New Yorked

by Rob Hart

  The scanner is buzzing on its little table. A veil of static pierced by an occasional voice. “10-28, Astor Place.” Smoke condition in the subway.

  I yank the plug out of the wall and the buzzing stops. The apartment is draped in silence. I take a shirt from my duffel bag and wrap it around the scanner, nest the bundle in the middle of my clothing.

  And that’s it. I’ve reduced the entirety of my life into a green duffel bag.

  You loved my apartment. The brick walls held the heat like an oven. We spent some good winter nights in here, lounging around, soaked in sweat, ripping lines and smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey and listening to David Bowie.

  Those nights, the whole world fell away and it was just us.

  One night we were sitting by the window, blowing smoke through the screen, watching snow accumulate on the street below. The forecast called for more than two feet. The following school day had already been cancelled. The block was quiet, the snow white and soft.

  You said, We should go down and play before the snow gets New Yorked.

  What?

  It gets all dirty and slushy.

  I’ve never heard that term before.

  There’s always a first time.

  We got dressed and went outside and avoided the avenues and cut down the side streets. The streetlamps made the snow sparkle like the sky was filled with stars whipping in lazy circles over our heads.

  We hit each other with powdery snowballs and stopped for shots in the bars brave enough to stay open and tried, unsuccessfully, to build a snowman in Tompkins Square Park. We sat in the middle of Fourth Street, facing the direction of traffic, wondering when a car would turn the corner, savoring the look of the unblemished snow.

  Finally, when the cold got to be too much, we retreated to my apartment where it was so hot we dropped our clothes by the door. You slept on the couch, and the next morning, the snow was filthy and gray.

  I text Bombay: EVICTED. Crash with you?

  He writes back: WTF?

  Long story.

  Okay. Girls are here.

  One last look. There’s nothing else to take. Nothing else to do.

  At the murder chart on the wall I use the crappy camera in my phone to snap a photo. Next to it I write a note to Aziz: You’re a greedy fuck. I’ll call you if I need a reference.

  I don’t close the door behind me when I leave.

  Part of me stays in the apartment.

  Bombay and Lunette and Margo are drinking beer and watching a black-and-white B movie. Desert mountains and giant lobsters on the horizon. Bombay pauses the movie and they all turn to look at me as I find a spot to drop my bag.

  Lunette says, “Not really your week, is it?”

  “It is not,” I say. “How come you’re all in? Figured you would all be out tonight.”

  Bombay says, “No one’s out.”

  “What do you mean no one’s out?”

  “We popped into a few bars. Didn’t see anyone.”

  “Really?”

  Lunette says, “Rage, rage against the dying of our social life.”

  I drop my bag and put my umbrella on top and sit on the floor, the bag between me and Margo. She looks over and pokes at the umbrella, then picks it up. She curls it like a dumbbell.

  “This thing is really heavy,” she says.

  I shrug. “Those bodega umbrellas aren’t very sturdy. They snap in a strong wind.”

  Bombay scoffs. “Sturdy. Right. That’s why you have it.”

  To me, Margo says, “What happened to your apartment? It looked like a bomb hit.”

  “Some friends stopped by,” I tell her. “It got out of hand.”

  Lunette says, “Will you two shut up? We’re watching a very important work of cinema.” She takes the remote from Bombay and turns the movie back on.

  I look at Margo. “Want to go upstairs?”

  “This movie sucks anyway,” she says.

  Lunette says, “You suck.”

  “Now we have to rewind it,” Bombay says.

  I bring Margo to the roof. It’s cold, but I’m too tired to go back downstairs for my jacket. I find a spot and fall onto my back, let the sky swallow my vision. Margo sits next to me, her knees pulled up to her chest, and says, “I’m sorry about your apartment.”

  “Just a matter of time. And don’t apologize to me. You came here to visit, and now I’m homeless. I’m the one who should be sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Margo says. “I got my stuff and Lunette said I can stay with her.” She pauses, afraid to say the next thing. “How are you?”

