The Nervous System (9 page)

If you've got internal balance, you can radiate that balance externally, exercise control over your environment.

Don't expect everybody to dig the System. Though it's like I say, you work it, it works for you …

Moving again, I soon find myself back at Sixth Avenue. I peep north and clock the burning wreckage of the chopper, chumps wandering around, hamstrung, what to do? Clowns. I spin left left and left as the System dictates, with the intention of heading south and—

Wham bam stop dead at West 36th Street and Sixth Avenue. I'm having a freeze.

Scan the street for indicators of what the fuck. Plywoodcovered storefronts, FedEx/Kinko's, McDonald's, blank, hollowed out. Mounds of garbage, which look like somebody tried to “organize.”

Think: snipers.

Make for cover, expecting a pop and a shot to the back, scramble under a partially collapsed scaffolding, scoot into a recessed doorway to the dusty remains of one of those dodgy mobile phone shops. A sign reads,
WE UNLOCK THEM,
and I think: hajji mart.

I know I'm armed, touch the ankle holster, feel the pressure in the small of my back, produce the gun I find there. Crouch and have a long look at the windows, bank after bank, dirty/broken/blank, telling me zilch-o. I'm frozen, my head idles between first and second gear, nowhere.

Forgot what I was doing, see? I don't know why I now squat at this particular place, at this particular moment.

Fun with PTSD. My shrink back at Walter Reed would just love to see this, the snooty bitch. Making notes, shitty little smile, arching those thin eyebrows like I'm confirming all her private theories.

The point is, doesn't matter where you go. Where there's people, there's buildings; where there's buildings, there's windows; and where there's windows, snipers. Think: don't let 'em draw you out, rule uno.

Call it in. Feel for the radio that isn't there. Look left.

A couple blocks south at Cooper Square there are two civilians, old folks, dragging one of those garment district rolling clothes hangers, covered with what looks like fur coats. Seems like hard work, slow going. I consider calling to them, tell them to get out of the open, but think again: smokescreen.

Beyond that a Humvee is parked side-on across the avenue. Three National Guardsmen are milling around, an open manhole spewing steam. Oblivious. To the threat of snipers.

Stand. My leg protests. I spin around, look uptown. Lone moving vehicle in sight this direction: ugly bronze Prius, headed against the nonexistent flow of traffic, toward some kind of bonfire, industrial wreckage, hard to see what is going on up there. The driver is all over the road, going slow, clearly impaired. Not like it matters. He peels off at 37th Street.

No action. Please, give me some sort of clue.

Fuck. This happens. Need to be patient with myself. Always feels like: this time it's going to be forever. I'll get stuck in this antistate. And I always recover. So I don't stress it, but it's a challenge.

Don't panic, man. I replace my gun.

Start patting myself down, that usually does the trick. Notice again my broken hand, which indicates nothing. My usual kit, the Purell
^TM
, extra gloves. Jerky. In my breast pocket, a photo of a lovely Asian teenager. And a fucking compact disc? Wu-Tang … what is this, the twentieth century? No jingles yet. I put both back.

Some sort of condiment splatter on my suit? Nope. Blood. How could this have happened?

From my front pants pocket, I withdraw a folded piece of paper, addresses, within mere blocks of here, Chinese stuff …

No, Korean. Song. K-Man. Senator Howard. Oh yeah, here it comes, all at once like a hot blast of air to the noggin.

Back in it. Dizzy and embarrassed. I strip off my gloves, hit the hand and a half with Purell
^TM
, new set of gloves for both. Toss back a pill, which lodges in my sandy throat for a panicky second, then dives.

Pull up my mask. Heart slamming but gradually, gradually slowing. Counting backward from twenty. I get to zero and continue south.

Have to check the dosage on my meds. Freezes coming more and more frequently.

In passing I lift my hat at a Guardsman, a fleshy albino. He's watching the burning helicopter up yonder, but directs his gaze my way. Pink eyes. Looks right through me like I'm already gone.

_______________

Unlike the low-lying sprawl they have going in Los Angeles, New York's Koreatown was always a compact, vertical affair.

Never really expanded past its horizontal block-and-ahalf radius, but the area seemed to be in a perpetual state of skyward growth. New floors would metastasize on top of new floors. Mysterious extensions and unreadable neon sprouted like lichen. Thirty-second Street was garish and impossible to miss, but ultimately unknowable.

