This Side of Brightness (14 page)

The wet hat chills his head as he emerges onto 42nd Street in the night. He decides to walk all the way uptown, searching the garbage for cans and bottles as he goes. The snow has stopped but the streets are bright with whiteness. He wears his sunglasses. Not many people drinking sodas in wintertime, but he collects enough bottles to redeem them for two dollars and forty cents. Combining all his money, he buys himself a couple of cans of ravioli and the largest bottle of gin he can afford.

*   *   *

He passes the empty playground, the ghosts of mothers and children ranged around it. He tips up his sunglasses. Lenora, girl, how are you and what is it like being alive and would I enjoy it?

He climbs over a railing and down the embankment through the drifts of snow.

Ice on the tunnel gate. Treefrog gets down on his hands and knees, goes headfirst through the gap, and twists his body around, brings his legs through, sits on the metal platform, holding his breath. Always a moment of fear. Maybe somebody waiting for him just inside the gate. A man with only one shoe, missing five dollars. Or a kid waiting to fling a bottle of gasoline with a lit rag in the top. Or a cop with a gun. Everything stands in the purest blackness so that he can hardly even see his palm in front of his face. And then there's a slow coming together of tunnel and light shafts, and he can see through the shadows. He listens for movement, and the fear sits back down in his belly and rests in his liver.

No one in sight. He sweeps his hair under his hat and reaches for his shopping bag, the bottle clinking against the ravioli cans. He takes off his gloves and places each one between the bottle and the cans to deaden the clinking, so he won't have to share if anybody hears him.

Treefrog makes his way soundlessly down the metal stairs. All quiet on the western front. He stops outside Angela and Elijah's cubicle and puts his ear to the door, hears them sucking their way down into a crack pipe, the slow pull and the ecstatic exhalation and then a few giggles as they move together under their mangy blankets.

He thinks of Elijah's hand unbuttoning Angela's shirt, moving slowly along her dark skin, the slow rise of nipple between Elijah's fingers, then the slide of his hand under her breast, down along her stomach, a meander of finger around her belly button, tracing her bony hip, massaging it, caressing it, belonging to it, the slow draw across her hipbone, feeling her moistness even in the freezing cold, his fingernails sliding into the warm layers of her body, Angela lying back in the blankets, blissful, moaning, her eyelids shut tight, Elijah suspended on the scent of her, leaning down and breathing into her ear, Angela's fingernails dragging along his back, making rivulets in his skin, and the movement of their breathing, fast fast fast fast, a wild thrust from each of them, until it is all crushed into long segments of breathing, slow slow slow slow, and then the two of them might lie there in anticipation of more.

Treefrog stands by the door until he hears the pipe sucked on again and—bending over at the hip a few times to calm his erection—he goes carefully along with the bag, past the row of cubicles and the giant communal area and the shacks.

Only Dean is out, his campfire burning, yellow hair up in spikes and his hunting jacket tight around him. He stares at nothing, not even looking at the fire like any normal man would do. Dean once bit out a man's tongue in a lovers' quarrel. Ever since then he's been going around with the other man's life in his mouth. Sometimes he roars about a lawn not being cut in Connecticut, the edges of flowerbeds being way too grassy, needing to be clipped. Or the china dishes having spaghetti stains on them. Or the credit card bills not being paid.

As he goes past, Treefrog gives a quick wave, but Dean just looks into the distance. A young boy lumbers out of Dean's lean-to, beside the pile of garbage. The boy and Dean sit beside each other. Dean runs a finger along the inside of the boy's thigh, and then suddenly they are standing and meshed together beside the fire—the boy is so small that his head only reaches Dean's chest—and they are locked together in embrace by the light of the fire. Treefrog can see the boy nibbling at Dean's neck and the slide of Dean's hand to the small of the boy's back.

Treefrog shivers.

Another hundred yards and he's home. Before he climbs he imitates the turning of a key in the door, shouting upward to his nest, “Honey, I'm home!”

