My first mistake was stealing a wheelchair as opposed to a crutch or something, more or less broadcasting my defenselessness to all and sundry.
Not to mention the freaking monster of a hill around 96th Street. I’m vibing Special Olympics, with a strong emphasis on the “special.”
My second and far more serious mistake, but related to the first, was reckoning I’d take Fifth Avenue all the way down to the library.
Fifth Avenue, of course, borders the park. Park entrances are festooned with yellow police tape. Crosstown motorways are blockaded with piles of rock, log, and garbage.
Within lies who knows what kind of darkness.
And here’s me, grunting and straining, surgical mask and hat, in a goddamn wheelchair, half-stoned on the dope, essentially announcing “easy target” to anything that might emerge from the unknowable hole that is the park.
My gun, needless to say, is in my lap. I’m trying to remember how many bullets might remain in the clip. Can’t scare up this information. I don’t think I shot at anybody recently but my powers of recall are not running at their full potential.
Did I mention this?
It’s quiet. Bad quiet. I’m on the east side of Fifth, as far away from the park as possible. There’s no question I’m being observed.
Even at night, the air here is more melting plastic than oxygen. That smell, always that smell. The Stench.
I need to pause and take a pill, they’re in my jacket pocket, but I don’t want to stop moving. Thanks be to Christ I pulled on a pair of those gloves prior to exiting the hospital, the thought of touching these wheels with my naked hands raises my gorge.
I’m at 73rd Street, arms trembling, biting my tongue with the effort of pushing my carcass up the slight incline that is Fifth Avenue.
I hear a thunk, and a brick appears in my path.
As I try to digest this, wham, something whacks my right wheel, missing my hand by inches. Something else whistles by my head. I get the general thrust of things.
To my left is some overgrown shrubbery near the entryway to a once-fancy apartment house, I size it up. Register a sharp sting in my upper arm as something tags me there, thankfully something on the smaller side. Time to move.
Upend myself, tilting the chair west and dumping my body into the brush, my weight crushing the small branches, and I land behind the shrubs.
A deluge of projectiles—brick fragments, shale, bits of tile. I attempt to shield my head and lie flat. As my bad knee hits the earth I nearly black out and most likely give an involuntary scream, though I can’t be sure. I feel warmth in my crotch and am dismayed to realize that I’ve pissed my pants. Just a touch.
Whizz, bang, chunks strike the wall behind me, bouncing off the air-conditioning units, smashing holes in the windows, one of which gives and shatters completely, and in due course I’m covered in and framed by glass shards.
My gun is in hand. Hope it’s still loaded, so tough to keep track of such things.
The shower of debris is slackening and I take this opportunity to make sure my key is still with me, check, and to work my pill bottle out of my pocket, trying not to stab myself with a spear of broken glass. Praise be the bottle didn’t fall out, I get the top off one-handed in a much-practiced maneuver, angle my head back, and coax two down my gullet.
Downpour of crap comes to a stop. I cock the hammer on the Beretta. Voices.
It’s Portuguese. I’m sure of this, though I’m hardly fluent. At least four individuals. Brazilian Portuguese at that, which I certainly don’t understand. Sounds like an argument. Probably beefing as to who comes over to check me out. They do have reason to be concerned.
Or maybe it’s like that Chinese thing where they always sound like they’re chewing each other out.
I’m no longer concerned. Not really.
The voices cease, or at least fall below audibility. I’m trying to gauge if I can get up. I run a checklist of my motor functions, which comes up at about 50 percent. As in, I cannot rely on the lower half of my body. Not super great. On ten, I will make the most of my arms, will rise up if possible and bring what I got.
I’m not hearing anything. Count to ten.
In one big push-up I rise from the brush, trying to put my weight on my good knee …
A short, stocky man freezes halfway across the avenue, all I clock is a wispy mustache. I don’t even think about it, I pull off a shot and he folds up on himself and slow-motion face-plants on the asphalt.
Guess he got the short straw.
I don’t recall hearing the shot, which is odd, but now there’s general shouting across the street. Apparently I’ve made an impression.
I do understand the word “arma” … register the sound of a group of people crashing through the brush, perhaps retreating, falling back into the inky wilds of Central Park.
Wait till all is quiet again. I retrieve my hat, then very very gingerly come to a full standing position … I surmise that the least bit of pressure on my bad knee might cause me to lose consciousness and I can’t afford that now.
My beeper has been obliterated … oops. No way for the DA to page me now. Que sera.
Guy prostrate in the street, in supplication. I can see his upper back rising and falling, not dead, not yet. His navy-blue T-shirt reads Jeter and the number 2, a bit of Yankees swag.
I’m a Mets fan. Or was. Go fuck yourself: you try growing up a biracial Mets fan in the South Bronx.
I see no weapon, save a large bread knife that must have been in his hand, and is now about ten feet out of his reach. I do see an exit wound, lower back, blood rapidly dying his T-shirt black.
A freaking bread knife … that’s pretty bleak. Even for a punk scavenger.
Can I walk? Hardly. Dragging my useless leg, I hopskip in his direction.
The wheelchair is trashed. Goddamnit. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but what now?
Approaching the prone figure, I feel a tug in my stomach. Nothing I can articulate. Something feels wrong, off. It’s easier to sit back down and kind of shuffle over to him on my ass; I do so with a growing sense of dread.
I arrive at his side. His respiration is choppy and erratic. I have to know, so I roll him over. Not a short man, not at all. More like a kid. Seventeen, tops, and probably younger. His features are fairly wrecked, but he’s presenting all the facial aspects of Down syndrome.
