‘Stop it!’ he shouted. ‘I never did! Ask her!’
The girl moved her own arm. She did not know what she meant to do.
‘I never did!’
He was so near her, that smell, dirty and thick and animal. She had nothing in her hands to defend her. There was a rock in the air. The man ducked.
‘You have no right,’ she said, and her nails were nearly against his skin. Her nails were long. The skin would tear. She felt saliva in her mouth, and the clean burn of anger, and she didn’t think, she pursed her lips and spat at his face, and then the sickness hit her again, instant, the sticky wad of saliva shining on his dirty skin. She thought of blood on her nails, and it was as if she had been standing there forever, her spit on his face, her hand
Someone pushed in beside her. Zoe. She stumbled, and her arm fell.
‘This is stupid,’ Zoe was saying, her voice harsh. ‘This is fucking ridiculous.’
Megan turned. ‘What’s your problem, Zoe? You in love with this guy or what?’
The girl looked at her hand.
‘I just think it’s stupid, it’s… what’s the fucking point, Lauren? I’d rather go to the mall.’
‘You like him, don’t you? You wanna marry him? The sick pervert?’
‘Oh, fuck you,’ said Zoe.
‘I think,’ the girl started to say, her hand held awkwardly in the air, and her legs began to shake; but Lauren glanced at Zoe and said, ‘Go ahead, then. Go to the mall yourself. We’re busy.’ And Zoe yelled, ‘Fuck you, Lauren, fuck you!’ and ran weeping out of the park.
The man had his head between his knees now, his hands folded above them, but the circle of girls had been broken, the shivery current was dissipating. The girl wiped her mouth, tasting sweat from her palm. She had a pain in her stomach.
She stepped backwards. The man glanced up, and she didn’t want to look at him but she did, the trapped grimace of his mouth, grotesque. Broken man. The dark hurt eyes.
‘Zoe’s a moron,’ said the girl. But she was moving, suddenly, drawing the others with her, away from the man, laughing and pushing each other.
They were moving away. She was taking them away. ‘God,’ said Lauren. ‘That is so random, letting him be in that park.’
‘He was so weird,’ said Tasha.
‘Yeah,’ said the girl. ‘Yeah.’ And she laughed, a strange high forced laugh, and walked fast towards the sidewalk, and they followed her. She was doing this. She was taking them away.
‘Stupid pervert.’
‘Sick bastard.’
And when they got on the subway she was thinking wrong, she was thinking that certain things were wrong, were very wrong, and she thought somebody could hurt me.
They could, they could do that, though she didn’t know who they were or what they might do, but there was hurt in the world and she was just too close.
She was thinking wrong, she was thinking I don’t feel well.
‘He was such a pervert,’ said Lauren.
‘I bet he goes home and jerks off all night long,’ said Tasha, and the girl laughed her high stretched laugh again. Wrong. And her own half-distorted memories of being pulled from the subway car in the darkness, and trying to understand what she had done to make this happen. Bodies falling around her. As if it were a war.
You could get hurt. People could hurt you. People could hurt you for no reason, to make you scared, to make you go away.
It wasn’t right.
Because she had done something wrong. Or something was wrong, near or around her. But she had. And you couldn’t get away with it. You couldn’t. The man’s eyes, black, his twisted mouth.
‘I don’t feel very good,’ she said.
‘What?’ said Megan. ‘You feeling all upset for him? You wanna marry him too?’ But Lauren looked at her coldly, this was too much. Megan never knew when to stop.
‘Shut up, Megan,’ Lauren said.
‘I just don’t feel good,’ said the girl.
‘I feel… I feel really weird.’
‘Jesus,’ said Lauren. ‘You look sick. You’re scaring me.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Tasha, her eyes expanding. ‘Did you smell anything? Is there anything wrong?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the girl. ‘I don’t know.’ And then she did, there was a smell all over the car, it was like roses, it was everywhere. Somebody could hurt me. And her throat started heaving, and then vomit was pouring out of her mouth, burning, violent.
‘Oh my God!’ cried Lauren. ‘Oh God, oh Jesus!’ The girl was dizzy, she bent down, nearly collapsing, her skin starting to itch and redden, and the others gathered around her but she couldn’t make out their individual words, and then the train pulled into the station, jerking her back against the wall, and a grey-haired man walked over to them and asked, ‘Does she have an EpiPen?’
Girls fall down because they have come to know too much, and have no words for that knowledge. Sometimes girls fall down and bring chaos to the city, not just because of the bad things around and outside them. Sometimes girls fall down because of a tiny emergent good.
Every Safe Thing
I
You should go home,’ said Susie, curled up in a waiting-room chair, an old copy of the New Yorker lying unread in her lap. There was no expression on her face that he could read.
‘I guess.’
‘Or are you supposed to go to work today?’
‘I’m not sure. I think I took today off. I can’t really remember.’
And he should have gone home, he meant to go home. There was no reason to think she wanted him there. He left her his beeper number, but he didn’t expect her ever to use it.
It wasn’t much of a way to leave, but he wasn’t sure that mattered.
He went down into the dim lobby, and even here there were traces of the night, shadowy worried figures drifting back and forth in the darkness, lost relatives maybe, wandering patients, doctors who had been working for thirty-six hours. Outside, he saw another ambulance pulling around to the emergency bay.
There was a cab parked near the entrance, a warm orange light on the silent street, and he sank gratefully into the soft fake leather of the back seat. He did mean to go home. It was just that he could see the sky starting to fade from black to a dull lead blue, the suggestion of bare tree branches emerging, and he thought of something that needed to be done.
The driver looked at Alex skeptically as he stood on the shoulder at Bayview and Pottery Road, counting out the fare. Nearly morning now, the streetlights glowing pale and redundant under the wet clouds. ‘What you planning to do here, man?’ he asked. ‘Nothing here at all. You sure you got the right address?’
‘It’s okay,’ said Alex. ‘Really. I know what I’m doing.’
A police car came speeding around the curve in the opposite lane, siren wailing. ‘I take you where you want to go, you know,’ shouted the cab driver over the noise. ‘You tell me where you need to go, I be happy to take you.’
‘This is where I want to go. Honestly.’
‘You got something to do, I wait for you and drive you on.’
‘I’ll be okay. Thanks, but I’m fine.’
‘I’m a good driver.’
‘I’m sure you are. I just, this is where I need to be, that’s all.’
‘Things pretty crazy on the subway, you know. Better not rely on that.’