Shovel Ready: A Novel

by Adam Sternbergh

  The pity is, Mr Spademan, that we can’t kill you in here. You can’t die. It’s not possible. Most times that seems like an inconvenient impediment. But sometimes it proves surprisingly useful.

  Simon stomps my head. I’m really starting to hate this magic act.

  Mr Spademan, when I say we can do this all day, I really do mean it. All day. All night. A whole lifetime.

  Simon stomps my head.

  I spit up.

  Harrow, I came here in good faith.

  Harrow laughs.

  Now what would you presume to tell me about faith, good or otherwise?

  Simon stomps my head.

  Skulls weren’t made for this.

  Harrow stands over me, supervising like a pit boss watching a card sharp get his comeuppance.

  I want my daughter back.

  Knock at the church door.

  Some minutes later. Not sure how many. Several stomps’ worth, at least.

  Harrow looks at Simon. Simon looks at Farmboy Number One. Who looks at Farmboy Number Two. Who walks over and answers the door.

  Enter Mark Ray.

  I look up from the wide-plank floor. Taste of plank in my mouth.

  Mark’s in some kind of getup. It all matches his blond curls nicely. White robe. Sandals. Gold braid belt.

  Hurlbat.

  Sorry to interrupt. Did I miss the sermon?

  A hurlbat looks like an ax but with two blades, set in opposite directions, one east, one west. Mark grips it and twirls it loosely in a batting stance, like a slugger waiting on-deck. Farmboy Number One watches mutely.

  So he gives Farmboy Number One a closer look.

  Farmboy falls.

  Mark pries the hurlbat free from the farmboy’s face. It takes a couple of good jimmies to pry loose.

  Ax free, Mark walks up the aisle.

  Since we’re telling religious stories, I’ve got a good one. Saint Fidelis. Heard of him? German saint. Philosopher. Friar. Wore a hair-shirt. You ever worn a hair-shirt? Anyone?

  Farmboy Number Two shrugs. Harrow and Simon stand silent, sizing Mark up. Simon’s fists turn back into hands. He spreads his fingers, cracks newfound knuckles.

  Mark continues.

  It’s no fun, I’ll you that. A hair-shirt I mean. Not recommended. Do you know the hair’s on the inside? Anyway. Saint Fidelis. Scourge of heretics. Known to carry—

  And here he bows and presents his weapon to each man like a jester proudly showing off his scepter.

  —a hurlbat.

  Then Mark stands. Shakes his shoulders out. Regrips. Crouches once, a quick low bounce in the knees, then sticks the ax into the middle of Farmboy Number Two.

  Timber.

  I’d give him a standing ovation if I could stand.

  Harrow steps forward.

  And who are you?

  I’m just here to pick up my friend.

  We’re having a word with him.

  So I see. Don’t worry. I’m not here to stop the hurting. I’m just here to spread it around a little bit.

  He takes a quick step left and hacks toward Simon, who feints, snatches the handle, twists, and wrests it free.

  Mark empty-handed.

  Harrow smiles.

  All right. Now we can talk like civilized folk. May I ask, and I apologize if this sounds somewhat silly given the situation, but how the devil did you manage to get in here?

  Funny you should mention that. I know a devil. From Chinatown. Name’s Rick.

  Well. That’s all very interesting, Mr—

  Uriel.

  Apparently Mark’s got a nickname.

  Mr Uriel. But this is still my construct. Yes? My church. My rules.

  That’s true. More or less.

  So I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.

  Harrow gestures to Simon, who steps up, ax held high. Ready to swing low.

  Mark’s robe ripples in the back.

  Rips.

  Mark’s flesh ripples in the back.

  Rips.

  Mark lurches forward.

  Mark’s a hunchback.

  Then an angel.

  Wings unfurl.

  Ax meets air.

  Mark’s foot meets Simon’s forehead. Hard. From on high.

  Mark’s airborne. He laughs.

  Turns his sandal into a steel-toe boot.

  Kicks Simon again. Harder.

