The Colossus of New York (2 page)

THE PORT AUTHORITY

THEY’RE ALL BROKEN somehow, sagging down the stairs of the bus. Otherwise they would have come here differently. The paparazzi do not wait to take their picture. Barricades do not hold back the faithful. This is the back entrance, after all.

IN THE PARKING berth it is anticlimactic. A man in goggles records the time of arrival. The baggage handler huffs into his palms, one job closer to punching out. Thousands of arrivals every day, they won’t stop coming. Different people but all the same. They try to sneak by with different faces but it is no use. They step down the grooved steps, clutching items and the attendant lugs the bags out of the bin, looking for handles. They get excited and jostle: is someone going to steal their bags. They have all heard the stories. One of them has a cousin who came here once and was a victim of street crime. He had to have money wired so he could get home and that was the last time their clan went to New York. There is a thing called three card monte out to get you. They have all heard the stories and they all come anyway. The bags thud on concrete and get taken.

NO MATTER their hometowns, no matter their reasons for sliding cash through ticket windows, on the bus they are all alike. They get on. By the driver they take stock, shoving receipts into pockets and bags. There are some seats in the back. They all want to sit alone. You have never been the first on the bus and had your pick. People have theories about window seats and aisle seats and which areas are safer in the event of a crash. He is unaware that his duffel hits each person on the head as he passes. Is this seat taken, he says, and his measure is taken by his neighbor. Scowls come easy. It only takes five minutes for them to ease into lasting discomfort. If only she could breathe through her mouth for the next thousand miles. She practices a technique. At the next stop people arrange bags and jackets on the empty seats beside them and avoid eye contact or feign sleep when the new pilgrims try to find seats.

THERE IS NOT much to occupy them on the highways except intermittent foreshadowings. An industrial park, the confident skyline of a smaller city than the one named on their ripped tickets. Signs on the highway count down miles, sometimes heartening. More furtive things dart from the headlights to escape glimpses. Across three states the empty bottle of juice rolls up and down the bus between shoes and bags. No one claims ownership. Responsible parties pretend not to hear. That is surely a wig two rows up. They try out new positions for their legs. One drawn up and the other wedged into the footrest. Both feet almost in the aisle until the third person trips on them. He has long legs and deserves special rights. The tall man drives his knees into the seat in front of him, squeezing up a chimney. Hers is the only seat that won’t recline. The lever has been ripped off and every inclination of her neighbors summons jealousy. Each new combination of limbs might be the one that unlocks the vault of comfort and then sleep. Instead, parts that don’t matter fall asleep before their brains. Legs, feet. As they cross state lines, license plates change colors.

SOMETHING HAPPENS TO the bags up there in the baggage racks. When you go to get something out of them they are inexplicably heavier, as if they repacked themselves when you weren’t looking. Zippers won’t close, hang open in half smiles. Innocuous imperfections in the highway have consequences. The cap of the shampoo loosens itself. Shampoo oozes onto garments, a drop a mile. The smell of shampoo seeps through canvas and reminds whole rows of showers denied them. He falls asleep on the window and when he wakes notices a gray cloud of grease, indentation on a tinted pillow. She thinks she has slept a long time but it has only been ten minutes. Hardly closer.

THANK GOD for the white detachable headrest slip-covers, an invention that saves us from germs. Pat pending. Without gratitude the bus speeds past the factory that manufactures them. The guy in the next seat won’t take a hint. She sends signals, glancing at her book, nods or grunts noncommittally but he keeps on yapping. Finally closing the book to submit to prattle. If this loaf of bread lasts for the next three days, he will have nine dollars and seventy-five cents when he gets there. Someone is eating fried chicken, there can be no mistake. The smell of fried chicken makes Rows 8 through 15 hungry and envious until someone cons open a sticky window. The bathroom disinfectant is a genie periodically loosed from its bottle, all out of wishes. Hold it for as long as possible before braving that place. For ten miles of interstate a man inspects his face in the bathroom mirror. Is he actually going to start fresh in a new place with that face of his. If you can endure the verdict of the fluorescent lighting the city will be no problem. He takes a piss and tries not to splash at every latest jolt. Occasionally self-abuse. Through the tiny window left open for ventilation the world blurs. Cool reassurances from moist towelettes. The latch slides to vacant. Then the staggering return down the aisle to find the seat shrunk while you were away.