A tangle of offices, nail salons, electronics stores, BBQ joints, bars, karaoke spots, travel agencies, bridal shops, plus the plentiful manifestations of the jizz-biz: wack shacks, tug parlors, whore stores, sexy shoppes spanning the spectrum of class and cost.

Nobody actually lived on this street and a half. But day and night, business was frenzied and dense.

That was back when.

This is now.

Koreans have always been smart, and the moves they made post-Valentine's bear this out. Ever the pragmatists, they threw their lot in with the Chinese. Despite all historical hullabaloo that would make such a union seem inconceivable.

The scene got a lot more desperate in a hurry for the Koreans when the North did what it had been saying it was gonna do for decades and set about lobbing dirty bombs into central Seoul. Extremely ugly stuff. Everybody acted all surprised, but if you look at it, this was a long time coming.

The action on 32nd Street has hardly slowed since the Occurrence; after the bombing of Seoul the Koreans got a lot tougher, and a lot more thick on the ground as they flooded the city looking for a job; these folks now make up a fair percentage of the workforce on the island. Korean, Chinese, and Korean/Chinese contracting firms lay claim to some primo gigs. Landmark stuff.

But today the street is stripped down, less frenzied and gaudy, less eye-candy. Basically only three types of businesses remain: construction, food importation/service, and the hostess bars that keep it all lubricated.

Yeah, the bustle holds steady.

Even this early in the morning, work gangs haul themselves onto electric buses. Trucks unload wooden crates of seafood and building materials. Men and women fresh off the boat blink in the filtered sunlight, as they're corralled by gun- and nightstick-toting Chinese soldiers, tan uniforms laying down a constant flow of verbal abuse, this in Mandarin.

Chinese famously treat their own people like slaves, you gotta wonder how they treat the “lesser” races. Bar none, the Chinese are the most scary (and best organized) motherfuckers on the island. I steer well clear of them at all times. They do not play well with others.

Here on 32nd Street, gray folks in gray uniforms weave in and out, heads lowered, sucking up the garbage as fast as it's created. Under the dead gaze of Chink gunmen.

It's a clean street.

Clean, but the Stench, which is everywhere, sits over the area like cloud cover. It tastes/smells … different in these parts. More rotten seafood in there somewhere.

The men, the fresh meat coming in, are directed toward the buses, the women steered toward various buildings.

Appealing to me: Organization. Structure.

Then again, the same could be said of Dachau. Or the sugarcane plantation my great-granddaddy worked.

Woulda made a shitty slave. Too uppity. I'd be quick to cut massah's throat too, that's no joke.

All this I observe from the intersection of 32nd and Broadway, crouched in the stairwell of the old Herald Square subway station. Bear in mind, I've made a left turn off Broadway to get where I am, so the System and I are in full step.

Already know I'm not welcome. Even in happier days, any non-Korean was viewed as the Other, and there was only so far one could go before hitting a cultural wall. The unspoken message was:
You have your neighborhood, and we have ours. We'd like to keep it that way.

I intend on waiting out the busloads of new bodies, but they just keep on coming. It's a dirge. Like watching a film loop. Nothing new happens.

Check this: I have Bubble Teen Tea down at 38 West 32nd. This address is just opposite me at an angle, an angrylooking steel-and-stone office building, though strikingly featureless for this block.

Well. Here I am. So this is where I start.

Plus, might as well be inside when Cyna-corp rolls up, as they inevitably will. Oh yes.

Without moving too quickly I tilt my hat forward, readjust my mask, step into the street. I have a Michael Jackson moment. One of many differences being I got two gloves on, and they're blue rubber.

Nobody's clocking me so I stroll on over, just past the entrance, reverse, and take the prescribed left into the building's foyer, through double glass doors.

I'm presented with another set of doors, locked this time, and a daunting array of buzzers, ancient-looking unit numbers, and layer upon layer of yellowed tape. Labelmaker squiggles describe names and business in a mashup of Korean, English, and Chinese characters.

Let's see, ninth floor … Not surprisingly, I see no Bubble Teen. Scan the ninth floor, zoom in on suite 907, Club Enjoy. I get inspired.