Treefrog slips the shopping back under his coat, ties the handles of the bag to his belt loop, and climbs the catwalk, careful with the bottle. He lights some candles and places the bag on the bed beside Castor, who is curled up by the pillow. Reaching to the shelf by the Gulag, he takes down a can opener and sighs. “I'll dance at your wedding, I'll dance at your wedding.”

*   *   *

In the morning he practices a loop shot against the wall, and the pink handball goes high in the air, rebounds down off the stalactite, and lands perfectly for his right hand, then left. He feels good, energized, almost clean after yesterday's shower. He closes his fist for an underhand shot, and the ball barrels out from the Melting Clock. The ritual continues until warmth floods through him. Along one part of the tunnel wall he sees a fat sheet of ice insinuating itself into existence, the drops of water coming from an overflow pipe topside as if to say, We have all been here before.

*   *   *

“Heyyo.”

“Shit.”

“Hey, Angela. Up here. Turn.”

“Where?”

“Heyyo.”

“Goddamn. It's you.”

“It's me. Where you goin'?”

“Nowhere,” she says. “What you doin' up there?”

“The presidential suite. I'm putting mints on my pillows.”

“You got any more blankets? Our goddamn electric's still out. Heaters ain't working. Elijah's gone looking for that guy Edison.”

“Faraday.”

“Same difference.”

“You wanna come up?” asks Treefrog. “I got a fire going.”

“No way. If Elijah saw me up there, he'd rip your head off and shit down your throat. He says that to me all the time. He says he'll rip my—”

“Elijah won't see us. He's left the wilderness and been fed by ravens and gone off in a whirlwind.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” says Treefrog. “You kill those rats yet?”

“No. I…” She hesitates and scratches at the side of her face. “I like the fat one,” she says. “She's cute. She wouldn't hurt nobody. She's pregnant.”

Angela stands by the tracks, wrapped in a blanket, caught in a stream of topside light with her face tilted up, sad and beautiful.

Treefrog says to her, “You should get Papa Love to make a painting of you.”

“Who?”

“The guy in the shack down by the cubicles. With all the drawings on it. He never comes out except sometimes when he wants to. You should get him to make a painting of you.”

“I don't want no painting,” she says, but then her face brightens. “Say, has he got a heater?”

“Yeah, but he don't answer the door.”

“Shit. Where the goddamn hell is Edison?”

“Taking a dirt nap.”

“Huh?”

“Edison's dead. He's the man made the first phonograph. He's the man gave us music. He's the man gave us light. Edison kicked it sixty years ago. Faraday's his name.”

“He's a motherfucker.”

Treefrog laughs.

“I had a warm house once,” says Angela, stamping her feet on the tunnel gravel, looking up at Treefrog, perched twenty feet up on his catwalk.

“It had a wraparound porch and a feeder for birds,” she says, “and it was bright as all get out. There was trees outside, and sometimes we went climbing in the branches. I hate New York. It's cold. Ain't you cold?”

“You're high, ain't you?”

She ignores him. “It was cold in Iowa but we had a stovepipe, and my father, he broke it off and smashed it in my momma's face. Left a big dent in her cheekbone. That's what happened to the stovepipe. Big dent in the stovepipe too, after he smashed it in the wall 'cause he was sorry. Then he did it again. I hate him. He always said he'd take me to see the sea, but he never did. He just did the stovepipe thing. The doctor gave her an eyepatch. She dropped it in a well. Ever been married?”

“Yeah.”

“What's her name?”

“Dancesca.”

“Did you hit her?”

“No.”

“You're a liar. I know you're a liar.”

“No I ain't.”

“Ever been beaten?” asks Angela after a moment. “You get used to it; it's like breathing. It's like breathing underwater.”

And for some reason he thinks she's smiling, though her back is turned now and all he can see is her hunched figure wrapped in the blanket.

“Angela,” he says. “Turn around. Let me see you.”

“I bet you beat her until she couldn't even walk no more.”

“No I didn't.”

“I bet you got a blue washcloth and wrapped it on your fist so the bruises wouldn't show.”

“Shut up.”

“I bet you took a yellow pencil and stuck it in her ear and turned it around and around till the lead snapped and went into her brain.”

“Shut up.”