THE DRIVER IS some kind of priest, changing gears for their salvation. A blank space follows the words, The Name of Your Driver Is. More and more frequently he falls asleep at the wheel for whole seconds. If you ask him to turn the heat up, he might do it. He steers behind dark aviator glasses. He announces a ten-minute rest stop and the prisoners scramble out into the exercise yard. They scramble for fast food, the last chance to eat for who knows how many miles. She recognizes that guy over there from the bus and has a cigarette. As long as he stands there the bus hasn’t left yet. Forced to prioritize, some choose food over phone calls to loved ones. Pennies accumulate. It is tense in the fast food lines, how long is ten minutes. To stand there in the parking lot with hot french fries looking at the departing red lights of the bus. Best to cut these missions short. When they get back to the bus there is still plenty of time and they stand there stupidly, too fearful to make another attempt. Everybody has forgotten napkins.

IT IS THE biggest hiding place in the world. The inevitable runaways. The abandoned, only recently reading between the lines. After the beauty contest this is the natural next step. All the big agencies are there. He saved his tips all summer and to see them disappear into a ticket quickened his heart. Not the first in the family to make the attempt. The suitcase is the same one his father used decades before. This time it will be different. The highway twists. She will be witty and stylish there. With any luck he will be at the same address and won’t it be quite a shock when he opens the door but after all he said if you’re ever in town. Hope and wish. In the light of the bonfire she realized the madness of that place and was packed by morning. They will send back money when they get settled, whatever they can. A percentage. Reliving each good-bye. Practicing the erasure of her accent, she watches her jaw’s reflection in the window. Wily vowels escape. No one will know the nickname that makes him mad. This is the right decision, they tell themselves. And then there is you.

THEY REFUEL between towns, gliding down ramps for gasoline. Diesel oases. After all they have been through together, the drivers switch without farewells. What is a passenger to a driver. Apparently those fingerless leather gloves are standard issue. One driver, she never saw his face, just his sure shoulders. The bus changes when you are not looking. It is possible to fall asleep and wake up and everyone is different, all the scalps and haircuts accidentally memorized over miles are transmuted. Everyone reached their destination and got off except for you and it might be the case that all these new people will reach their destinations before you and only you will remain, in this seat, the lone fool sticking for the terminus. In one seat successively sit an infant, a small child, then a teenager and the next occupant will be the next stage older, he is sure of it. But then time is a funny thing on a bus.

IF THEY THINK those two words New York will fix them, who are we to say otherwise. They wait for so long to see the famous skyline but wake at the arrival gate and with a final lurch are delivered into dinginess. This first disappointment will help acclimate. The weather is always the same in there. It may be day or night outside, or sunny or rainy outside, but inside the terminal the light is always the same queasy green rays. In effect, no matter what time of day it is, everyone arrives at the same time, in the same weather, and in this way it is possible for all of them to start even. At other gates buses heave in and head out according to schedule. They roar. The fleet returns bit by bit. The buses depart with the ones who need to leave and come back with replacements from every state. The replacements are a bit dazed after the long ride and the tiny brutalities. Row after row they wait to shuffle into the aisle. On her asleep foot she stumbles. He wants to say thanks to the driver but the driver fills out the clipboard and won’t look up. In front of the luggage bin they take what is theirs, move bags from hand to hand to discover what is best for the next leg of the trek. Sag on one side. Some take deep breaths. The door opens easily, they are not the first through, and they enter the Port Authority.

MORNING

IN THE MORNING the streets are owned by bread and garbage trucks. Sanitation engineers swashbuckle to sidewalks after scraps, obscure treasure, hoist up chewed-up bread and crusts the bread trucks left days before. Deliver and pick up. Twelve-ton gluttons chew the curb and burp up to windows in mechanical gusts. Where’s a rooster when you need one. Instead hydraulics crow. Tabloid haystacks squat. Emptied trash cans skid to anchor corners. Shopkeepers retract metal grates that repel burglars from merchandise unworthy of theft. All this metal grinding, this is the machine of morning reaching out through cogs and gears to claim and wake us. Check the clock to see how much more sleep. Still time. Down there they deliver and pick up. We each have routes we keep to keep this place going.