He blinks at me, blood gathering at his mouth, bubbling out his nose. It’s a straight-up gut shot, square in the lower abdomen, absolutely zero hope, but I drop my weapon, knock his head sideways so he doesn’t choke on his own fluids, and apply direct pressure.
Just a kid, just a big kid. A handicapped kid.
I’m talking, saying, “I’m so sorry. I am so sorry. I didn’t know who … A hospital, I can get you to a hospital. No problem. Kid, you have to look at me …”
But he’s elsewhere, watching from some distant point. Blood is running freely from his nose. Oh Jesus, I think … I think he’s trying to smile at me.
“You gotta believe that I would not have hurt you. Had I known …”
Yeah, he’s smiling at me, which is more than I can bear … I’m pressing at the wound hard but he’s bleeding out, a small pond of blood has formed, flowing freely from the exit wound in his back.
Now I’m just babbling, with no reason to believe he understands my rap. “Hey, kid, you like baseball? Speak English? Nod if you’re with me. You gotta stay with me. Okay?”
His expression doesn’t change, though his jaw slackens a bit. I feel him fading. I press his abdomen harder.
“No, listen. We’re going to get you help. Listen. I have a story. When I was a kid, younger than you, my dad took me to the old Yankee Stadium. Not that crappy new one that got hit. The old one they tore down. Listen. So he gets me sitting down and gives me two bucks for popcorn and candy. Are you listening?”
I shake him and his eyes roll around to meet mine for a moment, then come unfocused again.
“Listen. Back when they had Rick Cerone pitching, he was pretty great, people don’t talk enough about Rick. They’re playing the Red Sox, a big game. Maybe it was the Series, I don’t know. So I’m watching the game … Listen to me.”
I slap his cheek. Again his head lolls back in my direction. The movement of his chest is growing harder to detect.
“I’m watching the game. It’s a good game. You know. And then I think I haven’t seen my dad in a while. I start wondering, hey, where’d he get to? Listen.”
I push his face again and this time he doesn’t respond at all. I keep talking.
“So I check the men’s room. I’m looking at all the lines at the concession stands. Can’t find him anywhere. Are you listening?”
Blood has soaked my left pant leg. I keep talking.
“So before I know it, the game’s over. Everybody’s leaving. Smells like beer and mustard and sweat, I remember that. It’s like a crush of people, just so many people, laughing and fighting and shouting, and I’m starting to get scared, right? I’m calling for my dad. Walking around and around the stadium. Just calling for him.”
I know this kid is dead. I keep talking.
“So eventually, what can I do, I leave. I walk home, it’s a long ways but I know where to go and I walk home. To my mom’s, that is. It’s dark when I get there and my mom, she’s furious, asks me why I ran away from Dad. Because it was a Sunday, and he had me on the weekends. She’s talking about how I should respect my dad more, and I keep trying to explain, Mom, Mom …”
The kid is very much dead. I release his gut and pull myself up.
I’m standing, wobbly, but upright.
Commence hopping south.
Feel like I need to allow the story to wrap itself up, I’m learning things, because this is not an active memory I have, and yet here I am describing it, so I continue speaking quietly. It’s like automatic writing.
I’m observing myself, listening, saying: “Mom. It wasn’t my fault. She’s not hearing me. Says I have to go over to his house, that’s where I sleep Sundays, she has company coming and it’s his night. I know there’s no arguing with her. I go. Walk to my dad’s project. I buzz him and buzz him and nobody answers. So I sleep in Claremont Park, on a bench. They gave us these crappy little beach towels with the Yankees logo at the game, I use that as a pillow. Turns out: Dad went to a bar and forgot about me. So …”
I stumble over a rut in the sidewalk. I’m in serious pain, but I press forward, the key in my fist.
“Needless to say, from that point on I was a Mets fan.”
My brain goes empty. Is that it? I wait for a postscript. Nope, c’est fini. Well, how’s that for a gun-tothe-soft-palette bummer of a story. I was hoping for a less heavy-handed wrap-up.
See, I’m suspicious of such yarns; could all be bullshit, false memory. It lists too far toward the weepy side. Overly pat somehow.
So I’m thinking: probably bullshit. But man, the detail. These elaborate lies I tell myself. To what fucking end?
Regardless. I attain the bottom of the park. To my left, what remains of the Plaza. On the right: the former Apple computer store, which appears structurally viable, despite the ordinance I know to have been detonated on the lower level.
Presently I limp by Bergdorf Goodman. It’s all winter shit in the windows, cream-colored Prada ski suits, wool capes, and whatnot. They had this up in mid-Feburary? It’s no wonder the displays are intact. Who wants to boost this kind of gear in the middle of a heat wave?
Even my sweat feels filthy. I pause to strip off my gloves and hit the PurellTM, which praise Yahweh is still to be found in my pocket.
Having done so, I slip on another pair. I love that initial powdery sensation of these gloves, it whispers “clean,” if you listen close. And I do.
Pass a night crew doing some kind of shit, a manhole open, yellow tape, floodlights, big red tent with a zipper, people moon-walking about in those creepy-ass space suits. Not the white suits, the orange ones with that biohazard logo on the back.
I stumble-slide forward, pulling my mask back on.
And as I pass St. Thomas it occurs to me: 2/14, they left the churches alone. They didn’t hit the churches. To my knowledge, only the mosque across from the Freedom Tower sustained damage, and best guess that was due to its proximity to a major target.
And at this point I’ve gotten better at walking, calibrating my step to favor my as-yet-undamaged leg. Making little adjustments.
Focus on the System, which has a way forward for everything.
Six months of physical therapy my caramel ass.