"He'll be seventy-some inches tall. He'll be drinking a beer, and he'll be grabbing his balls. He's the remote explosive waiting for someone to call"
This fucking guy…The raincoat’s demise…rental adventure…A pony
discussion…The smiley motorman…Things get ugly…Texas…A package arrives…A
Cadillac burns…Rest stop.
The yellow rain coat had been effective. There was rain the
whole way from Midtown to the park, and wind - swirling and modulating - in the
vast cement canyons, driving the water before like a team of horses. Even so, the
dramatically colored jacket had kept it all off of him, including the most
important parts: his forehead and his hands. Over the past few weeks – wet as
they’d been - he’d had great need, and great use of the raincoat, and he
thought it was a shame to have to leave it behind. Nevertheless, he was down to
a $1000 roll of 50’s and 100’: Soon the coat would have to go.
***
He followed them for three blocks. A small girl – he was
guessing around seven - and a young mother, walking along park between 77th &
78th. He'd overheard a conversation, downwind of them at strawberry fields. The
plan was uptown for lunch, then Astor Place to spin the cube and St. Marks for
t-shirt buying.
They were heading for the station at 72nd, which would make
things easier. He could envision the scene: The R was coming, uptown / downtown
express, with the N train moments later, uptown express and local, seconds apart. There were steel trusses spaced three
feet apart in the station, separating uptown from down, two sets on each side.
They were rusty, tons of trash and shit strewn around them, piling at the concrete
base, infesting the steel frame like termites in ancient Oak.
They stopped at Starbucks so he watched them from a few feet
away. The girl was cute. A brunette, an easy smile, easy laugh, nine years old
instead of seven, turning ten the very next day. He could see the three of them
in his mind’s eye, entering the station on the downtown side, on 71st
and Park. They finished and he followed them at 15 yards. They never turned
around. Talking – all the while - about horses.
Moments later in an almost empty mid-afternoon subway
station, he closed to within five yards, leaning on a tiled pole, watching them
move up to the yellow line. He could hear the train coming, it was almost time,
and they were still talking about horses. He moved up. Six feet away now, the
two of them standing close, waiting. He briefly considered doing both, but
quickly opted no. The girl was getting louder:
I do want a pony, but just not now, you know…
She was yelling over the metallic concussions popping off
all around as the old train moved close at full throttle.
***
Two quick steps closed the gap and the mom was still eyes
locked on the 9 year old. He bounded off his left foot, brought a knee and
thigh into the kid. She flew only a few feet before the uptown express seemingly
vaporized most of her, leaving no trace but a bleach white “Keds” sneaker in
almost immaculate condition. He and the girl’s mother watched it bounce and
spin across the platform like a badly hit ball dribbling foul.
He’d thrown low. The motorman had seen nothing, felt
nothing, so the train continued on through the station. In an instant he can
see the immediate future unfold in front of him like a brilliant sunrise.
The downtown N train on the opposite track (separated by those
rusty old trusses) is coming in. He can see it in his head and he can hear it
in real, super HD fidelity, showing up about 30 seconds after the downtown
express on the opposite platform. Both trains coming in, feel the station
shaking and feedback echoes of echoes. Commuters on the opposite platform begin
crowding up toward the tracks, jockeying to gain a predictive advantage over
envisioned subway doors soon to open. The whole place is vibrating, and the
woman whose daughter he just murdered begins to scream - not cry, or wail, but
scream - at the ragged top of her voice directly into his face. She’d waited
about five seconds before starting in, and he’d spent the entire time staring
into her eyes right there on the platform. Now things began to happen all at
once: The awful train roared past, and an imaginary count-down began:
At twenty seconds the speeding uptown express is finally
past them, and he’s leaping away from the now wailing mother, who – in
retrospect – seemed younger than he’d originally thought. At 18 seconds he
lands between the tracks on his side of the 72nd street station and considers
that perhaps the young woman hadn't been the mother after all. A nanny,
perhaps? An elder sister? At 15 seconds he’d leapt from his position between
the first set of tracks, over the infamous third rail and into the gap between
the second set of tracks. He could still hear the mother/nanny belting it out,
even in spite of the sound of the R local, now fully out of the tunnel and
lurching to a halt, breaks screaming, grinding into position between he and the
hysterical woman.
At 14 seconds he sizes up the truss situation from up close.
At 11 seconds he’s through the truss and jumping out over the entire first set
of rails, landing between the tracks with the N express blasting from the
tunnel, bearing down on him like an artillery shell. At six seconds he can see
the motorman fixing him in a terrified gaze through the front window of the
downtown express. At five seconds he leaps for the far side of the tracks, shedding
the bright yellow rain coat just before take-off. He doesn’t see it hang there
for an instant before the massive air-wave of the speeding train blows it high
up and out of sight, deep into the duct-works of the old train station. At two
seconds his hands meet the far platform as the downtown local – just on time –
comes sliding up. At one second his matador, gator-suede boots are finally safe
atop the ancient concrete of the 72 St. Station, and the doors of the downtown
N train open like a mother’s arms to welcome him in.
