Fire (26 page)

Andy cocked an eyebrow, thought about it. “We’re going a good distance. It’ll take most of an hour, if the train doesn’t get stuck.”

Stuck? Luke felt claustrophobia closing in on him again. “Does that happen often? Do the trains break down in the tunnels?”

The boy held out his hand, made an uncertain, waving motion with it. “Mostly it only happens when you’re in a hurry. Like at rush hours, when all those commuters are trying to get to work. Except for the times that the train breaks down because it doesn’t think you can take it that day.”

Luke shuddered. “Great,” he said, though he didn’t think it was great at all.

The train doors closed, and then they were moving again and the noise was so loud that there wasn’t any sense trying to talk. Luke looked around, trying to figure out how he was going to keep himself from going stir-crazy . . . an hour was a long time to keep his mind occupied on nothing at all. He could read the ads that ran in a long continuous strip along the space between the ceiling and the walls of the subway car. More than half of them were written in Spanish, though; he understood just enough of the language to recognize it and wonder what the signs said. And the walls were covered with graffiti — most of that was inscribed in strange marks that might have been letters or even words, but might just as well have been hieroglyphics from some civilization he couldn’t remember.

It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d choose to spend an hour puzzling over — but it wasn’t as though there was much else to do. By the time they reached the stop where Andy had them change trains — its sign read
WEST 4
— by the time they changed trains Luke had managed to decipher
Anton likes Estrella
,
John McC
,
Eats Dick
(which made him wince for Richard), and the fact that a female celebrity named Chita wanted all pregnant women to get themselves tested for some sort of a disease.

The ride on the second train was short by comparison; it only stopped twice — at
34 Street
and
42 Street
— before they got off at
47–50 Streets
Rockefeller Center
. That train was clean, too, or relatively clean, full of bright plastic colors and shiny steel. And quiet. And it was air conditioned! Luke had completely forgotten the idea of air conditioning before he stepped into that train. It was a wonderful thing, the way it turned the fetid air of the subway tunnels crisp and almost fresh. Especially after the thick, gusting-in-through-the-widows stuff he’d had to breathe for so long in the first train. It was such a strange and dramatic difference, so . . . fascinating that it distracted Luke so much that the boy almost didn’t manage to get him out at their stop before the train closed its doors and started moving again.

But he did manage to get Luke out of the train, into a place so full of so many people that an hour before Luke wouldn’t have been able to imagine so many of them all in one place. And police officers, too — it almost seemed that there were more police officers around than there were people without uniforms.

“Is it always like this,” Luke asked, “so many policemen all around?”

The boy didn’t answer right away — he was too busy looking around him. Probably, Luke thought, he was trying to figure out which way they should go. They were standing on the subway platform, and the quiet train was pulling away from them. There was dirt everywhere, on everything, fine grainy brown-grey dirt that made Luke think more of filth than it made him think of soil.

The policemen made him nervous — even if they did all look clean and well-groomed and basically friendly. They made him nervous because every damned one of them had a gun hanging from his belt, and even if Luke didn’t remember a lot of things he knew what the fuck a gun was. Guns were things meant for turning people’s heads to jellied pulp on the sides of walls. And there were so damn many people in this place that it seemed certain to Luke that any gunshot that missed its mark would necessarily find another, unintended target. This wasn’t any place for guns. It surely wasn’t a place for so many of them. “Is it?” Luke asked again. “Are there always so many of them?”

After a while Andy finished scanning the train platform and shrugged. “Not usually,” he said. “Most often there are one or two police at this station. But this is the part of the City where all the rich tourists are, and with all the trouble the last few days, and the fact that anything that happens right around here has a good chance of being on the news, they probably want to make sure that nothing happens. And with all these police it probably won’t.”

Luke nodded, but he didn’t feel as reassured as he’d’ve liked to be. He’d have been a lot more comfortable if the police could have got by without their firearms.

Andy started up the nearest stairway. “This way,” he said. “I think there’s a bank machine in this part of the tunnels. Any of them ought to take your card.”

“Right,” Luke said. Said it even though he didn’t have much idea what the boy was talking about.

Andy led him up off the platform, through a caged-in area and out through a hinged gate, then along a confusing series of corridors, some parts of which were lined with tile, like the subway tunnel, and other parts of which were lined with shops.

A few of those shops were broken open and wrecked inside, as though looters had attacked them.

Finally they turned into a tiny shop that wasn’t a shop at all, just a little glassed-in cubbyhole with a pair of strange-looking machines in it. Andy stepped aside and looked at Luke expectantly, as though waiting for him to do something.

“Well,” the boy said, “go ahead. Don’t just stand there.”

Luke felt himself frowning. “Go ahead and do what?”

Andy let out a groan that was partly a frustrated growl. “Go ahead and stick your card in the machine and get yourself some money.”

Luke blinked; it was beginning to sound familiar, but it still seemed amazing. “Really? That’s all I have to do — stick a card in and the machine’ll give me money?”

The boy’s face was beginning to look concerned. He looked over at the machine hesitantly. “No, that’s not all you have to do. You got to put your card in the machine, and then you got to punch in your special secret number, and then you just kind of answer the questions that it asks you so that you get what you want.” He glared up at Luke. “You do know your special secret number, don’t you?”

Luke thought about it — no number came to mind. “Not off hand.” He took his wallet from his pocket, looked at the cards inside it, trying to remember any sort of a clue at all. It wasn’t any use.

The boy let loose with a string of swear words that would have made his mother blanch. “How’re you going to get yourself any money if you can’t remember your secret number?” he asked and cursed some more. “How we going to eat lunch in this part of the city with what I’ve got in my pocket? I’ll tell you — I’ll tell you. Some Jesus you turned out to be.” He cursed once more, more quietly.

