stones and craters and thousand-foot pits and whatever else might break its tires, and then stopped, the bulky mass rocking forward, then settling back onto itself as the vehicle came to a dead stop. I vomited a third time. A bag fell against me. The engine stayed on. I heard the voices, a door open, then the voices come alongside the walls of the vehicle. The lock on the door was being opened. I lifted my head. A rectangle of light opened at one end of the space and two Chinese men in overalls and long rubber gloves stood before me. I hollered bloody murder again and they climbed into the garbage and hauled me out feetfirst, roughly, yelling as if I had betrayed them, and I fought them out of instinct, but they got their clammy gloves around my legs and pulled me roughly through the leaking garbage bags, then along the slick floor of the van. I fell straight to the ground, banging my shoulder on the bumper, and before they slammed the doors shut, one of the men picked up a fallen bag of eggshells and shrimp carcasses, a pause just long enough for me to look up and into the van- it was a van- and notice, or think that I noticed, a man's brown dress shoe resting in the refuse, a shoe not my own, since I had both of mine still on. I fell backward, stunned and weak, my lungs filled with exhaust as the van sped crazily over a rubbled wasteland, through a broken fence, then into the street. The sky above me was a cloudless infinity of blue. A seagull winged lazily past. My eyes hurt, my head felt too big, my back numb, legs stiff and weak. I rolled to my stomach, got one knee up, stood, staggered, vomited again, this time a thin, burning gruel, wiped my mouth with my sleeve, pulled a piece of limp lettuce from my hair, and saw now that I stood in an abandoned lot strewn with bricks and bottles. I was suddenly cold and dry-mouthed. The garbage had kept me warm. I felt my pockets and was pleased to discover my wallet, with all my identification as well. Plus a set of keys I didn't recognize. I studied them. They were Jay's. I had to give them back. I counted my cash, found I hadn't been robbed. No, that would have been a relief, in a way. I was being dumped, taken out with the garbage.
Dumped, as if they thought I was dead.
Like the other guy in the van.
In a bodega three blocks away I bought coffee, juice, three scrambled eggs, home fries, and a New York Giants sweatshirt off a kid delivering newspapers. I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep the food down, but I ordered it anyway. The cook, a big, authoritative man, told me I was in Queens. He let me use the bathroom, where I took off my reeking button-down oxford. I could barely move my arms, I was so stiff. A cockroach lay inside the sleeve. I washed my chest and armpits and face with paper towels, threw away the shirt, then put on the sweatshirt.
'You got jacked, right?' said the cook when I came out, rubbing a hand over his pear-shaped belly. He kept a pen behind his ear.
'Something.' My head was a mess. Fourteen-odd hours later.
He set the ketchup in front of me. 'No, no, let me tell you something, I'm telling you, you got jacked. You don't remember nothing, right? That lot, it's like, what, three, maybe four times aJimmy, how many times we see guys get dumped where the old paint factory used to be?'
A voice from a back room. 'Howafuck I know?'
'Don't give him no never-mine,' the cook told me. 'His wife got mental-pause and it got him, too. Guys get fucking jacked and they throw them in that lot because it's just off the expressway. One guy, it was a hooker and she had him pull over his car and when she got his dick out there was another guy waiting, then another time this guy was left there, couple of sickos, they taped a dead cat against his head, fuckin'-unbelievable-tha'shit, trying-a scare him, and this other time they threw fucking toxic waste out there, the government came with all the white moon suits, you know, we sold like two hundred cups of coffee.'
'They didn't get all of it!' came the voice behind the door.
'What? What's that, Jimmy?'
'They didn't get all the fucking toxic waste.'
'What d'you mean?'
'They left you, didn't they?'
I looked at my watch. 'What day is this?'
'What day?'
'It's uh, it's Tues day, guy.'
'No, I mean the date.'
'The date? Let me- what's the date, Jimmy?'
'Howafuck I know?'
The cook slicked his hand across his head and checked a spattered calendar next to the cash register. 'It's the first,' he declared, 'first of the month.'
March 1. The day I was to start work. I was due at work in three hours, showered, shaved, in a new tie- walking human capital. It took me another moment to remember I didn't live anywhere anymore. I checked the cash in my wallet.
'You guys do me one more favor?' I said.
'What. Anything, name it.'
'I want you guys to call me a car into Manhattan.'
'Can't.'
'Why?'
'I'm driving you myself.'
'No, no, that's all right.'
'Come on, it's twenty minutes.' The cook reached for his coat. 'Jimmy, take the front.' He pointed at the front door. 'We're slow today, anyway. It's a slow week. Actually, the year's been pretty slow, matter of fact.'
We drove in silence in an old Chevy Caprice that looked repainted. Maybe an old taxi. I was immensely grateful. I asked the cook to drop me in midtown.
'So, did you know these people who jacked you?' The cook turned his eyes onto me, and beneath their penetration, I couldn't lie. 'Or was it just a surprise, wrong place-wrong time?'
'Basically I knew them,' I said.
The cook nodded, as if he expected to hear this. 'Let me tell you something,' he said. 'I used to be a cop. I retired. I got tired and I retired. But I seen a lot of things.'
I went rigid. 'All right.'
'You want to go on, right, you want to avoid more trouble?'
Had I shot a gun? Did I remember doing that? 'Absolutely.'
'Don't try to get revenge.'
'It's not like that.'
He wheeled the car through Spanish Harlem. 'Just listen to me. Don't try to get revenge, don't try to explain it to a bunch of people, don't tell nobody, don't tell the police for freaking sake, don't do nothing. And don't go back to those people, don't associate, don't talk about it.'
'Okay.' I realized I hadn't told him my name.
'You got out with your skin, right?'
'Yeah.'
'You're lucky.'
'Just go back to my old life, let time pass.'
He nodded as he pulled the car to a stop. 'Yeah. Go back to your regular life and stay there. Die old.'
How do you walk into your hotel at eight o'clock smelling of garbage, have no change of clothes, then two hours later arrive at a new job looking great in a new suit? Answer: It can't quite be done. I hurried stiffly into the hotel, showered, shaved, cleaned up, then padded downstairs in pants and a hotel bathrobe, bought a ridiculous red sweatsuit in a gift shop on Fifth Avenue, returned to the room, changed, then took a cab to Macy's, which opens at nine, bought a suit off the rack, shirt, tie, belt, socks, shoes, dressing in the little changing cubicle, then took the subway to work- and arrived seventeen minutes late.
But it didn't matter. Dan was on the phone with someone- his new mistress, I learned later. That morning, after he had introduced me to the other principals (younger men and women straining on their leashes, eager for glory and promotions and big bucks) and the new assistants (three battle-hardened fiftyish women, attuned to health care benefits and flexible hours to see their grandchildren in school productions), and after I had inspected my office (decent, but nothing like my former one, which had a helicopter view of Lexington Avenue), after I had