“I know you did.”

He shifts on the catwalk. “I had a wife and child,” he says. “I never hit them.”

“Sure sure sure.”

“She left me.”

“Sure she did.”

“They both left me.”

“Yeah yeah yeah. You ain't got my sympathy.”

And for a moment he is back in the playground near 97th Street and it is four years ago and he is with his daughter and she is on the cusp of puberty. It is a summer's day and he is guiding her on the swing—she is too old for swings and her legs are too long so she tucks them underneath the small wooden platform but kicks them out when she rises high. He must push with both hands and she shouts with joy; this is the moment that Lenora loves the most, but she will not love it for very much longer. He pushes her in the high center of her back but one hand slips and she is in a tight T-shirt, she has been growing taller in recent months and there is not much money for clothes, he has lost his job, he has lost control of his hands, he is pushing her at the armpits now and still she is moving with joy on the swing and his fingers by mistake touch the soft swell of new flesh, with just one hand, and his head is thumping and he must equalize the pressure and his fingers stretch out and gently touch the other side of her body, and there is a shoot of something like electricity to him, and he is trembling, but it feels so soft, so lovely, it eases him for a second, all the time he is pushing her and she doesn't even notice, his hands are at her armpits and he wishes he could lift his history out of her, his daughter, he is touching her and he will touch her again and he will be found out and he will come down the tunnel and he will try to murder his hands in shame.

“They left me,” says Treefrog.

Angela turns around and points up at him. “I bet you had a blue washcloth. I bet you had a yellow pencil. I bet you knocked their eyes back in their heads.”

“No I didn't.”

“I bet you twisted their arms behind their heads. I don't got no sympathy for you. You're only looking for a knock. That's what you're looking for. A knock. You want a knock? Go goddamn knock yourself.”

“Angela,” he says.

“You're just like the rest. I don't got no sympathy for you, no way. I hope you fall. I hope you fall down a goddamn well. You should cut your beard. And your hair. Then fall down a well. Get an eyepatch.”

A vision of Lenora again flashes across his mind.

“I didn't hurt her,” he says.

“Bullshit,” says Angela, the word elongated into something almost lyrical.

Treefrog buries his head in his hands for a while and then he stands and moves along the catwalk with his arms outstretched. He disappears into the rear of his cave, knocking over the piss bottles at the end of his mattress. He reaches out to the rickety bedside table and rummages in the broken drawer. The smell of piss rises up from where the bottles have leaked across the floor. He rifles through the clothes—some of his old hand-drawn maps on graph paper are crumpled up among them—and he scatters them around until he finds a thermal shirt. He tucks it into his overcoat, stumbles over his mattress in the dark, swings his way down the two catwalks, and lands—knees bent—in front of Angela.

She crouches and shields her eyes. “Leave me alone, motherfucker!”

“Here.”

“Don't hurt me, don't hurt me, don't hurt me!”

He shoves the thermal shirt toward her. Angela takes her arm away from her eyes and looks at him and says, “Wow.”

“It'll keep you warm,” says Treefrog.

“Thanks.”

“Put it on.”

“Now?”

“Yeah.”

“You just wanna see me naked. I seen the way you narrowed your eyes. I seen it, man.”

“Shut up, okay? Just put it on.”

She looks at him, shy and circumspect. “Turn away.”

He turns and sees a clump of snow fall through the metal grill on the other side of the tunnel. She drapes the fur coat over his shoulder and when he turns around Angela is smiling, with her arms behind her head and her elbows out, like a movie star—she has put the thermal shirt over three or four blouses—but still he imagines her nipples erect in the cold and he wants to touch her, but he doesn't, he can't, he won't.

“I didn't hurt nobody.”

“I believe you, Treefy.”

“You do?” he says, with sudden surprise.

“Yeah, 'course I believe you.”

“Thanks.”

And then Angela reaches for the fur coat and says, “Ain't I cute?”

“Yeah,” he says, and he puts his arms around her.

“You smell, man.”

“I had a shower yesterday. In Grand Central. In the steam tunnel. You should come down there with me sometime. The water's hot.”