“Coldest so far.”
“You’re a genius,” Ward said. “Now turn up the goddamn heat.”
“What?” The driver craned his neck to look back over the seat. Perhaps he would steer the car with one hand and shoot Ward with the other. “You want to repeat that?”
“You heard me.”
“Officer,” the police superintendent said, “do the honor. Turn up the heat.”
The driver shot a quick unprotesting glance at his superior and clicked on the blower.
“Thanks, you cocksucker.”
The police superintendent looked at Ward’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “Take a moment or two, if you must.”
Ward offered no reply, only sat rubbing his palms together. The blower roaring like an untamed beast.
“That warm enough for you?” the driver asked.
“No. Have your mother send up a fagot or two from hell.”
The driver began rocking from side to side in his seat, his fingers tapping anxious rhythms on the steering wheel. The police superintendent gave him a sharp look, and he pressed his shoulders into his seat, the dark shape of his head looking straight ahead, through the snow-repellent windshield.
“Kiss him once for me, would you?” Ward said to the police super intendent.
The police superintendent turned around in his seat and gave Ward his familiar look of disgust. He shook his head slowly from side to side. “Who would have ever thought.”
“Certainly not you.”
The ride was otherwise uneventful, the streets specked with people, black forms silhouetted against the snow.
“Here”—the police superintendent dropped a ring of keys into Ward’s lap, letting them fall from his hand with the highest form of disregard, a soiled-nose wipe—“the keys to the city.”
“You’re so thoughtful.” Ward deftly deposited the keys into some inside pocket of his coat. He looked over and saw that the young officer who had kept vigil outside his door was snickering into his upturned jacket collar. When they made it to their destination, this same officer pulled Ward from the car and rudely bumped him and shoved him into the snow, but in such a way as to make the action seem accidental, an inadvertent trip over the curb. Ward regained his feet, brushed snow from his clothes, retrieved his scattered thoughts, and patted his pockets to be sure that the keys were still there, showing no concern that his outer garments were thoroughly soaked through. Then the police superintendent took a firm hold of Ward’s gloved hand and led him forward as if he were a child on the first day of school. Black and slick, his streamlined shoes jumped above the snow, one after the other, like dolphins.
They had walked some fifty paces, Ward’s breath coming a little harder with every step, when the police superintendent stopped as if on cue and spun Ward in front of him like a practiced dancer.
“Please sign, here and here.”
Ward did as instructed. The police superintendent slipped the damp form into his jacket and stood before Ward under his white derby, the hat tiny on his massive head, like some ghastly baby bonnet. “I would be lying if I said it has been a pleasure.”
“Spare me.”
The police superintendent turned and headed back for his car and left Ward to the snow and wind. Ward vowed to take away with him some memory of the man. However, the weather being what it was, he was already having trouble remembering exactly how the man’s features fit together. So much so that Ward considered calling out to him and requesting a quick but comprehensive physical inventory, fully aware that, in all likelihood, the police super intendent would not acquiesce. But instead, he looked through the neutral and colorless distance and saw an old five-story walk-up building slanting away from the ground — a splinter angling up from skin — at a precarious angle, snow swirling around the structure as if to lasso it upright. His appointed destination. What was keeping it standing? He turned a last time to look at the police super intendent, who was now leaning against the car — white derby snugly atop his head — where the two young officers were hunched over, sharing a cigarette. Uniformed men from supporting vehicles worked to cordon off the street with brass barricades they took from the trunks of their own cars, in a shared geometry of secrecy and isolation.
Ward reached into his coat pocket for the ring of keys but fumbled them against his chest into the snow. At once he dropped to his knees, biting at the ends of his gloved fingers until his hands were free of the leather. He stuck his bare fists into the snow and began clawing about — hungry bear or ice fisherman — reacting to the cold in an almost clinical way, the snow both surprising and mundane. He scooped up two fistfuls and weighed them in each palm, and he told himself that he would do better to avoid any new feelings and impressions he was not yet conscious of, which he had not possessed in years. However, his proximity to the earth allowed him to see that snow was actually rising up from the street and fleeing into the heavens — an impossible journey, as the domed sky would allow no escape. No sadness at the realization, for the thought took hold of him: at this very moment he was kneeling at the very center of the world, at its cold icy navel. He trembled to shake himself free.
Twenty feet ahead he spotted a familiar figure trudging through the snow toward him. He stuck his hands back into the slushy mounds and worked more frantically after the keys. Heard the snow-crunching approach of the two young officers behind him. Looked up and turned his head to see them bobbing forward with pistols drawn. Had they misinterpreted the direction and meaning of his submerged and sweeping hands, mistaking purposeful search for beckoning wave? He thought to shout, “The keys! I dropped the keys!” Burrowing down, trenched in this place, which had already started to corrode beneath him, melt and puddle around his knees.
The Green Apocalypse
The dead just ain’t what they used to be.
Down in the alley, Chitlin Sandwich sat wide-legged on a fifteen-speed racer, fifteen himself, a schoolboy, dressed like somebody’s granddaddy, a wide fedora slanted across his face, his tall skinny frame entombed in a wide double-breasted blazer, a diamond pin centered in a fat red and green polka-dot tie, flashy argyle socks, peeking above two-tone patent-leather shoes, like two shiny puddles of mud beneath his cuffed and pleated baggy slacks. He was sipping from a can wrapped in a brown paper bag and drumming his fingers on a burlap newspaper sack that hung over one shoulder. Sheila was certain that the bike belonged to Hatch — her little brother — or that it was an exact replica, its twin. She pressed her face hard to the window glass and cut her eyes at him. He regarded her with frank indifference, as still as an owl. Then he tilted the bag and drank long and deep. She felt hot anger rising and spreading throughout her face, elongating fingers of flames. His diamond tie pin caught the sunlight. He took one final gulp, crushed the wrapped can like a mosquito between both hands, and sent it clattering over his shoulder, into an open trash barrel. He pulled a Daily Chronicle from the burlap sack, drew back his arm like a pitcher, only to toss the newspaper underhanded, like a softball. It soared in early-morning air and plopped like a dead bird onto Sheila’s porch, inches from her window. A spasm of rage gripped her throat. I’m twenty-four and educated and the assistant human-resources manager at the growing East Shore Bank, and I will not put up with this. She went out onto the porch.
You’re lucky that didn’t hit my window, she said, fists clenched at her sides.
Ain’t nobody tryin to hit yo window.
What are you doing here in the first place?