his four martini lunch and tried to cover the smell with a fistful of Altoids. Someone just bought a CD player and I smell the new plastic as they tear open the bubble-pack it’s wrapped in. Shampoo. Ink from the fat tip of a felt-tip pen as a kid tags a window of the car. Someone had sex just before she caught the train and semen dribbles down the inside of her thigh. Foot powder. Tiger Balm. A Hershey’s bar. French fries. A puff of deodorant released as someone unzips their jacket. Hair spray, hair gel, hair mousse, hair cream, hair wax. Over a dozen types of perfumes, twice as many lotions and creams. Once I focus on all of it, once I let that lizard part of my brain that deals with smells start sifting them all out and identifying them, it makes me want to vomit. I bite it back and take another whiff.
The stagnant
It’s awful. All of it. But nowhere in it do I smell the Vyrus. Nowhere but in my own blood. I try to stop, try to breathe easy and focus my mind on something else. I bring my head up and let my eyes bob and drift around, lazily taking in the faces around me. There is no trace of the Vyrus in here other than my own, but that doesn’t mean I’m safe. The bleeder could be a savvy Renfield, one trained by Coalition enforcers to look for a sniffer. Or it could be worse. It could be a Van Helsing. If it is a Van Helsing, if it’s a staker who knows enough to prick his finger and wait to see who takes an interest, he’ll be dangerous as hell. A Van Helsing that knows the game? Shit. He won’t care about borders and treaties and turf. A Van Helsing will ride this car with me all the way up to the Hood. I get off the train with a Van Helsing on my ass, bring that to Hood turf? There’s no punishment that covers that, nothing but getting tumored by the sun.
The train slows, pulling to a stop at 59th Street, Columbus Circle.
The Upper West Side types hurry off the train to rush home and meet their spouses, who are also coming home from work, so they can both kiss their trophy babies before their Jamaican nannies put the little ones to bed so they can go out to dinner and not talk to one another. They are replaced by the far upper Manhattan Caribbeans who have finished cleaning houses and walking dogs and working their shifts at Balducci’s and are heading home to fuck up their own children and not talk to their spouses. I watch them. I don’t bother with subtlety now, I watch everyone who stays on the train, looking for the thing that is not like the others.
The doors try to close and get caught on one of the overstuffed bags of the homeless guy. The conductor is on the intercom again, screaming through the static.
– DO NOT BLOCK THE DOORS AT THE BACK OF THE TRAIN!
The doors slide open for a moment, but rather than stepping through them the homeless guy adjusts his grip on the bag and gets caught again as the doors slide shut.
– STOP BLOCKING THE DOORS BACK THERE!
They open again and a couple people on the platform take advantage of the opportunity to squeeze in around the homeless guy, who gets stuck again.
– GET OUT OF THE WAY OF THE DOORS BACK THERE! YOU’RE HOLDING EVERYBODY UP! THE TRAIN WILL NOT MOVE UNTIL YOU STOP BLOCKING THE DOORS!
A young guy gets off his seat and tries to help the homeless guy with his bags. The homeless guy jerks away from him, cursing, and the doors close on him again.
– STOP BLOCKING THE DOORS! STOP BLOCKING THE DOORS! STOP BLOCKING THE DOORS!
The kid throws up his hands and goes to sit back down, but someone has already grabbed his seat. The doors open and the homeless guy hefts his bags and lets a businessman on the train. Then he steps clear of the doors as they finally close all the way. Just before they close, just before they seal us in here nice and tight, I finally notice the fresh red stain on the side of one of his bags: the spot of blood from his pricked fingertip. And as the train begins to move, I smell something new in the car, something that smells like me, and I catch the eye of the businessman the homeless guy stepped so easily aside for at that last moment. He’s staring at me, not bothering to hide it. And why shouldn’t we stare at each other? We’re stuck together in here all the way up.
Fucking Coalition. Got a Renfield riding the line doing the homeless thing. I try to remember if he got on at 14th or if he was already on the train at 4th. That would be like the Coalition, to have the sap riding the whole line, dangling out there to get picked off. I wonder if he did the finger-prick trick because he spotted me. Does Predo have that big a hard-on for me? Does he have my photo circulating through his Renfields? Maybe not, maybe it’s just standard for them: Let a little blood before Columbus Circle and see if anyone bites. If they do, you block the door long enough for an enforcer patrolling the platform to get on the train. Well, whether he had me from the get-go or not, he must have picked me up when I started sniffing around. Good Renfield, that one. Ever see him again, I’ll find out what his blood tastes like. But this guy here giving me the eyeball? He’s another matter entirely.
Enforcer. Coalition Gestapo. He’ll be well fed. He’ll be armed. He’ll have some moves. He stands in the middle of the car, glancing at me every now and then to see that I don’t do anything rash. Don’t know what that would be. My back is resting against the rear of the train. I suppose I could smash the glass on the emergency exit and dive out of the speeding train onto the tracks and hope I don’t break my neck or tumble into the third rail. But I’ll save that as a final option.
The train is still full, the line dead ends at 207th. I can either get off in the middle of Hood turf with the enforcer on my ass, or ride the line all the way to the end and transfer to a downtown train. Of course, that will mean crossing back over Coalition turf. I don’t know if this guy’s got any backup on board, but if I’m still on this thing with him and we go back down to 59th, he’s bound to pick up some help. At some point before 14th, they’ll make a move to drag me off. That or see how far I want to ride. Into no-man’s? Lower Manhattan? I don’t even want to think about Lower Manhattan and all the tiny, crazy Clans down there. Across the river and into the bush? Who the fuck knows what goes on once you cross the water. Nice choices.
I give him a good once-over. Looks late twenties. Not that that means anything. Got on one of those nice suits Predo has them all wear. Hair slicked back. Not as big as me, but there’s a build under the suit.
The train’s been racing the line, cutting through the local stations and leaving them behind. The driver’s got the pedal down, making up for the time he lost when the Renfield blocked the doors. I see a sign for 110th flicker past. That’s it, we’re gone, above the line and in the Hood.
The enforcer is staring into my eyes now, trying to put the voodoo on me; give me the willies with his undead badassness. I give it back to him. Fat fucking enforcer. Overfed. Pampered. Coalition paying all his bills, doing all his hunting for him. Sitting tight until Dexter Predo says jump.
The train stops at 125th. He keeps his stare on, shooting me all his fantasies about how big the world of hurt’s gonna be when he lays his hands on me. I nod my head at him and walk off the train, into the station in the heart of the Hood. Right underneath the intersection of Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass Boulevards. He hesitates, then jumps off between the doors before they can close. That’s right, motherfucker, made you blink.
– OK, guy.
I take the stairs up from the platform one at a time.
– All right, you showed your stones. Now let’s go back to the platform and wait for a downtown train.
I come to the top of the stairs and take a look around. They’re doing a ton of construction in the station and the whole Uptown half is sealed off behind sheets of plywood painted bright MTA blue. If I want to exit that way, I’ll have to go back to the platform and take the stairs at the far end.
– I’m not gonna fuck around with you here, guy. You come back down or I’ll haul you down.
The enforcer is still at my shoulder, still talking.
– No shit, guy, you