***
There was a van rental place at 59th and the west
side highway. The guy took his fake license without looking at it and said:
$165 for the next 24 hours. You want the insurance?
Without waiting for the reply, the guy threw the keys to a
2011 Charger on the high counter between them and continued speaking:
Black on black. Tinted all the way around to the legal
limit. Fuckin’ sweet. Where you headin’?
***
In minutes he was on open track, 120 and climbing, leaving
great chunks of the Henry Hudson Parkway behind him with each stretching second
of travel. At the very top of the George Washington Bridge he let off on the
pedal, looked south out over the bay past the Statue of Liberty, imagined himself
jerking the wheel hard left, ripping through guard rail, Jersey barrier, and
giant cable-spans like so much tissue paper. He saw himself floating into the
windy void hundreds of feet above the Hudson River with hard trajectory and
total silence. How long falling? He wondered.
Instead, he rolled the passenger window, reached into his
inside pocket, flung his brown leather wallet out over the rails. He rolled the
window back up and dipped into the Charger’s throttle once again. Hours later
he was out of jersey, heading south at over 100mph, the $837 dollars
unprotected in the pocket where the wallet had been.
***
He pulled off into a rest stop at 3:05am. There were signs
for Burger King, Dunkin Donuts, Mobile, and Krispy Kreme Donuts. It took him 10
steps to get from the glass vestibule to the bathroom and making them he counted
eight people in the rest stop. There was a man wearing a Red Sox hat in the
bathroom, pissing into a urinal, and he could hear somebody else in the stalls.
As he was washing his hands, the first guy – Red Sox hat – stepped up to do the
same, saying:
Holy shit man. Fuckin’ guys, right?.
Red Sox hat caught a flash of movement to his left. He leaned
over the sink to wash his hands as a gush of hot, crimson/black blood flooded
from a great gash in his throat onto his hands. He caught himself in the mirror
looking helpless and scared, and he began to panic. He saw the reflected
bathroom door swinging closed behind him just as the darkness began creeping at
the edges of his vision. He reached up for his throat, fell to his knees and
pitched forward onto the formica counter top between the sinks.
***
He walked out of the bathroom without tending to the stall.
He saw seven of the eight people he’d seen before. There were four people at
burger king, two on either side of the counter, females selling, men buying.
Similar ages. 20’s, early 30’s. He walked over to them, eavesdropping. One was
having trouble deciding and the other was frustrated:
Fuck. Alex. Fuck. Really? Really? Fuck.
Shut up dood. Fuck. Gimme a minute fuckin’…
He closed in, smelling a cloud of alcoholic vapor enveloping
this are of the rest stop. The women on the other side, both dark, heavy, and
aggravated-looking beamed at him as he arrived with pleading glances. He was
not moved. One of the men turned as he arrived and fixed him in a bloodshot
stare:
Dude…You look just like…
Just as he’d been about to say the words “Keith Richards”,
the man drove an ice pick through Alex’s right eye to the wooden handle. There
was a sound like a water balloon hitting pavement, a weird fountain of fluids
and blood began oozing and bubbling from the wound as Alex – still standing up
– began repeating the word “like” at strange intervals and weird tones of voice.
The girls were gone as soon as the pick happened, dialing 911 in the back, or
maybe just fleeing, he thought. Alex’s friend, however, was too scared to run
away. He seemed transfixed by Alex’s ruined face, but the assailant only allowed
a few seconds to indulge the fascination. Swinging his right arm up through its
full range of motion, snatching the ice pick on the upswing, he drove it into
the friend’s lower abdomen and wrenched his hand up hard and fast through skin,
bone, cotton and nylon. There was a gasping noise as his Alex and his friend
fell, side by side on the rest stop floor in an expanding blood slick.
***
Outside he heard the sirens, closing from both directions
out on the freeway, but instead of making for the Charger he went for the
woods. As the troopers lined up outside and began to staging he was already in
the darkened neighborhoods off the rest stop exit. The neighborhood was nice.
There was a gigantic late 80’s style contemporary commanding a cul de sac off
the street he found himself on. He made for that, taking careful note of the
new, muted glow low the western sky.
It was set back farther than had been apparent, and he made
his way up a winding, unlit driveway with the sirens blaring back at the rest
stop. The house was huge, basically a giant rectangular box with a great open
space carved out of the center to form a carport and circle-back. He went
silently about, testing doors and windows for an unsecured latch, when a light
went on at a window close bye and he hit the dirt. Noise from inside “Yeah yeah
yeah” or something like that. Not the voice of somebody who’d been sleeping.