  “I’ve been a bad host. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

  She pauses. “Spending a lot of time with Lunette. Walking around the city, going to thrift stores, stuff like that. A lot of coffee. Coffee here is good.” She laughs. “It’s funny. It’s not what I thought it would be like.”

  “What did you think it would be like?”

  “If I tell you, you’ll laugh at me.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Lunette did.”

  “She’s Russian. She doesn’t have a normal sense of humor.”

  “It’s just that, the only things I really know about New York is what I saw on Sex and the City,” she says, like she’s admitting to an embarrassing kink.

  “Ah.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve seen a few episodes. Nothing about it looks familiar except the sidewalks. It’s all gallery openings and fancy fucking bars.” I pull my jacket a little tighter around me. “So any second thoughts yet? Still want to move here?”

  “I think so.”

  “What’s so bad about Pennsylvania?”

  She laughs. “Let me tell you about a typical Saturday night. Me and my friends get dressed up like we’re going out for a night on the town, and we go to the pool hall or the bowling alley. They’re full of the kids we went to high school with. We all want to drink, but we have to fight over who’s going to be designated driver because we can’t walk home and there’s no public transportation. These places close around midnight, so we end up going to someone’s house and sitting in the basement. And all anyone ever talks about is stuff that happened in high school. Why would I want to live there anymore?”

  “The quiet must be nice though. The space. You don’t get that here.”

  “I’ll get used to the noise.”

  We smoke some cigarettes in silence. I feel like she wants to ask me a question, but she’s afraid. And if she’s afraid, I don’t want her to ask it. I consider moving us inside, back where it’s warm and I can find a snack, but then she says, “Lunette told me about Chell. You know, a little. She said you two didn’t exactly have a… healthy relationship.”

  “We all express ourselves in different ways.”

  “Why do you feel you need to do this?”

  “Someone needs to.”

  “What if you get hurt?”

  I want to tell her I don’t care about that, but she’ll take it the wrong way. Maybe she’ll take it the right way. Either way, it’s going to produce a lot of drama so I tell her, “I can take care of myself.”

  “Lunette thinks this is about your dad.”

  “What about him?”

  “That the people who killed him are dead and you’re looking for someone to lash out at.”

  “That’s an interesting theory.”

  “My mom still talks to your mom a lot, you know. She said you were planning on taking the test to be a firefighter. Like your dad. How did that go?”

  “Everything went fine until I got to the drug test.”

  She doesn’t say anything to that. I don’t expect her to. I don’t even know how to feel about it anymore. The memory has spent so much time kicking me in the ribs that now I’m numb to it.

  She slides her hands into her sweater and pulls the arms around her, says, “Cold.”

  “Head back in. I need a few minutes.”

  She nods and leaves. I stare at the city for
a long time, at the tops of the buildings jutting into the dark sky. From here I can only see the apartments stretching from here to the West Side Highway. I’ve got this feeling inside me like I want to cry, but I can’t remember how. I try to focus on the things I need to focus on and my mind wanders down dark paths.

  I keep coming back to the same thing.

  You promised.

  Who promised?

  This isn’t the first time I’ve blacked out from drinking. This is the first time that a blackout has scratched at the back of me, daring me to figure out what happened during the course of it.

  The question I haven’t been asking because I don’t want to know the answer is, did I see Chell the night she died?

  And I can’t answer it.

  My phone buzzes. Text: Can you help me move out tomorrow?

  Good Kelly. I respond: Sure.

  Great!! Tomorrow afternoon?

  Sure.

  At least I have a few hours to grab some sleep.

  Then I notice I’ve got another text that I missed. This one says: Dymphnas.

  Let’s see who sent it.

  St. Dymphna was the patron saint of the mentally ill. St. Dymphna’s is our backup bar, a small British-style pub with an older clientele and a chill atmosphere. There’s also a back patio that’s covered and heated, so it’s perfect for those especially cold winter nights.

