by Rob Hart
I wonder if that’s a bad thing.
Then the buildings stop moving. I hear horns honking and smell exhaust.
I push myself up and I’m in a boat.
My hat is back. It’s sitting on top of the cooler next to me. I reach into the cooler and come out with a beer and a bottle of water. I put back the beer and chug the water, then retch it over the side, into the street.
It would be nice to know where the hell I am, but I’m too tired. I curl up into a ball, roll onto my side and go back to sleep.
Pale blue sky, and the boat is listing back and forth on water. Tibo is half-naked, pulling on a full-body diving suit.
He sees me stir and says, “Good morning.”
“Where are we?”
“On a boat.”
“Why?”
“You don’t remember last night at all, do you?” He gets the suit zipped up and pushes his dreads under the hood. “The boat was parked on the street. I let you sleep in it because you said you couldn’t go home. When I said I had to leave early, you said to just bring you with me.”
I climb onto the bench and look out across the water. Mammoth cargo ships drift past us. I pray they can see us down here. “Are we even allowed to be out here?”
“Until someone tells me we can’t be.”
“This is the Hudson. You are going to go into that water and come out with syphilis.”
He tosses me a bottle of bleach. “For when I get out.”
“Can we sign a waiver or something to say I’m not liable for when you die?”
Tibo isn’t listening to me, just fits a huge pair of goggles to his face. He flicks a switch on the side and a lamp pops on.
He lowers himself into the water and his body goes rigid from the cold. He hangs on the side of the boat, takes the breathing device out of his mouth and says, “Let’s say if I’m down there for more than a half-hour, want to call the Coast Guard? There’s a radio at the front of the boat. I don’t know how to work it, but I’m sure it can’t be terribly hard to figure out.”
“I will, as long as you understand I’m not coming in after you. Is it even warm enough to be swimming in?”
He pats his cowl. “Dry suit. Rated for cold-water diving.”
“Do you know how to scuba dive?”
“Learn by doing.”
He slides under the water. I check my phone and wedge myself into the bottom of the boat until I’m comfortable, take a beer out of the cooler. It’s warm. But between that, the smell of salt and the sun on me, the cold air forcing my skin tight, it helps a little.
And it’s quiet. So quiet. All I can hear is the slap of water against the side of the boat and the distant call of ship horns. There’s also a faint sucking sound, and it takes a bit to realize that’s just the quiet.
From here, the city looks like a painted backdrop. The buildings are sharp and crisp. I’ve always loved the cold weather in the city. The air is dry, so there’s no humidity to hold on to water vapor, pollution, whatever crap makes the views hazy on hot days. Starting in October, you can see for miles. Go outside on a cold night, and you can see every lit window in every building.
Any other day, I would be more wistful about this view, but right now the city looks like pictures from someone else’s story.
I take out my phone. Still getting service. I text Good Kelly: How’s Austin?
Within moments she writes back: Good! Already feels like home.
Miss you here.
Come visit.
Maybe.
Nothing from Bombay or Margo or Lunette. Probably for the better.
As I’m getting close to sleep again, Tibo’s hand appears on the side of the boat. He pulls himself up, dripping wet, and I move away from him so he doesn’t get any water on me. I know it’s getting cleaner, but the sewer system still flushes into the harbor when it rains.
He pulls off the mask. The look of dejection of his face says it. He puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head from side to side. “I found a car and a shopping cart. Not very useful.”
“What’s it like down there?”
“Like swimming through oil. You can’t see very far in front of you, and every now and again a fish darts out at you and it sort of comes out of nowhere. It’s like being in a horror movie I can’t turn off. I think I peed myself a little.”
“You’re basically swimming in it.”
I uncork the bleach, and we sanitize him, taking care to keep it out of his face. He strips down to his t-shirt and boxers but doesn’t bother getting the rest of the way dressed even though it’s pretty cold out here, just piles his gear in the corner of the boat, puts his feet up and cracks a beer.
Finally he says, “Do you think we can try again tomorrow?”
“Tell me again, about what it’s going to pay for.”
“Construction costs, supplies. I’m thinking geodesic domes and farming. Treehouses. Chickens and goats. It needs to be a sustainable community that could support up to a few hundred people if necessary.”
“How soon do you want to start construction?”
“Six months ago.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere south. It’s easier to deal with the heat than the cold, at least when it comes to crops.”
“You really want to leave all this?”
“I love living here, but sooner or later, either you outgrow it, or it outgrows you. If you don’t recognize when that happens, you’re just going to end up being miserable.”
“This is our home.”
“Home is any place you want it to be.”
“How do you even know the silver is down there?”
Tibo shrugs. “Because I already found eight bars.”
“No shit.”
He laughs. “My bank account is pretty damn flush, brother.”
“So this whole thing might actually work.”
“You should come.”
“I’m thinking about it.”
He laughs.
I ask him, “What?”
“Every other time I’ve asked you to come and you’ve agreed, I knew you were humoring me. Except this time. This time you’re really thinking about it.”
Tibo finishes his beer, takes another out of the cooler. He says, “But you’re not ready to go yet.”
