“I die very quietly. I try not to bother you.”
“I know you’re joking, Humph, but I’m actually starting to feel bad.”
“Do what you like.” He leaned on her, rising unsteadily to his feet. “But I am going out. Cannot sit around all day. I have items and activities.”
“You idiot,” she said, grabbing him for a cuddle.
“Leave me, crazy girl!” He squirmed away, sweeping the mussed gray-black hair off his forehead. “You don’t go to see him. You come with me on book consult. No?”
“Sorry, Humph. And I’m walking there, so I should leave.”
“At least you take subway with me. It’s very colding outside.”
“For a Russian, you’re so whiny about the weather.”
“I am low-quality Russian.”
“I’ll accompany you to the station. But that’s it.”
When they stepped outside, she inhaled deeply and the cold air seemed to awaken her a second time. A burning smell was in the air — welding at the ironworks across the street. Their corner was dotted with industrial workshops, many in red-brick garages inside padlocked chain link fences crowned with razor wire. They cut down Hamilton Avenue, walking against the flow of passing vehicles. A few bereft brownstones gave onto the rusted expressway undercarriage, with the Red Hook projects on the other side.
Outside the station, Tooly stopped. “I have my own things to do, Humph.”
“How you can walk all way to Manhattan?”
“Stop trying to keep me here!” she said, laughing.
“I make law that it is illegal for you to walk today.”
“I veto your law.”
“Who gives you veto power?”
“You did.”
“I un-give.”
“I launch a coup d’état and write a new constitution that says I can go. There, done.” She kissed his wrinkly cheek; he wiped it away.
Striding off, she marched hard up the block, speeding to outpace her guilt. But it caught up, dragged her to a halt. Tooly drummed her lower lip. Couldn’t just leave him. She spun around and went back, fed her token into the turnstile. She found him seated on the platform, leafing through Hume’s Essays, Moral and Political.
“My darlink,” he said. They sat in silence. The low ceilings and joists down here, paint peeling — it was like stepping inside a mechanical object. “You are so capable and clever, darlink,” he told her. “You will do wonderful things in your life.”
“We’ll see.”
“You come back for me — very nice. But you go now,” he said. “You walk. I survive. Muggers don’t dare fight me.”
“You’d hit them with David Hume.”
“Worse: I read it to them.” His old brown eyes reflected her momentarily, then gazed up the tracks. A train rushed into the station, its scratched-up windows etched with gang signs and initials. She watched as he boarded alone.
She resumed her hike, dodging pedestrians and overruling traffic lights all the way up Smith Street, through downtown Brooklyn, across the Manhattan Bridge, her mismatched sneakers moving fast — red, then black, cold air gusting up her corduroys — pace increasing almost to a run, as she tried not to beam too stupidly at the thought of who awaited. On arrival at the Bowery, she looked for him; not here yet. Sweat budded across her upper lip, glittered on her forehead.
To occupy herself, she took out her felt-tip pen — a few new streets to add from this latest hike — and fumbled in her overcoat pocket for the map. But it was missing. Had it slipped out somewhere on the road? Damn! Weeks of effort wasted. Never get attached to objects, Venn always said. Aargh — where was he? She stood at the corner of Hester Street, shivering.
Minutes passed, and she promised herself to leave after just one more. That one passed; another began. She looked to the left, the right, behind her, back again.
“Well, well,” Venn said, cheeks broadening as he swept her alongside him in a one-armed hug. “Why’d you keep me waiting, duck? Come on.”
Whenever they met, his voice resonated in this way — it was as if he spoke directly inside her. His wild beard was shorn these days, though reddish-brown stubble still bristled on his cheeks when he smiled, fan lines crinkling around his eyes. Despite the cold, he wore no overcoat, just a navy turtleneck that smelled of cedar.
She intended to be furious, but he’d made her laugh already. Anyway, indignation fizzled when directed at Venn. “Can we go indoors immediately,” she asked with mock annoyance, “or walk very fast, preferably huddling together? I’m seconds from hypothermia here.”
“Hypothermia is good for you — everything goes warm. You moaner! Come on.” He took her hand and threaded it into the crook of his arm, his body dwarfing hers. Venn was like a devilish older sibling, offering that brotherly combination of wholly unreliable and utterly trustworthy. As they walked, she glanced obliquely at him, grinning. She allowed herself to be led along, paying no mind to her route for a change, the city shrinking away.
She’d seen so little of Venn since their arrival here from Barcelona. He’d come a couple of weeks earlier to set up the basics of whatever business had lured him to New York. So far, they’d had only one other meet-up in this city: a walk around Central Park, followed by drinks and talk and laughter at a bar under the Empire State Building. Cities changed; never their friendship.
But after that she’d not seen Venn for weeks, and realized that New York might be one of those places where he’d prove a rare presence. Patiently or not, she’d have to wait. He never had a fixed telephone number or a permanent address where she could find him, instead residing in the bed of his latest girlfriend, which changed frequently. Tooly had met many of them over the years, always variations on the same towering floozy. As an adolescent, she had viewed these perfumed ladies as womanhood personified, a state she’d one day achieve. Tooly was grown now and still hadn’t reached it, but she retained a sense that those were proper women, not she.
Venn led her along Canal Street, past a bakery selling cha siu bao, and pushed open the next glass door, entering the foyer of a six-story building. He pressed the call button for the freight elevator, whose sliding door opened upward with a clatter, revealing a wizened black man in calfskin jacket and woolen suit pants. Warmly, he greeted Venn, ushering them in, and turning the half-wheel that operated the elevator, dry cogs grinding, the rickety cage hoisting them toward the top floor.
“How are you, my friend?” Venn asked, hand resting on the elevator operator’s shoulder, his other surreptitiously slipping a ten-dollar bill into the man’s pocket.
“It’s all good,” he replied shyly, loving the attention from Venn.
“You don’t go crashing this elevator with my girl here, all right? We want a nice soft landing.”
“Nothing but the best, my man.”
They stepped out into a large industrial space, once a nineteenth-century factory, converted to a sweatshop at the start of the twentieth, and lately transformed into cubicles. A smutty skylight provided scant illumination, while the windows were blacked out to prevent reflections on the computer screens, producing a permanent dusk, just the flicker of TVs on the walls, broadcasting financial news. The space was divided into steel-and-glass units, each containing desks, telephones, beanbags, dartboards, and chattery young professionals kneading stress balls and procrastinating. The centerpiece, however, was a yellow school bus, whose interior had been stripped to turn it into the conference room.
Tooly wondered about the purpose of all this, but a gathering crowd required Venn’s immediate attention. He led them into the school bus, adults tripping on kid-size steps, banging their heads inside the darkened interior. For several minutes, Tooly waited by the goods elevator, hands clasped behind her back, tapping a rhythm on her behind.