He had thought about this moment, or this series of moments — walking across town to James Bennett’s apartment, knocking on the door, meeting the boy — a million times. And yet he was still standing here on the Rising Sun’s stoop, a piece of shit with the particles of cold fog seeping into him, the suit practically drenched, unable to move. A church bell from somewhere uptown commemorated his stasis with a melancholy, distant dong. Part of him wished he could turn around and go back inside, where at least there were no decisions to be made, no end of any bargain to hold up, no looming responsibility. Be a fucking man, he tried to coach himself. But he didn’t feel like a man. He was a boy without parents. A drunk without a hand. A goon in a pin-striped suit.
His eyes landed on the squat across the street. There was a prolonged moment where he questioned whether to cross the street and go in, but he also knew himself; he wouldn’t be able not to. Finally he took one deep breath and crossed toward it. He shoved open the huge blue door—Locks are a symbol of proprietary greed, Toby had once claimed — and entered the big, open front room. The smell overtook him: the lacquer and resin and turpentine mixed with growing mold and old food. Engales kicked a beer bottle over; it rolled jerkily, like a bagged body. In the floor’s cracks were the remnants of a party: a green feather, a miniature plastic bag, gold sequins, which distinctly reminded him of Lucy.
Nostalgia swelled within him: these thin walls; this idealistic, bright paint; this house of youth and wonder. The place, of course, had been gutted of the bulk of its furnishings — sidewalk couches, mismatched dishes, wobbly tables, the art — but what was left was enough to make him remember the precise feeling he’d gotten when he walked in here for the first time: This is it. The space was the New York he’d come for, and embodied everything it meant to be alive. Even the smell made him ache with a wish he knew would never come true: to go backward. He let himself live inside that wish for a second, imagining Mans and Hans in the corner, taking a blowtorch to a hunk of bronze. Toby coming out from the back room, his arm around Regina, telling everyone: “This is the life, people. We fucking did it.” Selma’s singing, drifting from the makeshift bathroom with the steam. But this foray into his past life was interrupted by a voice coming from the back, saying what sounded from where Engales stood like: Failed artist! Failed artist! Failed artist! The fucking parrots.
Engales went into the back room, which smelled like a thousand rats had died inside of it. He held his breath, kicked through a pile of trash. The bird sounded again, from somewhere in the corner: Capitalism is for suckers! When he found it, waddling under an overturned chair, it looked up at him with its creepy bird eyes, shook its matted, filthy feathers. How had it managed to stay alive in here? Engales wondered as he stuck his good arm out to pick it up. But then again, how did anyone manage to stay alive these days? They were all hanging on by a fucking feather.
The bird climbed up Engales’s arm and onto his shoulder. Engales wanted to hate it, but for some reason the fact of it, this live thing holding on to him with its gross claws, gave him just the ounce of courage he would need for what he knew he had to do next: go back out that blue door, leave this place behind for good, give up any thought of going backward. Giddyap! the parrot screamed, which Engales translated to himself as forward. Only forward. The messy bird and the one-armed man went out into the world.
Out on Second, the street felt eerily empty. The bars had their neon signs off and their doors locked up. When he passed Binibon, where the windows were usually fogged with the breath and coffee steam of the many regulars, he saw that the grate was down. On the grate someone had taped a note on a piece of binder paper that read: CLOSED TODAY. Then a frowny face and a peace sign. The tiny bookstore on the corner of Fifth Street was locked up, too, and the big beer hall was not crawling with drunks as it usually was. There was no cold-fingered saxophonist on Fourth, where he usually serenaded the street in any weather. There were no sirens. The city seemed to be on pause, like a ghost town after a shoot-out. The only thing open was Telemondo’s, and though Engales did not want to see the Telemondo guy, he went in, asked for a pack of cigarettes. He spotted the line of golden flasks on the back wall. “One of those, too,” he said. To his relief, the Telemondo guy didn’t acknowledge him in any special way, but only slid the cigarettes and whiskey across the counter and said with his flat, accented voice: “That will be five hundred and fifty two pennies.”
He could do this. He was armed with booze and a bird and he was cloaked in fog and the Telemondo guy had done his joke. He’d be drunk by the time he got there, and the whole thing would just sink into him like the alcohol did, slowly and warmly. He’d do for his sister what he’d been unable to do before; he’d come through for her. He walked past a vacant lot where a man’s dress shirt was hanging on a chain-link fence, sailing in the wind like a ghost. He passed a man in a wheelchair wearing all yellow, with a sign that said something about waterskiing. He passed a woman with very smeared clown makeup. The beautiful horrors of New York, he thought as he took a big swig from the bottle. And I am among them.
Finally he made it to Greenwich, and turned up toward Jane. He knew this route well because it was how he had walked to the Eagle to visit Lucy on her shifts, to harass her while she worked, kiss her over the bar. The thought of her stung him. He pushed her away, turned left on Jane. He had found James Bennett’s address in the Rising Sun’s probably very dated phonebook: number 24, a little wooden house crammed between two larger brick apartment buildings. In front of the wooden door, the snow-fog moved in a funny way. The snow-fog moved in a way that said, You don’t know shit.
Suddenly, when faced with the door that would open onto Franca’s big news, he felt paralyzed. What would happen when it opened? What would be waiting behind it? Would he feel anything when he saw Franca’s son? Would he see Franca in him? Would the boy see Franca in Engales? Would he remember everything about being a boy himself? How wonderful it was to run through the streets — so much faster than his sister — and feel the wind on his face? Would he know exactly how the boy felt, alone in a strange place, with no parents to speak of? Would the boy be frightened of him? Would the boy be frightened of his hand?
The boy would be frightened of his hand.
No, he couldn’t do this. He walked back down the stairs of the stoop, down the block that he and Lucy had once careened down like love-drunk pinballs.
I’ve never asked you for anything in my whole life.
He turned around. Walked back up.
Rug muncher! the bird spat. The bird. Oh, Jesus, the fucking bird. No way, Engales. No way was he doing this.