inside me, confused, threatened, ready to kill me, kill itself, rather than endure the sun.
Crossing the street, trotting between the cars so I don’t have to stand on the corner and wait for the light to change, I remember something. I remember being a sixteen-year-old runaway, how I spent that summer, every day in Tompkins Square. I remember sprawling drunk and shirtless on the brown grass and waking, my skin so deeply burned it radiated heat. The girl I was with that night, holding her hand an inch from my stomach, warming her fingers. I poured ice-cold beer over my chest. For days the skin flaked and peeled. I picked at it, teasing off leafs of it and burning holes in them with the tip of my cigarette to gross out my friends with the smell. When the burned skin was dead and gone, I was browner than the grass in the park. That winter I was infected.
I look at the subway entrance just ahead. All things being equal, I’m going to die down there, somewhere between here and home. I stop at the top of the stairs.
I look up at the blue sky.
And pay for it with boiling tears and blurred vision.
Half blind, I stumble down the stairs into the hole in the ground, cursing myself.
The platform is crowded. My vision is still clouded, but I run my eyes around, looking for any of Papa’s
I pull up the ski mask. Doesn’t matter who sees my face. The ones I’m most concerned about will smell me anyway.
I stand on the platform, shifting from foot to foot and rubbing the tears from my eyes, blinking away the blur. The platform grows more crowded. I put my back against one of the green girders that lines the platform. I breathe deep, smell the rats on the track along with all the other stinks of the station. I watch the faces, not caring if I catch anyone’s eye. Never certain if I have because of my fogged vision.
I squint at a map of the system. It’s a jumble of wavy lines: blue, orange, yellow, red, and green. Meaningless. That’s OK, I know the tunnels, I know the lines. I can picture the A in my head. The express down to 59th, to 42nd, to 34th, to 14th. I sniff again. Still smells clean, clean of what I’m looking for anyway. If the
Or.
Or Papa could have a deal with Predo. Percy said Papa might be dealing with him, might be
The air moves in the station; a stale breeze blowing in from the tunnel, pushed ahead by the train. This is a bad play. I should be aboveground. Duck into a bar and call a car service. Get a limo with tinted windows. Yeah, sit in a bar on Hood turf and wait for a car. Bad call. A cab? Traffic, clear windows.
The train squeals into the station. People cram themselves up close to the doors, staring at the folks on the inside, also packed at the doors. All of them sizing each other up, challenging one another for space. The doors slide open, the speakers crackle, there’s a brief free-for-all as the people on the train and the people on the platform trade places. I wait for the last possible second, looking for some danger more obvious than what I know is already out there, and push my way aboard.
The doors snap shut and the train jerks and rolls. I scent the air in the car and find it safe. My eyes are clearing quickly now, my vision all but normal. I look around and catch sight of a service advisory, a sign telling me at once why the platform had been so crowded. Telling me the C and B trains are out of service and that all express trains are running local. Local, as in hitting every stop between here and home. Slow and steady all the way.
A long slow train through the gauntlet. And me, no cigarettes at all even if they would let you smoke down here.
Stopping, starting, pausing in the middle of the tunnel for a red signal, rolling. The train takes its own goddamn sweet time. 116th, a college kid with a sketchbook in his lap, drawing the passengers seated across from him, just their feet. 110th, last stop in the Hood, people cramming on and off. No
And I ride the rails, straight down to 14th Street. Straight down and free and clear. And I just know that it’s gotta be bad news.
At 14th, my nerves shot to hell, I get off. I transfer to the L line, cross over to First, and walk out of the station and back into the day.
The sun presses on me just the same as it did Uptown, but here it is almost a relief. As if it were a different, more familiar sun. I walk quickly to 10th, stopping in at my deli. I grab a six-pack and a carton of Luckys. The guy gives me a book of matches and I light up. I walk the last half block to my front door. I step into the vestibule and check my mail. Just a couple things for
I walk past the couch, wanting nothing half so much as to sink down onto it, drink my way through the six and smoke Luckys one after another. Instead, I go down the stairs into the basement apartment and get my other gun.
There’s nothing wrong with the 9mm I took off Shades, it’s just that I know this gun, I trust it as much as a gun can be trusted. Being a gun, it’s more than likely gonna end up in someone else’s hand being pointed at me someday, so I don’t trust it too much. But it’s mine and I’ve used it to kill people before, so I know it works. I leave Shades’ piece in the gun safe and pocket my own. Then I crack the fridge.
The bag of anathema is still in my jacket. I take it out and give it a sniff. I have no way of knowing for certain if it’s still potent, but it sure as shit smells like it is. I stick it in the fridge. I don’t want anyone smelling that stink when I come through the door. I look at my own last pint. The blisters on the backs of my hands throb. My whole body feels baked and dry, skin bright pink. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Fuck it.
I pop the pint open and suck it down. Once it’s in me, I wonder what the hell I was debating about. Of course I’m drinking it now, you should always drink it now. Drink all of it you can whenever you can. Anything that makes you feel like this, you should drink it. I drain it, slice it, lick it clean. It’s good. The blisters don’t go away, but they