Then he heard the sound of scraping paws against kitchen flooring and
understood. He began moving along the ground, making for the doors he’d seen in
the back.
The guy opened the door closest to him and he offered a tiny
“thank you” to the universe as he acted. The guy inside was insulting the dog,
angry at having been woken:
Fuck dog! You push and you push im tellin’ you. You bring this
shit on…
He stopped, because there was a very strange looking
intruder standing in the door from which he’d intended to fling the pet. It was
a man, taller and wiry looking, dressed in what looked like velvet pants and
black leather.
***
12 hours later he was eating at a diner three miles away,
dressed in a three piece suit he’d borrowed from the guy with the dog. The
weather section said storms coming, but calm further south, and he took the
info to heart. The bill for his breakfast was ten dollars, 47 cents, which he
covered with a hundred dollar bill before leaving. He walked south, heading for
easier weather.
He found a big supermarket and began going door to door
testing locks. It took him almost an hour, and three more big parking lots,
before success. The car was huge, a caddy, 1979 or so. The rear door was
opened, and he ducked in to wait. Storms were gathering and the air felt old
and cold and angry. The parking lot served what looked like a hundred smaller
stores and outlets. An hour went by, then another. He was drifting, thinking
about the wife and the little girl from the grey contemporary.
Eventually they came. Two girls. Teenaged or at least very
very close. They carried bags of different designs. Big day shopping. They did
not notice the passenger upon pulling out. One of them – the prettier one
judging by voice – was talking about a long drive ahead:
Fuck it’s late. O M G Katie we are in soooo much trouble.
Holy shit holy shit holy shit. It’ll take hours!
The other – not nearly so incensed – shot back casual:
Longer. We’re on ”E”…
***
He left the caddy burning on the side of the road in an area
he’d thought was Texas. After dealing with the girls he’d discovered that
disposal of their mortal remains wasn’t feasible considering his circumstance.
Instead, he left them in a bloody, rank smelling stack in the back seat and
drove south as fast as he could, until the daylight, and the horrible smell
forced a decision. He’d put a hundred dollar’s worth of gas in the trunk, so
the last 1000 had become the last 737 dollars. He watched the police converge
on the scene from all directions, but stayed undetected in his flight, hidden
by the grassy tufts and boulder piles almost a mile out from the road.
That night, long after the excitement on the highway had
been scrubbed away, there was just the road. He walked back out towards it,
grabbed a hundred dollar bill from the wad in his pocket, and held in a
clenched fist with the thumb extended.
5 hours later he rented a room just over the Texas/Oklahoma
border, paid the man a hundred dollars in advance of two nights stay, then
walked quietly out to his room. Arriving, he fired off a text:
Moving day – send everything over
night for tmrw: Texas Motor Court, 50 Alamo Drive, Plano Texas, 02320
then fell asleep for ten hours. By 8:00 the next morning he
was dressed and in motion, headed for the front desk to pick up a package. He
found the front desk guy cutting cardboard boxes up behind the counter, before
he could open his mouth to speak the guy stopped his cutting, turned his
attention to his guest:
Fine Mess! Fine Mess?
The front desk guy was air-quoting as he said it. After a
while, though, it became apparent that no reply was coming, he bounded over to
a rack of mail cubbies on the desk behind him. Our hero noticed a sign on the
wall reading “Don’t rush me. I’m making mistakes as fast as I can!” The man
said:
First this!
Picking from one of the cubbies, the front desk man handed
our hero a postcard, then began sifting through a small pile of packages. He
finally pulled out the only black envelope among them, held it up, saw
confirmation in his guest’s eyes, and handed it over without another word.
Almost.
Hey that’s weird you look…
That was the last our hero heard of the front desk man
before making his escape. Out of the office and into the dull dust of the hotel
parking lot, he quickened his gait, rushing toward his room in something like a
slow jog. Inside he studied the postcard. It featured a picture of a man in
dread locks smoking a gigantic joint. Across the top, the words “Wish you were
here” were written in script. At the bottom, in the same hand, were the words
“Wait, I forget: are you here?” and
under that: !JAMAICA AGAIN! In bold black caps.
The main package was about shoebox size. Upon opened it, he
removed a smaller item inside amongst balled newsprint. The smaller package was
soft, wrapped red and green tissue paper. It contained three wholly expected
items, one of which – a small red wallet made of climber’s webbing - would have
to wait until a healthy portion of the first two could be dealt with.
***
Later on he called a cab, paid 29 dollars getting to
(ballpark), paid a scalper 100 dollars apiece for a field box ticket, a
grandstand ticket and a bleacher seat.