“Actually, I think I may have one foot out the door.”
We don’t say anything after that. Just float, and after a little while I have Tibo drop me off at a dock on Staten Island.
The house is cemetery quiet. I walk through the living room, directly to the mantle above the fireplace. The memorial to my father.
Pictures of the family. Me, my dad, and my mom, out at Lido Beach for the annual firehouse picnic. My dad, decked out in his bunker gear, surrounded by the rest of the guys assigned to his firehouse. In the middle of the mantle is his helmet, wiped free of dust and still warm whenever I touch it. The only piece of him they could find.
After dad died and I left, my mom settled into a routine of working as much as she could. She never had the heart to date again, and I’m glad she didn’t. I’d never be able to accept that, because I’m selfish.
Footsteps shuffle on the basement steps. Mom comes out of the doorway hauling a basket of laundry. She’s in her bathrobe and pajamas, her blonde-to-white hair poking out from underneath a handkerchief wrapped tight around her head. She looks a little more frail than she did the last time. She always looks a little more frail, like without my father around, she’s getting smaller.
As she stares at me I try to imagine what I look like. Bruised and broken. Nothing hurts as much as the shame. She bursts into tears and drops the basket, clean clothes spilling across the floor.
She wraps her arms around me and her grip is tight despite her size. She asks, “Ashley, what happened?”
I don’t say anything. She leads me into the kitchen, says, “Ashley, talk to me.”
“I messed up, Ma.”
“What did you mess up?”
“I got caught up in something bad.”
“Ashley.”
“The girl who died. The one in the papers. I loved her. I wanted to hurt the person who did it to her. And this...” I look away from her.
“Ashley. Please. Just, please.” She puts her hand on my cheek. “Oh god, we should go down to the hospital.”
“I think if I’m still alive at this point I’m not in any real danger.”
Her mouth drops open and she can’t speak. She shakes her head back and forth, trying to find a thought to latch on to. “Please Ashley. Not after your father. Please.”
The kettle whistles but we ignore it.
“I think it’s time to leave, Ma,” I tell her.
The change of subject composes her. “Where?”
“The city. This place is bad for me.”
She nods, pushes me toward the table so I can sit, and turns to the stove. She busies herself making the tea, adding sugar to hers and not mine, being careful to not look at me. When the mugs are ready, she places one in front of me and says, “Do you want to leave because you feel like it’s right, or because you’re running away from something?”
“I don’t know how to answer that. I just… the whole way over I just knew. This is the thing I need. You know how sometimes you get an idea and it just fits? But I’m worried. I think Dad wouldn’t want me to go. If he had a say in it.”
She smiles, and her eyes well up at the thought of him. “He would want you to be happy. I’m a tough girl, I can take care of myself. I’m not alone. Your friends aren’t alone. No one is alone as long as they don’t want to be.” She pauses, and adds, “You’re not alone either, even if it feels that way.”
“I know Ma, I just... I don’t want to make the wrong decision.”
“You won’t know if it’s right unless you do it.”
“I don’t know.”
“Just stop. Stop it. If you think it’s the right thing to do, then you should do it. Ashley, you have a big heart, and you care about people, and that’s a wonderful thing. But you have to care about yourself first. You can’t be there for everyone. No one can.” She looks away from me. “Your father needed to protect everyone. And look what happened.”
“That was different.”
For the briefest moment, anger flashes across her face. She asks, “Is it?”
“It’s different.”
She sits next to me and wraps her arms around my shoulders, says, “If you need to go, I’ll support you. I’ll miss you like crazy, but a change of scenery can be a very good thing. You can always come back, and then you can stay here as long as you need. Just promise me you will answer your phone when I call you? Please? Can you promise me that?”
“Yeah Ma. I promise.”
She smiles, and points to the hat on the kitchen table.
“That’s a nice hat.”
“I always wanted a fedora.”
“That’s not a fedora, honey. The brim of a fedora is wider. That’s a trilby.”
“Really?”
“Yes honey.” She runs her hand through my hair and says, “You look so much like him, you know that? More and more every day.”
“Should I get a haircut? Grow a beard? Would that help?”
“No, I love that you look like him. He would be so proud of you.”
I wish that were true.
My mother’s words follow me the rest of the way back into the city.
All I wanted was to be like my dad. And I succeeded at making a mess of that. The only silver lining in him being dead is at least he can’t see me like this. What I’ve become.
I’m there before I realize that’s where I’m even headed. The street corner in Alphabet City where Chell disappeared, the last place she stood that I can place her. I drop to my knee and run my fingertips over the ground. The warmth has been sucked out of it. I can’t smell lavender.
Another unmarked grave in a city full of them.
I take the vial of lavender oil out of my pocket and pour it onto the concrete. Close my eyes. Pretend she’s standing here, just for a second.
She called me. Even after what I did, how I acted, she called me. She didn’t write me off. Maybe she even would have listened to me apologize.
I can hold on to that.
And that’s the end of this. Let the cops handle it.
The door of the bar across the street opens and closes. The bouncer, a big black guy nearly seven feet tall, takes his position at the front.