  At the front door, there’s a guy checking IDs. They’ve never checked IDs. When I get inside I see why. The place is overflowing. Tommy is drowning, trying to fill orders for Jaeger bombs and Amstel Lights for overeager college students. He sees me come in and screams through the crowd, “You drinking yet?”

  “You’ll be the first to know.” I push up against the bar, shoving some kid wearing a trucker hat aside. “What’s with the crowd?”

  “Who knows,” Tommy says, blowing off a group of sorority girls who want lemon drops. “This stuff is cyclical. One person finds out about a bar that’s not too crowded, suddenly it gets slammed.”

  “Good for business at least?”

  “I prefer the regulars. These kids are assholes, and they don’t tip.”

  The guy next to me says something to win Tommy’s kinship. Tommy ignores him. I head to the back.

  Bad Kelly is sitting at a table in the corner by herself. The patio is just as crowded as the front and there aren’t any free seats. On my way to the rear, some kid gets up to go inside so I take his seat and drag it over to Kelly. Someone yells about it being saved, and I hold up my middle finger over my shoulder.

  She looks up at me like she’s looking down at a roach. I sit and light a cigarette and wait for her to say something.

  I ask, “What?”

  “You’re lucky I like you.”

  “If it was such a big deal why did you do it?”

  “Chell was my friend. I did it for her.”

  “What did you find out?”

  Bad Kelly takes a sip from her glass of white wine, then places it down and holds it to the table by the stem. “There were two sets of DNA.”

  “Two different guys?”

  “One male, one female. They can’t identify either. The guy, the cop. A friend of his is working the case. So he’s hearing it right from the source.”

  I lean back and wish I had a drink. That’s weird. Even weirder is, I know there’s a girl who was gunning for Chell. Fanny Fatale. It helps and it doesn’t, because I don’t know anyone in the burlesque world aside from Cinnamon West, and she’s not going to help me.

  Bad Kelly waves at me. “It would be nice if you at least said ‘thank you.’”

  “Thanks. I owe you one. Two actually.”

  “Yes you do.”

  I figure that’s all there is so I get up to leave when the girl working the tables stops at ours and drops a folded-up piece of paper in front of me. I open it. Rushed scribble, on a blank bar receipt. Tommy’s handwriting. Hipster assholes asking about you.

  Inside the bar there are two guys, both in tight jeans and tweed jackets with massive plaid scarves looped for miles around their necks. One is heavy and has a thick, sloppy beard. The other is scrawny, wearing an old pair of Ray-Bans converted to real glasses.

  The thin one’s hand is in a cast.

  My friends from the other night.

  I reach down to my belt and it’s empty. My umbrella is sitting on top of my duffel bag at Bombay’s apartment. I consider picking up a chair to use as a weapon, but after last night, they might be carrying something heavier than a pocketknife.

  Better to duck out. I kiss Bad Kelly on top of her head. “I need one more favor. You didn’t see me here.”

  “If only.”

  I vault myself onto a spent keg and over the wooden fence at the back of the yard. No one seems to notice, and I try to land on my good ankle, but I screw that up too and take the full force of the fall on the bad one.

  The adjacent yard is an empty box of concrete dotted with piles of scrap wood behind an apartment building. No one is looking down from the windows, and I’m covered by just enough shadow that this spot should be safe for a little while.

  I crouch down and listen. Bad Kelly is sitting right on the other side of the fence and maybe they’ll ask her something. But I can’t hear anything, not over the din of people talking and laughing and yelling.

  After fifteen minutes of having my ear pressed to the fence, I give up and climb back over and Bad Kelly is gone.

  As I’m smoking a cigarette outside Bombay’s apartment, trying to decide if I should go inside or check on the groper situation, a massive pair of arms wraps around me and picks me up off my feet. I’m shoved into what I’m pretty sure is the trunk of a car, because my head bounces off something rubber and slams into something metal and then it’s dark.

  A car engine roars on and that confirms it.