He arrived deep into the third inning and went straight to the bathroom. Ten guys on line, 12 stalls with another 5-6 dudes que'ed. He didn’t wait
long before a stall opened.Once inside, he took
a tiny white canister from a pocket and dumped a great pile of its powdery white contents
on to his hand, then jabbed his wrist up into his nasal area with a mighty
sniff. After that he doused the first caniupster, took another one from a
different pocket and repeated the process. This time the powder not so white,
the pile not near so big. He pulled his legs up under him and listened.
Public bathroom usage takes on some unique characteristics
during baseball games and the closer the game, the more pronounced the effect.
Football, concerts, festivals…Most public entertainment deals with great chunks
of time during which attendees will delay bathroom trips for as long as they
can. Nobody wants to miss stuff so they suffer, willingly. Baseball is the same
way, but instead of long hours of delayed peeing, the side changes every
inning, creating an irresistible pocket of opportunity for anybody holding it
in, and an easy decision for those who can hold it for another go-around.
Inside the bathroom, this effect manifests as a tiny “rush” to the bathrooms
every 10-20 minutes with periods of relative emptiness between the crowds. Our
hero had come to the stall during just such a rush and now, after sitting
through it, was waiting for the next.
It came quick. Within five minutes, he heard a gaggle of
noisy guys come roaring in to the tile echo chamber of the first room, nobody
came back to the stalls. An instant later he heard another small group come
into the bathroom. He heard seven people at first, but they’d all stopped in
the urinal section. He was trying to hear their voices but the auto-flush echo
was fucking with his understanding. Finally he heard a distinct, useful
sentence. An older man, talking to another man, pissing next to one another:
Hey did Ben leave? Ben!?
The other guy came right back:
He’s hear. Still shitting…Right Benny boy?
The water was running. He heard dudes washing hands, and he
heard a voice from the stall next to his:
Just fuck off JUSTIN. Dad I’m fine. Just go, I’ll be there.
There was no reply. The man’s partners had left the
bathroom. Our hero let his feet down and – waiting until the last footsteps
rang out in the exit tunnel – began to speak.
***
The shits, and on game day too. Billy Lukens was dejected,
sitting alone in his own rotted stink while Josh Beckett struck out more Ranger,s and the innings rocketed by. He was missing precious at bats to his awful
guts. Two weeks, he thought, probably time to go see the doctor. He spent the next
few minutes thinking about cancer and dying, but was interrupted in short order
by a voice that sounded more like a hiss:
Hey. Buddy. I need help. Can you help me?
The bathrooms tile interior was fucking with his ears, and
it sounded like the voice was coming from everywhere. Some primal feature in
his darkest self sprang awake upon hearing it, and began assessing the
surroundings for threat, and escape routes. It was like a put on, this voice, a
horror film parody of something dreadful. He answered back:
Uh. Well I’ll do what I can. I’m not sure I can stand up…
The voice came back directly at the “P” sound:
Perfect. That’s perfect. You see, I’ve dropped my ring, and
it’s terribly important to me. It’s just over there, in front of you on the
right.
Lukens looked. Saw.
Ok yeah. I can see it. Ok, you want me to slide it back
over?
Hand.
Excuse me?
Hand it over.
The primal dread was cresting, pounding on his thought
process and signaling immediate evacuation, but it was too late. Lukens leaned,
grabbed, and tried to hand back. Holding the recovered jewlery – a miniature
silver skull and crossbones – in his hand for a fascinated few seconds, he
said:
Cool ring
before u-ing it under the stall to allow access on the other
side, and that’s as far as he got.
***
He’d just come from the ATM at the El Al gate (New balance:
$100,000) and a drunken stranger spoke to him, pointing to an article in the
newspaper on our hero’s lap and bitching up a vapor cloud of Marlboro and
Corona.
That is scary. I mean can you believe it? That’s why I’m
going! That’s it! People look at me as if I’M the fucking nut!
Judging by the smell, the guy would have been happy to go
on, but a soft sounding female voice issued from speakers high above them and
interrupted him into concerned silence:
This is a last pre-boarding call for El Alal flight 911,
direct from New Orleans Louisiana to Montego Bay. Once again final pre-boarding
begins in just a minute folks. Make sure to have your ID’s ready to present.
You will not be allowed on the plane without valid ID. I repeat: you may not
board the airplane without proper photo ID.
At this our hero got up from his place beside the nosy
American and walked over to a trash can mounted in the wall near an ancient
bank of pay phones. Anybody giving a shit would have observed him plainly,
taking an pristine-looking black leather wallet from his pocket, tossing it
into the trash, removing another, very different looking wallet from a
well-hidden pocket and turning back towards his gate, and the future.
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