Lowboy (25 page)

I thought there was a calling Emily. I thought there had to be. Why else was I born if not for that. Dutchman said life is impossible but not if there’s a reason. There has to be a reason Emily. Otherwise why this sickness. Without it there’s only running away and kissing you and pushing you downstairs. There’s only poor sick Will gone up to heaven. Thank God there was a calling Emily. Thank God about the air. There was a reason and I asked you to help me with my body and you tried. I tried with you. You kissed me on the mouth to make it colder. Thank you Emily. Please don’t go flat. If not a calling then at least there was your name.

After she was gone he walked into the crowd without bothering to look for Skull & Bones. The fear was sputtering and screaming in his ears but he made up his mind not to pay attention. Most faces in the crowd were strange to him and badly drawn but many more were known to him by sight. Dr. Fleisig was there with Dr. Prekopp beside him and Baby and the laughing brownskinned nurses from
the school. Officer Martinez and the sad-eyed dandy from St. Jeb’s Buy & Barter and Jonathan Zizmor and the man with the Jamaican beef patty and the women from the dirty magazine. Quick & Painless and Secretary and the man in the gold satin jacket. A flatness over everything like a blacklight. No one answered his greeting. On a bench by a payphone his grandfather sat reading the New York
Daily
News
. Air was mustering on the platform and the paper snapped and buckled. The tracks on Lowboy’s left began to sigh. He looked back the way he’d come and every face that he saw was familiar. All of them waiting for the ghost train to arrive. Everyone was there but Violet.

Where’s Violet, Lowboy shouted. No one moved or breathed or said a word. Where’s Violet, he mumbled. Expecting no answer. But a voice rang out behind him and the crowd fell back like crabs before a wave. That voice alone had not been improvised.

“Violet’s here,” the voice said. “She’s upstairs.” Lowboy followed the sound to an old black man talking. A schoolteacherly man in a herringbone jacket. Skull & Bones behind him sharpening their teeth.

“Give her a message,” said Lowboy. “Tell her something from me.” He held his hands out like a prisoner. “I figured out the reason I was born.”

“You can tell her yourself,” said the man. The air pulled back from him as he stepped forward. “Come upstairs with me, Will. Your mother’s sick.”

“I know what my mother is.” He craned his neck to watch the ghost train coming. He thought about Violet and her sickness and her accent and her orthopedic shoes. He thought about her apartment with its bright red walls and Chinatown lamps and pictures from
Interview
and
National Geographic
and
Vogue
. He remembered her impatience and her dirty mouth and the way she had of misremembering sayings. He remembered
We don’t have all the tea in China
.

“I’ll tell her,” he mumbled, putting his hands down. “I’ll tell her something.” Then the man bent over and took him in his arms.

The ghost train came up behind them. “Easy,” the man said in his kindly black voice. “Nice and easy,” he said. He said it kindly and blackly. Was he talking to Lowboy now or to himself. Lowboy let his arms hang and flutter and his feet followed sorrowfully behind. Emily had held him there and kissed him. Where is Violet, he shouted. No one answered. He remembered what Emily had whispered to him on that last unforgivable afternoon.

It’s got to happen sometime, Will. It happens to every person in the world.

The noise of the express train blew out of the tunnel as Lowboy brought his mouth to the man’s cheek and bit it. There was no hearing anything else. He tasted blood on his teeth and the arms let him loose and his shoeheels hit the platform’s slotted edge. The man’s hands clutched his sleeves but he slipped out of his sweater like a fish. The man looked down at him in awe. His thin red mouth opened and shut. Skull & Bones came past him then but the express came past him faster. It came in as fast as the ghost train before it and made every living creature catch its breath. Why was I born, Lowboy thought. I know why. He made a face and took a slow step backward. On November 12 the world ended by fire.

Jin Auh, Eric Chinski, Brooke Costello,
Cop Talk
by E. W. Count,
Crazy All the Time
by Frederick L. Covan, MD,
Tell Me I’m Here
by Anne Deveson, Matt Dojny, Doug Dibbern, Eli Greenberg, MD,
The
Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, Subway Lives
by Jim Dwyer,
Jazz in the Sixties
by Leonard Feather,
Stranger to the System
by Jim Flynn and Nelson Hall, Alex Halberstadt, William Hall, Shirley Hazzard, Edward Henderson, MD, Corin Hewitt, Chloe Hooper, Cheryl Huber,
The Encyclopedia of New York City
by Kenneth T. Jackson, Kirsten Kearse, Peter Knecht, Jay Ko, MD, Steven Koch, William Lubart, PhD,
The Psychiatric Interview in Clinical Practice
by Roger MacKinnon, Haruki Murakami,
Children with Emerald Eyes
by Mira Rothenburg,
Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
by Daniel Paul Schreber,
Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl
by Marguerite Sechehaye, Akhil Sharma,
The Code Book
by Simon Singh,
Transit
Talk
by Robert W. Snyder, Adrian Tomine,
Surviving Schizophrenia
and
Nowhere to Go
by E. Fuller Torrey, MD, Jared Whitham,
This
Stranger, My Son
by Louise Wilson, Barbara Wünschmann-Henderson, PhD, Peter Wünschmann, Andrew Wylie.

Canaan’s Tongue
The Right Hand of Sleep