  For unto you is given this day a boot to the head.

  Simon staggers.

  Harrow waves his hand.

  All right. Enough.

  He toes me.

  Simon, tap out Mr Spademan.

  Harrow looks up at Mark, who hovers, feathered wings trembling.

  I imagine you can find your own way out.

  19.

  I’m awake. In a bed. In a cathedral.

  Not a cathedral. A bank.

  An angel hovers over me.

  Not an angel. A nurse.

  Behind her, Mr Milgram. He of the note.

  The nurse cradles my face.

  Be still. Let the painkillers work.

  My jaw and skull throb. Nothing broken but a very convincing facsimile.

  Pain. Killers.

  Two things I’ve been spending way too much time with recently.

  We’re in the financial district, the old Wall Street, where I came to meet Milgram, a neighborhood where abandoned banks abound. This one’s got vaulted ceilings, like a burial vault, built for kings. Paintings on the ceiling. Angels touching men.

  Milgram hands me a card.

  Mr Harrow would like you to know his offer still stands.

  Milgram’s a fussy type. Buttoned-down. Looks like he’d enjoy the back room at the Bait & Switch. Though I’m not sure which end of the whip he’d prefer.

  I take the card.

  One question.

  Yes?

  Why hire me if you’d already sent Pilot?

  Mr Pilot’s job wasn’t to kill her. That was your job. Mr Pilot’s job was to kill you. So, as you can see, this has been a real cavalcade of incompetence. But rest assured, we plan to set it right.

  I stash the card.

  Don’t expect a call.

  He tries to grin, can’t quite make it past a wince.

  Well, I suspect you’ll be hearing from us either way.

  I stop outside on the stone steps of the bank. Sit on the steps. Catch my breath.

  Run a palm over the cold pebbled stone, squinting at the street, which is all edges and angles and light.

  It’s early morning. New day still has that new-day smell. Sunlight scrubs away what’s left of last night. Tries to, anyway.

  I don’t go off-body often and haven’t in a long while.

  It’s been long enough that I forgot about this part.

  Bed-resters call it the wake-up call. A painful sensitivity when the simulation’s over and you first come out of it and your senses all come back online. When you’re back to using your actual organs, your eyes and ears and nose and nerves all open for business again.

  Light searing your optic nerves. Odors numbing your nose. Sound galloping across your eardrums.

  The wake-up call.

  It’s painful. Everything seems too real for a time.

  The too-sharp edges of the actual world.

  20.

  I collect myself and take the 2 train north toward Trump Tower. There are so few passengers at this hour they only run four cars to a train. And there’s no such thing as express anymore. Everything’s local. Making all stops. Except Times Square.

  We rattle through without braking.

  Times Square sealed off like a crypt.

  The first explosion was small, on the subway, a diversion. Gym bag in the first car of a Manhattan-bound train. Intended to draw first responders down into the tunnel. Ambulance, EMS, fire crews, which it did.

  Then came the second explosion.

  The dirty bomb in Times Square went off about an hour after that.

  Chaos opened the door to
chaos.

  Like a burglar sneaking in a side window, then unlocking the front door for his friends.

  It was midmorning, Monday, holiday season. Just starting to get cold.

  I remember they’d lit the big tree the week before. Local weatherman flipped the switch.

  My Stella always liked to go into Manhattan to see the Christmas windows. She didn’t mind braving the holiday crush, standing twenty-deep in a spillover crowd. She had a taste for magic. Silver snowflakes and mechanical elves, shilling name-brand gifts. Santa’s helpers, doing the robot, that was always my joke.

  She used to talk about us renting a little flat in the Village. Nothing fancy, but on a pretty street. With trees. The city had a pull on her that I didn’t share. But she’d read all the romantic memoirs. The ones about a city rich with artists and poets and dreamers, the old-fashioned kind.

  In my more sour moods, I’d remind her we were about a hundred years and a million dollars too late.

  Irony is, pretty soon we could have had our pick.

  That morning she watched me empty a pint bottle into the toilet bowl and made me promise it was the last time, for the last time.

