Lord, let me in there. I ain’t gon screw nwine one of them angels.
35
LUCIFER RENAMED NEW YORK the City of Trains. All rails glowed with the memory of those speeding colorful objects his eyes had witnessed years before. A babel of color inside and out. Scrawled tongues twisting into a mute vision of motion and voice. So his nostalgia had formed. But the trains had changed. New cars, clear cars. He found graffiti on concrete highway embankments, eye-catching billboards, the sides of parked and moving trucks, buildings — each brick a painted face — dolled-up girls sitting on stoops, traffic signs, everywhere but the remembered place. Tiled mosaics offered something of the old color. He celebrated, in the city of memory.
In the same way bridge joined water to land, rails joined earth to sky. (People here even called the El the subway.) You went deep inside to rise high to the outside world, ass to mouth. Bridge and train stitched borough to borough. New York was an island, all of it. In a city like this, each day might be an adventure. Travel within to other places. Take a little bit at a time. Archipelago to archipelago, pearl to pearl. He thought, I could live here. I want to live here. I will live here. Someday. He had thought this years before and was thinking it again now, a concentration of energy that vanished the instant after the hope, the intention took shape. Ah, New York. The City of Trains.
To be one of the first to enter the car and win a prized seat, you had to box out the other passengers, the same way you boxed out another basketball player to snatch a rebound. Back home, the seats faced to the forward or backward motion of the train. Here, long bench rows of seats faced one another, the left side of the car watching the right — never look any of the passengers opposite directly in the face — and the right side watching the left. An open middle between, standing room for millions.
He had spent the night in the City That Never Sleeps — the sky the deepest blue above the buildings and the buildings themselves, dimly lighted from within, like jack-o’-lanterns — not sleeping, tossing and turning on a hard mattress in a noisy Times Square hotel, the same hotel from his first visit many years ago. Only the rates had changed. A walk-up building — like so many others in the city — with wide stairwells, space in the landing, a fire escape zigzagging up the facade, and a printed warning to keep the escape window locked. The hotel bears no responsibility for lost or stolen items. A sailor and a hooker fucked in the sweaty shadows outside his room. Pardon me, folks. Don’t let me interrupt you. Inside the room, he found a bed made for a man a foot shorter than himself under a hanging bulb with a saucer-shaped lamp. He turned off the bulb and fell on the bed, a rock hitting the softness of water.
The sink gargled its steel throat. Bed legs from the room above him bucked from one end of the ceiling to the other, and the ceiling showered peeling paint down on him. He curled into sleep. Dreamed close to the surface.
His bed drifted. He woke and turned on the lights. Rats — five or six of them — scattered for the dark. He pulled a candy bar from his shirt pocket and tossed the two halves into two corners.
The new day dawned fair and fresh. Found him here. Coney Island. To discover ocean in New York, lower Manhattan was the obvious, convenient choice. But the long train ride to Coney Island offered the illusion of journey. He journeyed here to ocean because over there he had never been aware that ocean was ocean, hadn’t been convinced, even after he was told. Sea was just another word. Water was water. And the water felt like the waters back home, Tar Lake, hot summer waters, even if it had a salt smell and taste. He wanted to feel the ocean, this ocean.
A breeze strolled down to the boardwalk where the sand began. He dared not go barefoot on the beach. (He’d heard that dope fiends left their needles in the sand.) He walked, the impact of his steps darkening the sand, leaving puddles. The white sand broke loose in footprint after footprint. Clouds sailed in a westward armada. Gulls scratched through a rusty sky, circling ocean for minute after minute on a single wingbeat. Flocks of them wandered the beach on stick legs. The sea swelled, curled, broke in a long line, washing foam up on the beach, and slipped back down the beach to come back and re-form, break again in a long line, and slice back again, sound retreating with the wave to travel some invisible place and spill a great surge of noise. Lines of woven hemp trailed out into the ocean. Skeletal driftwood. And seaweed like discarded wigs. The green sea broke into silver on the beach. Lucifer stooped over sand — fish scales glistened like coins — grabbed a fistful, then stood, the sand dribbling out of his hand. He stooped again to gather pieces of seashell almost purple from the brackish water. Then he stood and looked at the sea, the waves now white and slow as sheep. All he saw was surf out there, more and more of nothing. He wiggled his toes, a wet feeling causing him to look down at his shoes. He had ruined them, a good pair. Sand spilled from the laces. The sides breathed like gills.
36
HATCH SMELLED THE CITY’S CHOKED SEWERS. He curled through the tangled streets of South Lincoln. John had brought him here. And Jesus. He had been drawn into the elongated circle of their will. He grafted unknowns to unknowns. If he had winged eyes, they could fly and find John. If he could make boats of his words, they would sail and find Jesus. How could he halt what had already been set in motion? Maybe blood ain’t—
An angle of brick stabbed him. The concrete snatched him down. His eyes spilled spinning suns. He rubbed his head. His fingers felt no blood. The wheeling slowed to a stop. He and another boy both sat on their butts with their arms extended behind them. The boy pulled himself up on an invisible string. He was slow to follow.
Sorry, he said.
Bitch, why don’t you watch where you going?
He felt sun on his shoulders. Listen, ain’t no need fo all that.
You don’t like it? The boy poked his hard face into Hatch’s. He’s the same height as me. Why, he’s the spittin image of—He wore a hat, bomb-pointed crown aimed at the sky above, straps dangling like girl’s pigtails. Bitch, I’m talkin to you. The boy had eyes like sucked-out shells. Dry ice or frozen spit. A nasty gray light glowing in them.
I was jus turnin the corner.
Bitch, I ain’t ask you what you was jus doin. The words bat-flew out of the boy’s black grave mouth. Hatch breathed in gravedigger breath. He saw. Face behind the words. Face behind the breath. Little fly hairs of mustache. A black hole of mouth. Oh, he’s smilin. That’s what he’s doing. Grinning. Sneering. Crooked tombstones of teeth. I wanna know what you gon do now.
Hatch said nothing.
Bitch. I didn’t think so. The boy’s eyes traveled the entire orbit of Hatch’s body. I oughta smoke you. The boy slid his hand in the breast pocket — Napoleon-like — of his athletic jacket. Least make you suck my dick. His eyes ran a second orbit. Bitch, get outa my face.
The words pushed Hatch away. Made his legs move as fast as they could. But not fast enough. At the next corner, the boy leaned his face out of a red ambulance. Buck! Buck!
Hatch ducked to the safety of the sidewalk. Tried to camouflage himself in concrete. Laughter rose from beneath burning tires. Bitch. The ambulance speeded away.
37
THE SHADOW-SWAMPED TREES shimmered like black ghosts. Thinned against the stars. Moon burned over the rim of the horizon. Blackened headstones blazed in the night, cracked old people’s faces, leaning, here and there a name or date barely legible. What did it matter? The years telescoping, he might have lived out the rest of his life in this single discovery.