This is crazy.
I gaze out over the geometric gray city and I gasp. I know what will happen when I leave my fluorescent hive and its ringing phones and hungry young men, when I descend into the human menagerie that growls at me with the snarling hunger for fresh blood.
Quitting time. Indeed.
The wool-itchy overcoat is my only protection against the concrete chill of the November rush hour. The coat is armor that will ward off the life-sucking cold that makes the city shiver with frost and desolation. I pull up the collar to protect my exposed neck where the naps are already prickling before I even step outside.
How many times have I suffered this journey home? There is an easier way--or so I'm told. I've never found it. In this screech-honking maze, blindness is not only an effect, but also a cause. I can't see where I'm going. But again, I hope I will. I must be crazy.
Echo-stepping across the marble lobby, I hunch my shoulders against the impending onslaught. Fifty or sixty or a hundred people cross before, behind, beside me, wearing similar armor of wool, leather and suede. I am not alone. Just lonely.
- You don't never need to be lonely
with me aroun'.
- I know, Mama.
The whump-whump-whump of the revolving door draws me through the crowd and then spits me out into the rush. The sting of winter air bites into my lungs. The air is not fresh, but it is refreshing because it is not confined within concrete and glass and steel. I breathe deeply, then cough when I have taken in too much of this city too quickly. Too cold, too rich with the refuse of trucks and trains and people. The detritus of people living their lives only inches away from each other makes this city as inhumane as it is inhuman. Still, I face uptown into the crackling air and struggle homeward.
A block up the avenue, I stop to peer into the comforting warmth of the Doubleday window, and a woman bumps into me from behind.
"Jesus, get the hell out of the way next time," she snarls, barely breaking her pace while rattling her Bloomingdale's shopping bag at me. The clack of her heels on pavement blends into the clatter of hundreds of thousands of others who are just as disgusted with me yet have no such particular reason to be. I hunch up beneath my coat, try to shrink, to be warm--to feel warmth. Behind me, people swarm. Behind the window, people meander. I choose the more civilized of the two and let myself be pushed through the revolving door, the clang and rattle of the city lost behind a whump and a whoosh. Inside the bookstore, there is warmth.
I excuse my way to the back of the store, passing mothers and their babies wrapped in layers of wool and care. I pass a man in a chartreuse bowler hat and marvel at the sight. I hear baroque strains gently soothing the air, fighting off the intrusion of the outside world.
"Can I help you?" a voice behind me asks, and I whirl and see a young blond man smiling at me. He lets his nametag introduce himself as Chris.
"No," I lie to him. "I'm just looking." And Chris leaves, but not before looking for a second too long at my face. They're all the same.
I pause before the magazine rack and see the salesman's face again, only this time, on every magazine. The young blond man. The boy next door. Here, there, everywhere. The world can't get enough of him.
- Boy, I don't know why you
actin' all seditty now. I ain't give you permission to be a fool.
- But Mama, he's my friend.
- He can't be no friend of yours.
Twelve years old and you don't know nuthin'.
- Ain't his fault.
- You can't trust them people, 'cause
they don't trust you.
- I ain't friends with--What that
got to do with me?
- You talkin' back to me, boy?
- No, Mama, but I--
- That's it. I had enough of this
mess and backtalk. Take off that belt, now.
- But Mama, I ain't--
- Gimme that belt, now. I'll teach
you a lesson you'll never forget.
I look at the rack full of the young man again. There he is, accusing me in eighty different ways, his blue eyes paralyzing, punishing me with shame I can't forget. The baroque strings fade, garble with electronic pops and zings that drive me out into the bustle again. I pull up my collar but it doesn't help. Chris watches me with all those blue eyes. Even engulfed by the flood of home-rushers outside, I feel his eyes on my back, on my neck. Stabbing. Stabbing.
I can't breathe easily again for four more blocks. Twilight darkens into night, and I step through pools of neon and fluorescent blue as I head toward the river. Tonight is not one of my better nights. The river becomes a distant refuge. I will be safe when I reach it. It will protect me when I cross it. But I find I am still breathing too hard, too quickly. I need to sit and breathe.
Outside of a corner deli, crates are stacked or tossed into an alley like orphans, and I use one. No one seems to notice. There are more unusual sights in this city than a black man sitting on a crate.
How cold it is.
After five minutes, I stand, pick up my black leather briefcase, smooth the back of my coat. I pull up my collar and hope again that it will help. Then I notice the eyes of a young woman across the street. She bears similar armor to mine. She stands, her arm upraised in an almost futile attempt to attract attention, mindless of the people shifting past her.
She glances at me before returning to the safety of her task. When she sees me, does she see the same nut-brown earth that birthed her?
A brisk ice wind slices up the street, swirls her royal blue scarf about her face. She glances at me again.
- Boy, what is this?
- It's a book, Mama.
- I know it's a book, boy. I done
read part of it, too.
- It's just a book, Mama.
- It's a sin is what it is. No fourteen
year-old boy of mine gonna be reading this mess. Whores and pimps
and mess. Didn't Reverend Sibley teach you nothin'?