  Most people would panic in this situation, but it’s par for the course for how much fun the last couple of days have been, so I roll with it. No sense in getting worked up until the trunk opens. I stretch out as much as I can in the slight space. The car isn’t moving fast, and I start to doze. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m tired or carbon monoxide, but either way, at least it means I can get some rest.

  It’s not long before the trunk swings open, and I can’t make out who’s standing over me. I reach for where I think there’s a throat but a large hand grabs mine, crushing it.

  A massive figure hauls me out without much effort, and once my eyes have adjusted I can see it’s my best buddy in the whole wide world.

  “Hey Samson,” I tell him.

  He throws me against the car and pats me down. I consider wising off to him, but his hand is way too close for my junk for that to be a good idea. When he’s done, he turns around and walks away. In his language, it’s an order to follow.

  I don’t know where we are, but it feels like the West Side somewhere. Some anonymous street full of big blank industrial buildings. I can’t see the Empire State Building or the Woolworth or the Chrysler, or any other tall building I can use to orient myself.

  Samson leads me down a narrow alley between two buildings and I run through the events of the last few days in my head, wondering whether Samson or Ginny might have any reason to kill me. But I’m pretty sure I haven’t screwed up that bad. I know I said I wouldn’t hit anyone, and I kinda fucked that up, but I’ve also done worse.

  We walk through a metal door and into a room so dark I can’t see in front of my face. There’s a sound of shuffling and then Ginny says, “Thank you, Samson. Please wait outside.”

  Something drops to the floor, feet shuffle into the distance. Complete blackness. I hold my breath, still myself. Can’t hear anything.

  A light clicks on.

  It’s a small lamp. Antique, skinny, and a little bit shorter than me. It has a beautiful pink shade with beaded tassels, and it throws off just enough light to show that it’s flanked by two red leather wingback chairs, a small coffee table in the middle of them. Undern
eath it all is a blue shag carpet. It’s a living room set floating in a vast, empty concrete warehouse.

  But that’s not the thing that throws me.

  Ginny stands before me in a tight gray t-shirt, threadbare and ripped at the seam on the left shoulder. Ratty black jeans torn at the knees. Her head is shaved, but growing in just enough that it’s clearly thinning around the temples. The only give-back to her true identity, the one I know now, is a carefully applied layer of pink on her thin, skeleton lips.

  Even seeing her like this, I still refer to her as ‘she.’ I know a lot of people get hung up on the pronoun, even when she’s still in her armor. Thing is, I can’t picture her as anyone but Ginny anymore.

  “I look dreadful,” she says, smiling like she’s carrying a planet on her back.

  She gestures to the chairs. We sit and she lights her cigarette, her body weak and loose at the joints. Even her poise has evaporated. She takes a drag, rests her head on the back of the chair, her legs splayed open, and asks, “How was the ride over?”

  “Great.” I light my own cigarette. “Samson has the nicest trunk I’ve ever been in.”

  “He made you ride in the trunk?”

  “Didn’t give me much choice.”

  “I’m sorry for that. I told him you were irrational and that you might not come easily. I guess he decided to take some liberties with my instructions.”

  “That he did.” I lean forward to knock a pile of ash off the end of my cigarette and adjust the fedora. “So, why no hissy fit over my hat this time?”

  “Because I’m exhausted. I didn’t even want to get dressed for this meeting. Luckily, you knew me before Ginny was born. So you can see me like this.” She raises one hand, the hand that doesn’t have a cigarette, and waves it in front of her face. “No one sees me like this anymore.”

  “Should I be honored?”

  “Don’t be cute.” She pulls a bottle of wine and two glasses from the floor next to her seat and pours one, then looks up at me. “Still not drinking?”

  “Not yet.”

  She nods, doesn’t fill the second glass. Leans back, resting the base on her knee. “You have pissed off some people.”

  “Well, hey, everyone’s got a talent. This is mine. What’s the use in hiding from it?”