The figure on the floor, still smoldering, rises and runs away. The flames spread quickly through the room. “We gotta get out of here,” says Marvin, struggling to his feet. He hobbles back the way we’d entered. Reuben and I drag Daphne after him.
It’s too dark to see the smoke pouring through the tunnels, but we’re choking on it. “Keep moving,” yells Marvin. I follow Reuben’s lead, helping to drag Daphne toward a pinpoint of light in the distance. The light gets brighter as we reach the entrance.
The scene outside is mayhem. Dozens of people, faces blackened by soot, follow the smoke out of the subway tunnel into the makeshift village. Reuben is struggling with Daphne, assaulting her with a flurry of profanities that continues long after I’ve shoved a few twenties into his hand. Daphne curls into a fetal ball on the ground. Marvin stands nearby tending to his ruined groin.
I scan the chaos for some sign of Robes. But all I can see is an army of charred zombies, coated in soot, grime, piss, and blood, blinking their eyes against the bright sun.
23
DAPHNE REMAINS NEARLY COMATOSE for the entire drive home. After we drop Marvin off, I drag her into the shower, do my best to scrub her clean, and tuck her into bed.
“What about the farewell drugs?” are her only words to me, a line from
I spend most of the night sitting in a chair next to the bed, watching her. I doze off at some point during the early hours of the morning. When I wake, the bed is empty and the Buick is gone from the driveway. There’s a note pinned to the refrigerator: “Sorry.”
The call from Kings Park arrives later that afternoon.
The next morning, another spectacularly sunny day, my father drops me off at the institution. Daphne shuffles out into the visiting area, looking very much like she did the first time I saw her there. She speaks slowly. They’ve clearly upped her dosage.
“So,” she asks. “How do you like me now?”
“Same as it ever was,” I say. “You look like the woman I love.”
She smiles weakly. “You know why love stories have happy endings?” I shake my head. “Because they end too early,” she continues. “They always end right at the kiss. You never have to see all the bullshit that comes later. You know,
“Lady, this love story is just beginning. Rest up, because when you’re feeling better…” I pause, because I don’t know exactly what to say next.
“What?” she asks. “We go back to the suburbs? We get married? That’s us, right? Two and a half kids and a white picket fence.”
“Fuck all that. We can move back into the Chelsea. I’ll even pick you up in a big yellow taxi.” It’s a reference to the end of
“You’re not Sid,” she says, shuffling back to her room.
Daphne’s words sting at first, mostly because she’s right. All of the bourgeois bullshit that we used to make fun of—stupid jobs and suburban values—has somehow become my life. I’m beginning to understand her urge to set fire to the world.
But I’m not Sid Vicious. Despite the world being a fuckedup place, well past fixing, I don’t have any desire to wreck the joint.
Maybe it’s just the sunshine that socks me in the face when I walk out the door, but I’m just not ready to go home and get ready for work. I could start fresh. Find a job in a better restaurant. Quit food service altogether.
I don’t even have to stay in New York. K. said that traveling was lonely, but I’ve never even been to California, where the sun’s supposed to shine like this every day of the year.
I pop a cassette into the Buick’s stereo. It’s the Ramones. I turn the volume up high and roll down the windows. The highway air tastes of fumes, but it still feels goddamn good to breathe.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book never would have existed without my follicularly challenged agent Charlie Runkle, the best in the business. Thanks also to his foxy wife Marcy, for everything she does to keep him that way. I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to my editor, Cara Bedick, whose quiet persistence saved you, dear reader, from many a cliche (although maybe not this one).
To Tom K., for believing in me before anybody else did. Thanks also, in no particular order, to Alex Cox, Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen (and Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb), the very helpful staff at Kings Park, Johnny’s Deli and their life-sustaining egg sandwiches, Randy Runkle, the Ramones, and Judy Blume, who taught me everything I think I know about women.
Finally, I am grateful to my family: my father, for observing early (and often) that I wasn’t cut out for doing honest work; my sisters, whose laughter at the dinner table still keeps me going; and my mother, to whom I owe, literally and metaphorically, absolutely everything.
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