GODS, HERE’S A TIP. To gain converts, recruit atheists, change your name to Snooze Button. A readily accessible divinity, a reach away, a prayer quick to fingertips if not lips. Like the truest gods it gives them what they already had and wins them through alarm. Exquisite torture of the Snooze Button. Wring a pillow to squeeze out minutes, the stuffing it contains. These life rafts from linen closets. Five more minutes might return you to that dream, the one where you were away and happy. It was good and real and cut off before you got to the best part. Almost there and then beep beep beep. Like the best gods it knows how to parcel out paradise.

UP AND AT ’EM . Pad around and revive. Turn on appliances, lights and coffee machines, radios and television sets. Listen to newscasters: while you were safe in here the world may have lost its way. Let these smoothing voices pat down until you are made. Check the window to discover yourself in a morgue, a white sheet covering your unfortunate acquaintance. So it snowed last night. Take your eyes off this city and it will play tricks. While you are sleeping it pranks to build your character. Where’s that trusty sweater. It will keep you warm. Maybe no one will notice it’s full of holes.

FACE THE DAY well armed with helpful info from morning shows. A tiny incident might shape up into an interesting scandal, cross your fingers. Birthdays of people possessing esoteric secrets vis-à-vis longevity. We could all use a handy computer graphic and earnest newscaster and ominous tagline for this new phase of our lives, yet no technicians scramble to produce it. Check the weather: there’s a little cartoon sun over a region you don’t inhabit. This is the most important meal of the day: accepting into your gut what lies outside your doorstep. Out of coffee. Out of milk. Out of luck. Late again. Call in sick, or don’t. One glimpse into the bathroom mirror proves last night’s self-improvement plan to be this morning’s abandoned scheme. So nice to wake to your spouse’s hip but then remember last night’s disagreement and decide you are still angry. Forgetting that when you skip your shower you are paranoid all day.

WEAR YOUR TOTEM item and everything will be okay. If only you’d done laundry, you wouldn’t be in this position. Regret, scavenge, assemble. The blessing of a secret stash of matching socks. The name of his cologne is Hamper, Recommended by Four Out of Five Whiffs. She is betrayed. Not once but repeatedly. This morning everything conspires against. Let down by a broken alarm clock, rebuked by work untouched last night, and now this snow. A well-planned assault against equilibrium that will end at midnight, when the spell is broken. Not a single clock offers an encouraging word, not even the one in the microwave, famous for its accelerations. We have been well rehearsed in our responses to first snows and first frosts. We take our places.

PECK GOOD-BYES to loved ones. You don’t want to know what goes on in your apartment when you’re not around. Before he crosses the threshold he must recite the manifesto that makes him steel. The door clicks locked behind and then outside into cold morning. The wind is a harsh critic, renowned for sardonic turn-of-phrase, but for once it is nice to be free of politeness, to receive the world without sugar coating. That Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life crap. Outside objects are snug in a white coat. Button the top button you save for emergencies, throw fists into pockets. The snow is already shamed and grimed: five minutes is all it takes for this city to break you. Canines add pigment to piles, rescuing snowballs within from mittened hands. As it melts, snow will disinter dog shit, yet no archaeologists rush to catalogue. Fleas of salt scare away snow. Maintenance men shovel snow from walkways to shoo away lawsuits. Along buildings and curbs, herded by shovels and wind, the snow huddles together for warmth. Everybody stick together. We have little else but safety in numbers.

A MOTLEY CREW waits for transportation. Leave the house fifteen minutes later or earlier and join a different cast of characters. This is a whole new troupe with their strange repertoire. Time it right to see your secret crush at the bus stop. Moved away two weeks ago without telling you but keep the fire burning, my faithful. Forget something upstairs and make the calculation. Bitter coalition of the workbound. They hoist the flags of their native countries. Just an hour into her day she sags, already defeated. Frozen eyeglasses fog. Roll past landmarks, we have private landmarks everyone can see. Seeing the particular awning through the bus window that announces he is almost there. Can you make it to the door in time. Pardon me, excuse me, where’s the fire. He has timed this route down to the second and today they are whole minutes off and everything is awry.

A PATH in the snow. Following in footsteps makes it easy as we retrace each other. No songs or statues for the early pioneers except their footprints. Every uneven step reacquaints you with the hazards of citizenship. So morning becomes required reading, a manual of struggle against odds. The frozen-to-death wait for someone to notice. They walk past him, seeing or not seeing, ignoring or indifferent. Avoid slush and its intimations. Forces work against you to melt your resolve into slush. Put your worst foot forward. As if you were not already wide awake and well shocked. Melting snow drips off awnings. No snow on street grates. Such abominable heat from below, what wouldn’t melt. The superstitious and the merely wary avoid walking on the steel doors that speak of the underworld. Gossip tells of people who have fallen into the unseen below. Goblins, hobgoblins, the homeless. Steel rattles under her brave treads and warns. Mornings will kill you with their trapdoors.