  She thought the drinking had something to do with the baby, or more to the point, the not-baby. Our inconceivable child. We’re looking to trade one bottle for another, is how she put it. That was always her joke, when she was in the mood for joking.

  So I poured out the last bottle and swore never again on various graves. Truth was, I just wanted her to leave. I had an appointment to keep that morning.

  Besides, it was easy enough to kick the bottle.

  By that time I’d discovered the beds.

  They drove it straight down from upstate, down the Henry Hudson, left at Forty-Second, right into Times Square, no stops. Made the whole trip on one tank of gas.

  Officials later said if they hadn’t blown themselves up they would have died in a few months anyway, just from handling the radioactive waste. Maybe if they’d had second thoughts. Dithered while they withered away in a quiet farmhouse somewhere.

  The world’s first long-term suicide bombers.

  But they didn’t. They drove it straight into the heart of Manhattan. Like a stake.

  A van stuffed with a bomb stuffed with fertilizer salted with waste lifted from a radiotherapy clinic in foreclosure. Enough to poison twenty city blocks.

  Crude stuff. But somehow fitting.

  A bomb made of shit and someone else’s trash.

  Pulled to a stop outside a TGI Fridays.

  Whispering a final fevered prayer.

  Back doors blew open and gave birth to a toxic cloud.

  Shattered windows. Splattered tourists.

  Glass. Blood. Sirens. Smoke. Screams.

  Hair. Bones. Ashes. Skin. Flesh.

  Charnel carnage.

  Almost biblical.

  A loosed plague.

  We fought that morning, like many mornings, like most. I was back from my leave, back at work but not really, and not often. And she was just starting to realize that Broadway was a lot more crowded than a high-school stage in Jersey.

  Still, she went to her classes, and to her auditions, and failed, then came home and we went to bed, and failed at that too.

  So the rest of the time we fought.

  At least that we were good at.

  Times Square closed for cleaning and never reopened. They kept telling us the radiation wasn’t that bad. You can easily endure small exposures, they said. No worse than a few X-rays at the dentist.

  The city issued handheld Geiger counters for free. Became a bit of a hip accessory for a time. Cool young kids clickety-clicking their way through the city, counters slung around their necks like tourists’ cameras. Even turned into a popular pickup line. Approach a young woman. Hold up your Geiger counter.

  Whoa, I think I’ve found a hot spot.

  Crafty vendors pitched card tables on sidewalks around the city, swapped out I Love New York t-shirts for I Survived Times Square. Set out rows of little plastic glow-in-the-dark Empire State Buildings and Statues of Liberty, a tiny toxic skyline. Funny idea, sick but funny, but there were no tourists around to buy them. And no native wanted an I Survived Times Square shirt when you couldn’t really be sure yet that you had.

  The mayor preached calm. As a stunt, he sat down for dinner in the middle of empty Times Square, ate a five-course meal with his wife. Silverware, candlesticks, white-coated waiters, white linen tablecloth, violinist, the whole thing. Dabbed his mouth with a napkin, turned to the TV cameras, proudly declared: Tell the world.

  New York is open for business.

  Didn’t matter. The tourists never returned. That’s a hard sell, even with three-for-one specials on hotel suites. All the businesses failed. They were built on selling M&M’s and I Love New York shirts to visitors. Problem was, no one was hungry for candy and no one loved New York anymore.

  The violinist came down with a rare sarcoma and died the following Easter. The mayor sent an aide to the funeral.

  Dirty bomb killed all the dogs in the city too. All of them.

  No one’s ever figured that one out.

  The president came. Made a speech from a safe distance. Reminded us that America always rebuilds. Recovers. Rises again.

  Then he rose again. In a helicopter.

  A couple of weeks later, the first car bomb went off. Near the United Nations.

  People watched live on the news and hoped it was just a faulty taxi, burst into flames. That kind of thing used to happen.

  People watched and hoped. Until the second one went off. Took out the news crews.