Deep breath. It's a nasty filthy business, this wall. Pick at the buzzer's marker, gagging, easily peel back the
Club Enjoy
label. Behind that are Korean characters that simply indicate
BAR
, which I peel away as well, in tiny strips. Revealing
BUBB TEEN TEA
, and that's good enough for this guy.

Apply pressure to the buzzer with my working hand. It's a straw-grasp. No idea really what or who I'm looking for. I only know I do not appreciate being threatened, not by anyone.

No response from suite 907. I bust a New York classic, hold my breath (weevils, fungal clouds) and lean both forearms across multiple random buzzers. Sure enough, a speaker crackles, and the door clicks. I push on through with my elbows.

Stairs, walk on in despite the Korean sign advising me to
DO NOT USE STAIRS
. Let's give those gluts some attention. Drag myself upward. Thinking about a name: Nic Deluccia. Now this is gonna bug me all day.

Farther on there's a point in that stairwell where it becomes absolutely pitch dark, and I observe myself begin to bug out.

Ridiculously enough I conjure Hakim Stanley, handsome and rangy, bullet hole under his strong chin. Behind me, on the stairs. Reaching for my ankles. I feel him panting ragged. He's close, really close.

Shoes slapping concrete, echoes ping-pong between the walls. Sounding like more than one pair of feet.

I fucking work through it,
command
my focus forward.

My lungs report serious taxation, count seven, eight, one more flight, and nine, yeah, okay, I get frantic, panicky, feel for a doorknob, no dice, kick at what I believe to be the door and it flies open, dousing me in weak light.

Stepping out into the hall, shaky legs, I rifle around in my pocket and draw a pill. Pop that thing. Spritz me some Purell
^TM
.

Gotta be a grown-up man here. Phantoms, spooks, shapes in the dark, that's schoolyard hokum.

Hakim Stanley: a young, beautiful black brother I never knew. Kind of guy this world needed back when, and needs today. A soldier I cold-blood murdered.

Could have been avoided. It's this fact that makes him loiter, occupying corners of my head, leaning into the picture at unpredictable times.

Shake it off, Decimal. Proceed down the hall.

Hovering at 50 percent disuse minimum. Evidence of recent activity. Suite 902:
Samuel Moon, DDS
, a brass placard. Note voices within. I'm thinking, how could a freaking dentist stay in business? I move on, mapping my rotting choppers with my tongue. My mouth starts watering, which reminds me to pause, grab my pill bottle, and take another one of those blue babies.

Opposite side of the hall, 903 and 905 seem unoccupied. Club Enjoy announces itself in a tastefully small, if pink, plastic sign, with a pair of dancing musical notes.

Consider my blood-misted suit, my gnarled hand. Figure it's dark enough. I locate my bogus Health Department badge. I got a badge for every occasion.

There's a doorbell, with an itsy-bitsy
Thank you, members only, OK
sign in English and Korean. I tweak the bell. Within, I hear a synthesized tune. Give me a second … yeah, it's “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

Déjà vu. Don't know from what. That's why they call it déjà vu.

I sense a presence behind the peephole. Inside: “Place close.” Female. “Come back lunchtime, members only.”

I hold up the badge. “Health Department.”

I hear locks being turned, the woman saying in Korean: “You've gotta be fucking kidding.”

Door swings open, reveals a small, skeletal woman, wearing some sort of smock, black page-boy haircut looking wrong on someone in her sixties, at least. So hard to tell really. Vibes cleaning lady. She waggles a massive cluster of keys at me. So goddamn thin I'm shocked she can stand upright. Is that the vibe I radiate too?

“Nobody come here. Close. This for members, private club.”

I show her the badge again. “Ma'am, I'm with the City Health Department. The premises are scheduled for an inspection. Is the tenant available?” Sounding bored.

“Close,” she says, starting to shut the door. I get a foot in.

“Ma'am. Listen. Where's the owner? We have this visit scheduled, there's penalties for rescheduling inspections.”

I'm aware she's likely digging a mere fraction of what I'm saying. Wonder if I should jump over to Korean, figure that'd freak her out.

Doesn't matter really; one of the bonuses of living in a dying city is nobody knows for sure what the fuck is going on, one example being: is there a functioning Health Department? Of course not.