SKIRTS ARUFFLE, hats launch, eyes grit up under the effects of this wind tunnel. Things are set fleeing. Hands pat down. Determination sets. This wind will mug you of everything, make you look ridiculous as you try to maintain. It’s these tall buildings and their architectural tricks. Shade in summer, cruelty in winter and truth be told it is this season they savor. Bang fingers against thighs to beat warmth into them, give up on ears. Note to self: Get Gloves. Vendors of papers and muffins haunt their staked-out corners. The same greetings to each customer. Remembering how you like your bagel, anointing you a regular with privileges. I like it black. Gooey surprises at the bottom of the coffee cup, dunes of undissolved sugar. His entire shipment of coffee lids is defective, irritating customers one by one. Two drops of java on his shirt is enough to make the day unsalvageable. Pulses quicken, percolating consciousness. Not until the third cup will he be human. Drag knuckles until then.

HEADLINES TRY to get under your skin and cheap ink on top of it. Wrassle and grapple newspapers. If only he knew the proper way to fold a newspaper on public transportation. If only my robot double were working, I’d send him to the office in my place. They like him better anyway. Over that stranger’s shoulder, a writer of horoscopes is an intimate friend. He looks like an idiot in this suit, but it’s the only one he owns and he can mask his too short sleeves by magic-show posture. Too big for these pants and considering that popular weight-loss program. At her bulging waistband the zipper tab stands at attention. Just now noticing the dry cleaner’s sabotage and devising ways to hide this treachery through the long day. Little things like that ruin promotions. It popped up on her cheek overnight and now no one will look her in the eye all day. Notice your first wrinkle, it made you late in front of the bathroom sink. No time to buy the advertised creams. First it snows and now this personal frost to consider. Forget what calendars say—it is these unimpeachable signs that tell us when a new season is upon us.

LAST NIGHT hangs heavy in the morning sky, weather that forecasters cannot describe for lack of proper instrumentation. Try to interpret last night’s passion. Try to make sense of last night—this time we will make this relationship work despite precedent. The only scholar in the discipline called yourself, never mentored, sans colleagues. Her smell still on him. After work and before sleep you let your true self out for a few hours and now you must pay for it. What were their names and what did it mean. Such is the reach of happy hour and its deceptively long hands. Someone probably deserves an apology. You never made it home. Maybe no one will notice she is wearing the same clothes. No one comments on the strange marks on his neck and when he gets home he will curse each of his coworkers for saying nothing. What will you share around the hypothetical water cooler or that solid coffee station. If you don’t plan ahead, who will you be: just another idiot holding a paper cup. Hung over from spirits. How do I smell and is this evil coming out of my pores. Discreetly sniff yourself. All of them have things waiting to come out through their skins. Unmetabolized inadequacy, dread, hope, although no one has told them that this last item has no scent.

SOLDIER ON. Pass the night shift on their way home. They have already seen the new situation on the front but cannot describe, lest you run back to bunker of home. Let us not neglect the children, for they also brave this minefield. They have smaller feet but are not exempt from disaster. Mittens clipped to sleeves. Bent bus passes brandished. Hide a toy in your pocket. He’s not supposed to take it to school, but who can dispute the power of cereal box talismans. Instructing kids in the workaday world through elementary threats. If they knew it will always be like this, they would revolt, go back to sleep where they stand, fall to the floor on buses, topple onto sidewalks. The only sane response, really.

PLACES, EVERYONE. Keep this machine up and running. Deliver and pick up. Every day a down payment. Get busy in the fine print of this contract while there is still time. Practice inflections for the big proposal. Devise busywork for the intern. Cram for the big test. After all that fear, the boss won’t be in today, the teacher is sick, and instead of what we expected, we have gullible substitutes. This fact summoning from reluctant lips the first smile of the day. All that hustle was for naught you think, but in fact it was down payment. One after the other the long days stretch ahead until the day you decide. Not today. Maybe tomorrow. Take five seconds to collect yourself starting now. Then back to work everybody and I mean it.