- I-I won't read it anymore, Mama.
- Damn right you won't. You gonna
take this back to where you got it and tell the man you been bad.
- But Mama--
- Boy, I'll beat your black ass
bloody if you give me anymore sass.
- But Mama--
- Boy, if you don't get your ass
back where this come from, I know what. You should be 'shamed.
If it's the last thing on God's earth I do, I'll teach you a lesson
about this evil you won't forget.
She is still staring at me as I force myself back into the crowd on Lexington. I lose myself in the rumble of the city, the roar of the jungle, the whisper of guarded lives slipping past each other just an edged breath away. But I cannot erase her just now. The blue scarf swirls in my head and I can't give it back.
I still see undulating blue in my mind five streets later, when I stop across from Joe's Place. Everyone around me shuffles by. The oaken door to Joe's opens and a young man, somewhat darker than I, steps confidently out into the frigid city, his wide-open, jean-clad stance daring the onslaught to move him. The current shifts and flows around him. He planned it that way.
He blows into his hands, fingers ashy from the dry air, and his breath billows from between them, reaching out, touching those who pass. They don't know how close they are.
How close I am.
He puts his hands into the pockets of his leather bomber jacket, hikes up his shoulders, shifts his hips. This is a dance, a language I understand. When he catches me staring, he glues his eyes to mine. He will not let go, and I cannot. I feel his pull even more strongly than the push of the thousands around me.
Afraid to show my weak links, I take long, slow strides toward him through a break in the bleating traffic. And then, from the obsidian of his face, through the deepening night, a trace of warmth, a smile. The crescent glow of his perfect teeth beams, a lunar phase as clear and romantic as those I read about.
- The devil done found a playground
in you, boy. Are you crazy? You must be crazy! But as God looks
down I'll tear him out of you.
- No, Mama. Don't make me do that,
Mama!
- If you wanna go switchin' that
butt of yours around them, then you gonna do it, all right. You
gonna do it till you don't do it no more!
- Mama, the neighbors will see--
- You sit your ass up on that stool
right now, boy! You think you something, puttin' your stuff up
in front of that boy? Well, you want people lookin', they gonna
be lookin' now! Get your ass up there now!
- But Mama--
- Shut your damn mouth! You gotta stop this sinnin'. What's wrong with you, boy? What he do to you?
- He smiled at me, Mama.
- Jesus God, what have I done for this? You killin' me, boy. You killin' me.
- Mama--
- Shut up! You gonna stay up there till your daddy gets home. And if people laugh, then you just sit there and cry and show 'em what kind of man you are.
The young man is shivering when I reach him, and he is still smiling. He drops his eyes to his shoes, and I do the same. The door to Joe's opens again, a brass burst of Miles Davis and a puff of warm, beer-stale air blow out, embracing us for a moment before fading, cooling. I see that he has the same pair of high-tops he wore last night. I am surprised he is still waiting. For me?
Our eyes meet again, though our heads are lowered, as if too much recognition will drive us away from each other and back into the anonymity of darkness.
- Lord Jesus, what am I suppose'
to do with you? Ain't you never learned nothin'? And you a college
man.
- I've learned a lot, Mama.
- I tried to teach you to leave
the devil alone, to be a man. What they teach you up at that school?
- The same thing.
I finally look up at the young man, the steaming desire reaching with ethereal fingers from his lips. I inhale deeply.
- I didn't teach you to fight
with your mama. I taught you to fight the devil.
- Not the devil, Mama.
- Don't go tellin' me I'm wrong,
boy. You the one caught up in the devil's work. You the one doin'
Lord knows what with that man they talkin' about.
A gust of frozen air blasts up the street from the darkening, beckoning river. The young man hunches his shoulders, the smile fades a bit. Even he can't stand the push for too long.
- You got me so scared I don't
even know when someone is trying to help me.
- I'm tryin' to help you, boy.
His feet start to shuffle, and he blows into his hands again. He looks up the avenue, then down, then at me.
"Maybe you can help me out tonight, brotherman," he says. "Or maybe I can do something for you."
- I don't want your help!
- Boy, are you crazy?
- I don't want your help!
I don't want your help!
"I don't want your help!"
"Crazy."
He pauses in his dance. Then he swings his hips toward the door and the life behind it. He looks back, no smile, no heat. No warmth.
Nothing.
He disappears, the door banging sharply behind him, silencing the music of desire. He could have given me a chance. They're all the same, those people. There's no point hanging around now.
I've learned my lesson.
Somehow, I think about nothing until I reach the tramway platform. The clank and whirr of the overhead machinery jars me back to sense, and I get pushed into the cage with a lot of other people who are going along for the ride. A minute later, the tram-car swings us upward and away, the lurch impotent to displace those of us jam-packed inside.
As we sway into the darkness above the river, the individual lights of the city blur into a miasma of light and color. From here, I lose all distinction. It all runs together, and I think I am glad to be going home to my island in the middle of the polluted river.
I try to peer ahead into the darkness, but I can't see. There are too many people around me. How could I find anything in here?
Unable to see where I'm going, I go anyway. But tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
I hope.
Crazy.