I should get up and leave. Go find a place to sleep tonight and figure things out. The cops are probably still looking for me. I’ve still probably got some fallout to deal with from T-Rex and The Hipster King, if he’s still alive. There are an awful lot of people with silly names who want to kill me.
But I cross the street toward the bar. I never got to follow up with that other bouncer, and the thread is dangling in my face, irritating me.
As I approach the guy, he takes off his sunglasses and surveys my face, raises an eyebrow. “Rough night?”
“Rough lifetime. Are you Steve?”
“That’s me.”
“Great, listen.” I point across the street. “Couple of nights ago a girl got killed, right? She was taken from over there, on that corner. The muscle-head covering the door the day after said you were the one working that night.”
“I remember that. She was the girl in the papers. But I wasn’t working that night. Who did you talk to?”
“I didn’t get the guy’s name. Body builder. Personality of a chainsaw.”
Steve purses his lips and nods. “That’s Bret. I was supposed to work that night but called out sick. He covered my shift.”
“Wait. That guy was working? Is he working now, or tonight?”
“Nah, boss let him go. Some bullshit with the girls here, they didn’t feel comfortable working with him. I think he made a grab at one of them.”
He keeps talking, but I don’t hear it.
The sidewalk drops out from under me.
How did I not see it?
I spoke to the guy. I spoke to the guy a few hours after he dropped Chell’s dead body in an empty lot in Queens. He probably still had blood under his fingernails.
I pull out my wallet, fish out a hundred bucks of T-Rex’s money and hold it up to Steve. “Can you get me his address?”
He pulls out his phone and scrolls through. “Whatever. Dude was an asshole.”
Getting to Long Island under the radar is not an easy feat.
Can’t rent a car, there’ll be a record. Plus the tollbooths have cameras. The trains have cameras, too.
It’s hard to get things done without Ginny’s pull, but it’s not impossible. It took a little work, but Tibo knew a guy with a car, and that guy was willing to not ask questions. I handed the driver a pile of money and he agreed to the plan.
I filled the trunk of his car with blankets. Told him to stick with the speed limit and obey every traffic rule. Just to be safe. I don’t know how long the ride took because I fell asleep.
After he dropped me off, he went to a pool hall where he could meet up with a friend and establish an alibi. Better to have it and not need it. While he was doing that, I was cutting through side streets, climbing through bushes and shrubs.
Getting things done without Bombay is also not an easy thing, but he’s taught me enough that I could pop into an Internet café and do a little research and cover my tracks. I found out that Bret Carte lives with his parents, and he’s been popped twice for sexual assault. Somehow he got a job guarding drunk women. The politicians will work themselves into frenzy over this.
It’s dark and the houses are spread out so far that even if his neighbors looked outside, they wouldn’t see me crouching in the bushes behind his house, watching him through the kitchen window.
The ski mask and the black clothing help.
The gun I borrowed will also help.
I check the clip for the twentieth time, just to be sure, my hands shaking a little
as I push it back into place. I watch Carte for a little while, puttering around his kitchen. The child inside me expected fire and brimstone. That there’d be some outward sign of rot.
But he just looks like a guy with a bad attitude.
Still, I don’t know why I didn’t see it. He was right there in front of me. I could have reached out my hand and touched him.
Funny thing is, trapped in that trunk for the ride out here, in the dark with the roar of the engine and my own solitary thoughts, I didn’t falter.
I am ready to end this.
Things were never easy between us Chell, but do you want to know my favorite memory of you? The one that comes back to me right now, so easily?
It was the night of the blackout. Remember that? The entire metro area, dark.
It was so hot that day. It was even worse inside my apartment, which is why I left to go for a walk. I went outside and I ran into Good Kelly and she told me there was a party on Tibo’s roof that night.
The last time the city went dark like that was back in the seventies. I wasn’t alive for that but I heard stories. My dad told me working that night was chaos. Every stereotype and scary story you’ve ever heard about New York City came true. Riots in the streets, looting, people attacking each other. It was his first week with the FDNY and he nearly quit. But of course he didn’t.
So this blackout was making me think of him, and whenever I thought of him it was kind of rough. I didn’t really want to go to the party, but I’d been sequestered in my apartment, ignoring the phone, sitting on my fire escape, chain-smoking cigarettes and drinking the cheapest, ugliest beer I could find at the bodega.
But that night, finally, with the power out, there would be no light pollution, and we’d be able to see some stars. More than the twelve strong enough to fight through the haze. The thing that had been deprived of us for so many years.
I thought that maybe it was the kind of experience that shouldn’t be taken in alone on a fire escape.
I left my apartment and found grills lining the sidewalks, carried down from roofs so frozen food could be cooked before it thawed and spoiled. Stoops were jammed with people drinking and playing acoustic instruments. Many of them barefoot, like a blackout turned the city into a provincial back-road town. Civilians mingled with police officers, standing at intersections, directing traffic through the clogged streets. I ate a cheeseburger cooked by a stranger, and when I thanked him he tossed me a beer.