry weaves in and out of traffic like a thread in some master’s loom, pulling off stunt after stunt with a cool half-smile.
Makes me feel like a kid again, Harry owns up silently. Makes me feel really… alive again. The admission floods him with images both tragic and sublime, leaves him swimming in the bittersweet. They pull up behind an impatient cluster of traffic, held at bay by the baleful red lights, and Harry finds that his cargo has also slipped into a thoughtful silence.
Blondie breaks it up by looking suddenly at Harry and saying, “I don’t want to be a party pooper or anything, but… you aren’t giving us the scenic tour, are you?” Her voice betrays discomfort with the need to ask. “I mean …”
“I know what you mean,” Harry cuts in, understandingly. “You don’t wanna get snookered by a New York cabbie, am I right?” She nods reluctantly.
“Well, hey,” Harry adds cheerfully, reaching across to flick off the meter. Three sets of eyebrows raise in disbelief. “Does that take care of it?”
The kids don’t know what to say, but they sure are smiling when the light turns green and the cab kicks back into gear. Tom does a thumbs-up motion and points at Harry, while the ladies nod vigorous agreement, but not a word is spoken. Harry decides to break the ice again.
“Where’re ya from?” he asks. A time-honored line.
“We come from deepest space,” Tom monotones.
“Ahhh!” Harry replies. “Coneheads, eh?”
This brings startled laughter from the rear. “You watch Saturday Night Live?” Brownie wants to know.
“Hey! This is th’ Big Apple, kiddo: home of Saturday Night Live an’ all things cultural!” The back echoes for a moment with yeahs and wows. “Yep, this is one hell of a little town, if you never been here before. You’ll love it.”
“First time,” says the blonde, “and I think I already do.”
“It’s scary, though,” says the brunette suddenly. There is an anticipative pause. “I mean, we’re from a really small town in Pennsylvania … Stewartstown. You ever hear of it?” Harry hasn’t.
“Anyway,” she continues, “we come up to New York City, and … woe my God!” She sighs heavily, then adds, “I mean, don’t you ever get scared living here all the time?”
Harry thinks about it. Not anymore occurs to him instantly, but that’s not what he wants to say. Before he can answer, Blondie interjects.
“If
you’re not afraid, you’ll be all right, Kathy. It’s the fear that attracts negative energies. If you don’t…”
“It’s always energies with you two,” the first one complains. “I don’t know what to think about all this energies shit.” She practically spits out the word.
“No, seriously,” says Tom, and it’s the first serious thing he’s said. “It’s like a dog, Kathy. A dog can smell when you’re afraid. You don’t have to carry a sign that sez I’M SCARED OF YOU for a dog to know what’s on your mind. They just know it.”
“I hate dogs,” Kathy mutters.
“See?” Tom insists. “It’s because they can see right through you…”
“But really" Kathy interrupts, turning the conversation back to Harry, who’s been listening the whole time. “When we got off the train and came upstairs, there was some guy in the lobby with one of those huge radios, an’…”
“Kathy!” The blonde in the middle sounds genuinely distressed.
“It’s okay,” Harry says slowly, quietly. He knows what she’s going to ask. “Go ahead.”
Kathy looks furtively at her companions, who are shaking their heads at her in disapproval. She sends back a telepathic message to the tune of well, he said to go ahead; then she clears her throat and continues.
“Wiett, the radio said that… that something like eighteen cab drivers have been killed so far this year already, and …” The silence is leaden. “… and I just wondered: doesn’t that scare you at all? I mean really, seriously.” When nobody speaks, she adds, ‘I'd be scared, that’s for sure.”
The atmosphere in the cab has been dampened, as if Kathy had just thrown a big shovelful of graveyard dirt over the lot of them. Harry has so many things that he could say right now, so many things drilling holes in his brain and screaming to get out, that he wishes he could just scream and let them out, spray them around the upholstery like bits of shattered skull. But these kids are fresh in town, and nothing horrible is gonna happen to them, and he doesn’t want to haunt their dreams with his nightmares.
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