Thomas, though, keeps his arms crossed over himself until the moment when he lets the wind knock him onto all fours, and he crouches there in Field 5 like a beast, an earthly creature through and through.
And then, slowly, crawling beneath the force of the wind, he comes toward us, hand knee hand knee hand knee hand knee hand, until his fingertips touch the oozing, shimmering blood that’s already begun to turn the soil into a new kind of mud.
THE WORST
Other, terrible things had happened, but this was the worst: a Friday night and we had free tickets to either a 6:30 or 8:30 movie, so, after meeting on a frigid street corner beside a cold golden statue of either a pregnant woman or a bull, we went to the theater and discovered that one movie was about child prostitutes in Bangladesh and the other was silent. Don’t get us wrong, we like silent movies, but already the world was silent enough. It had been silent for days now. Even though the pretty girl at the counter assured us: There will be music, there will be live music, a live musician, still the word “silent” stuck with us and we couldn’t bear it so we left. Abandoned by our plans, our images of “a movie in Manhattan,” maybe “dinner at a diner afterward,” we had nothing to cling to but our swiftly fading conviction that we could make fun anywhere, out of anything, like people who make love in the laundry room or station wagon. We walked up the cold boulevard commenting on dresses in store windows (but it was too cold to look at such dresses, I had to turn away from the sight); we welcomed an alternate sight, the sight of a cathedral, until we noticed the men dying on the steps of it. They weren’t dying, not really, I guess, but then again we’re all dying. The dying men burrowed into dirty sleeping bags. Then: a hotel. Walk in like you own the place, like you don’t have holes in the crotch of your jeans where your thighs rub against each other, like your shoelaces aren’t dirty with dog shit, et cetera, like you’re wearing lipstick rather than Vaseline. You’ll see the lobby is made of pure gold. That vase containing a hundred burgundy roses — it takes up far more space in the world than you, it produces far more beauty than you, you shrink before it. Crumpled up this way, I ruined the illusion that we owned the place, now we’ll never know how much more gold, how many more roses, we might have seen in the bathrooms off the lobby; we left with aching bladders. There was one last thing we could do: a store where I had sometimes been known to purchase something like a normal person. Limping with failure, we approached that store. What it had was clothing of many colors and what I wanted was clothing of many colors. I fingered the sweaters. Help me, I beg of you, help me. It was then that it happened, right then, the worst part, my hand touching many different sweaters at once: royal blue, heather gray, bubblegum pink, traffic cone orange, despair. They play loud, confusing music in this store, music designed to alter the electricity that dictates your desires. It goes without saying: we left empty-handed. Don’t dare look back at the racks as you exit.
HOW I BEGAN TO BLEED AGAIN AFTER SIX ALARMING MONTHS WITHOUT
I saw her on the bus and she disgusted me even then. She was eating something out of a clear plastic container. Something white and liquidy, yet she was eating it with a fork. I could not tell what manner of thing it was. Animal? Vegetable? Mineral? There were small chunks in the white liquid. I imagined playing Twenty Questions with her. Does it involve tuna? Does it involve mayonnaise? Is it sweet? Is it salty? Is it meant to be served hot? Is it meant to be served cold? Is it kosher? She tipped the container toward herself as she ate and the white liquid started to drain out one corner onto her black nylon tracksuit. Eventually she noticed what she’d done and it brought a smile to her face. Not a smile of shame, I might add. When I once again looked over, she had something unidentifiable in her mouth, clenched between her teeth, about to be torn open. My intestines seized in horror — with what strange food would she confront us now? Slowly, though, I came to see the thing in her mouth for what it was: a small square packet containing a single wet wipe.
But it was not only the white food; also I could tell she was having her period. Her face had that combined flush and pallor, at once swollen and sallow. Such an internal, indecipherable thing, you might think, yet I can always identify a menstruating woman, particularly in the unkind glare of public transportation after dark.
All that, just on the bus, and meanwhile I had problems of my own.
* * *
And then, when it came time to switch to the train, she too got off the bus. She too climbed up all the many stairs to the elevated station. The outward-bound platform was abandoned but for me and her, the white substance now turning cold and flaky on her black tracksuit, surely giving off the odor of wet wipe combined with tuna fish — though I’d never dare get close enough to smell it myself. Across the tracks, on the inward-bound platform, a pair of teenagers kissed and clung to each other and kept warm. It was the first cold night. I tried not to be inordinately envious, except of the faux-fur-lined hoods on their jackets.
I walked down the platform, away from the kids and away from her. Beneath the elevated station, the most enormous graveyard in the city. It stretched for blocks in every direction, releasing only negligible smells and sounds. A hint of grass in the process of freezing. The hum of a passing truck, miniature echoes among the tallest headstones. It was a grand place, the graveyard, and I liked to look out over it. I liked to search for headstones with my name on them; if the lettering was large, it was easy enough to read from the platform, and I’d found my surname more than once. But that was a game for daylight. Alongside the outer edge of the graveyard, a sports field with six towering fluorescent floodlights. The field seemed to float above the graves. The grass was still bright green. The shirts of the players glowed red and gold. It was hard not to mistake their far-off, anxious, screaming voices for the voices of young zombies emerged from the graveyard to play soccer.
But get this: she had followed me all the way down to the dark end of the platform. She stood not more than eight feet from me. I should mention that she was pretty and young. I attempted to feel an affinity for her, an affiliation, but it was not possible. Too fresh in my memory was the image of her slimy fork and menstrual face. It seemed we ought to acknowledge each other, two young women amid all this desolation, but instead I looked away. In the distance, a suspension bridge stretched over gleaming black water. Not that I could see the water, since many ugly things blocked it, yet I could imagine it, dark and oily in the night, multicolored with the frenetic task of reflecting the city. Atop the enormous steel structure from which the suspension bridge hung: two blinking red lights. Usually it’s a lovely thing to see blinking lights from afar, yet these lights I did not enjoy; they did not blink at a pleasant pace. They should have gone blink — blink — blink, but instead they went blinkblinkblink. I turned my attention back to her. She stood there, motionless, perhaps staring at the blinking red lights. I leaned out over the track to check for the headlights of an approaching train. There they were, still several stations away. Perhaps she too leaned out over the track and spotted the remote train; whatever the cause, something changed, something compelled her, because suddenly she was stepping toward me. There was nothing to do but meet her eyes. As I mentioned, she was young and pretty, with a friendly face, and it was not as much of a strain to smile at her as I’d imagined. I awaited her innocuous question: Excuse me, do you have the time? Excuse me, how many stops to Sheepshead Bay? Excuse me, does this line connect to the B? Excuse me, is this the inbound or outbound? Excuse me, but where did you get those jeans?