  Then a few days later, another. Then another.

  Over the next few weeks.

  Not often. But often enough.

  The president made another speech, this time from the Oval Office. Preempted football during half-time, sent his condolences and ordered in the National Guard. Promised the country was behind us, we’d spare no effort in seeking justice, then signed off with a God Bless America and God Bless New York, just in time for the second-half kickoff.

  Every day, right before she’d leave to face another parade of smiling rejections, she’d stand and steel herself at the front door, hand poised on the first of the locks.

  Beyond that door was the fiery furnace. We had to trust together that each day we wouldn’t be consumed. Burned up. Venture out on faith.

  Like that old Sunday school story.

  Me Shadrach. Her Meshach.

  Still hoping for an Abednego.

  And every day my Stella said the same strange thing, paused there at the door.

  Said it mostly to herself.

  See you on the other side.

  Every day she said that.

  Even the last one.

  Within a month Times Square was dead and rotting, beyond resuscitation, and the rot spread out in circles from there.

  But by that point no one cared. It’s not that we didn’t care about the attacks. We were New Yorkers, after all. Battle-scarred. We rattled our swords. We gathered in the streets, held candles, demanded justice. Demanded vengeance. We knew how this worked, we’d done it before. We hounded the brown-faced. Jumped a few Sikhs in our ignorance. A few Brazilians. Gave gay-bashers license once again to work out their issues on swarthy civilians. We were indiscriminate in our discrimination.

  It wasn’t that we didn’t care about the bombings. We just didn’t care about the city. Not really. Not that part. Not those streets. Most native New Yorkers, to be honest, had abandoned Times Square long ago. Thought of it mostly as a tourist preserve. Cursed the bright neon signs, the Naked Cowboy, and whatever errands might bring you there on a crowded Saturday to fight through the sluggish global herd.

  It wasn’t long before native New Yorkers were all making the same grim jokes. Times Square? Roach bomb. Ha-ha-ha. Or, Times Square? I’ve heard it really glows at night. Or, Times Square? They finally figured out a way to get a tourist to step aside on the sidewalk. Or, Tim
es Square? They bombed it? Well, who among us hasn’t thought of doing that at least once?

  But the reality was that the walls had been breached and the tourists stopped coming and the streets emptied out and soon the rest of the people started packing up too. Some skyward, to glass penthouses and the lure of the limnosphere. Most just outward, to some other city without a toxic tumor in its midsection.

  The car bombs didn’t help.

  America’s big, and the long recession had hollowed out most of the rest of the East Coast, so it wasn’t that hard to up and move, to find another house, on another block, in another neighborhood, another job, another chance, in another city that wasn’t suddenly halfway poisonous. Where you didn’t have to stand and sniff the wind each morning from your doorway and try to gauge just how much death you could smell in the air, and whether today it was blowing toward you.

  “Incremental Apocalypse” became the term of choice. Coined by some newspaper columnist, in an angry rant about the city quietly dying.

  No zombie overrun. No alien armada. No swallowing tsunami. No catastrophic quake.

  Just the gradual erosion of the will to stick it out.

  A trickle became a stream became a torrent became an exodus.

  So, sure, Times Square?

  Times Square didn’t kill too many New Yorkers.

  But it killed New York.

  The day it happened, I was in Chinatown sleeping.

  Deep in a custom-made dream.

  Stooped over, wringing my hands in a waiting room.

  Then slapping backs and unwrapping cigars.

  Bright blue balloons kissing the ceiling.

  Congratulations all around.

  My wife died in that first one, the one on the subway. The small one.

  The diversion.

  On her way to acting class.

  In the months after I could only hope she was riding in the first car. I hope she was standing right next to the bomb. I hope she picked up that damned gym bag, unzipped it, poked her head in, right before it detonated.

  I hope it blew her to dust.

  I hope that she didn’t lay wounded, twisted, in the darkness of that tunnel, waiting for sirens, waiting for help, hearing them carefully make their way down, advancing step-by-step through the wreckage, then die in the second explosion.