Luke stared into the video-screen face of the strange machine. It was familiar. Vaguely familiar, anyway. He could almost see himself . . . walking up to it, putting his card into the slot. Tapping — yes, tapping four numbers on the membrane key pad. Pictured it so clearly he could almost see which numbers his fingers touched . . . numbers . . . but then the vision receded, and the harder he tried to bring it back the farther away it seemed to get.

“Damn,” he said, and blushed because he’d cursed in front of a child, even though the child had cursed in front of him. “It isn’t any use,” he said. “I can’t remember.”

“You’re sure?”

Luke nodded.

The boy kicked at the wall — not very hard, but hard enough for his sneaker to leave a dirt scuff. “All right,” he said, “I got enough to get us a soda, anyhow. C’mon — might as well go on.”

Back through more tile corridors and hallways lined with shops — no, not back; this was a different route altogether. The shops here were brighter, the floors cleaner. Almost like a mall, he thought, and wondered what a mall was.

They finally ended up in a peculiar place with a lavender neon sign that read
McDonald’s Caf
é
— a place that Luke found strange and amazing for reasons he didn’t understand. It was bright and clean and almost elegant, in a way, and alien and familiar all at once. Andy motioned for Luke to sit in one of the booths that were covered with a velvetlike cloth, and left Luke waiting for a good five minutes while he bought sodas for them at the counter.

The restaurant was crowded — even more crowded than Luke would have expected from the crowds in the corridors. None of the tables were free, and most of them were full. Twice while Luke waited people came out from the counter where they sold food and asked if he’d mind if they shared his table; he felt a little guilty when he told them he was waiting for a friend to join him. Part of that guilt came from the way they looked at him when he said it — looked at him as though he were lying, and ought to be ashamed of himself. When the boy came back and sat down across from him, Luke was glad to see him, and grateful that he wouldn’t have to see that look in anyone’s eye again for a while.

“I got you a Coke,” Andy said. “That okay?”

“Sure,” he said. “I guess. Should I know what a Coke is?”

The boy rolled his eyes upward, opened the white paper bag that he’d set on the table when he sat down. Pulled out two tall white-and-yellow wax-paper cups with clear-plastic lids. “Yeah,” he said, “you ought to know. Here. You’ll remember when you taste it, I bet. Coca-Cola is special stuff.”

Luke took the cup, lifted up the lid, began to lift it to drink —

“No,” the boy said. “Not like that. That isn’t the way you drink a Coke at McDonald’s.” He reached across the table, took the cup back. Pressed the lid back down until it snapped firm. Lifted a straw from the table where a pair of them rested beside the bag — Luke hadn’t even noticed them before — and pressed one end of the straw through a cross-slit in the top of the cup. “There,” he said. “Now drink it through the straw.”

Luke looked up at the boy, raised an eyebrow.

“Go ahead. You’ve got to suck on a straw to drink through it, in case you don’t remember.”

“I know,” Luke said, even though the truth was that he hadn’t been certain. He lifted the cup, drank through the straw . . . and felt sweet thick water burst fizz all over his tongue, inside his mouth. Biting, burning ever so slightly; felt surprise paint itself all over his face, and heard the boy laughing outrageously across the table from him. For a moment he almost thought that there might be something wrong with it, that maybe the boy had played some sort of a trick on him. No; after just a second or two the fizzing stopped, and there was air in his mouth along with the fluid, and it was just sweet and strange and even a little subtle, not unsettling at all. He swallowed, which was a little awkward, since the gas and the fluid didn’t want to go down the same way, and some of it went down into his lungs —

And he tried not to cough, because he knew if he did the soda that wasn’t completely swallowed would go spraying everywhere, in every possible direction, and even if Luke didn’t remember a lot of things he knew it wasn’t polite to cough what you were drinking all over everybody and everything in a restaurant —

And across from him Andy was laughing even harder, laughing so hard that he looked like he was having trouble breathing, too —

And it finally sunk through to Luke himself how ridiculous he must look, and when he started to laugh all his control went away, and at least he’d managed to get most of it down, which meant that when he burst out choking and coughing and laughing all that came from his lungs was a fine, fine spray — not even a spray but a mist that hung in the air and drifted and sparkled tiny stars of reflected fluorescent light when Luke opened his eyes to see it.

My God, he thought, and didn’t know why that mist my God that mist . . . and he was terrified and afraid and responsible — responsible for God knew what and God knew why but oh God he’d done it now and he was still coughing like a dying diesel, whatever that was. And made himself stop for fear of doing something even worse.

Andy was still laughing, but not so hard, and he was watching Luke, and he said, “You’re awful funny, you know that Jesus?”

And Luke was too afraid of whatever he’d done to even mind being called Jesus again, not even though it was in public. Whatever he’d done was so bad that any moment now people were going to start dying, Andy included, and with that hanging over Luke’s head nothing else seemed especially important.

The end was coming any moment now. It was just a matter of time. A breath; two breaths. Three. And the world was still there, and everyone in the room was still alive and breathing for God’s sake.

Breathing.

“Hey,” Andy said, “let me see that wallet of yours. I got an idea.”

Luke reached into the back pocket of his jeans, took out the wallet and handed it to the boy, all without surfacing from his funk.

Andy opened the wallet, looked at it deliberately for a long while. And then suddenly his expression brightened. “Yeah — that’s the ticket. I think I got it.” He pulled himself up out of his seat. “You wait here, okay, Jesus? I’ll be right back.”

Luke nodded absently. He wanted to say something, wanted to stop the boy because he thought he wouldn’t ever see him again. The weight of . . . responsibility — of culpability — was too much on him to let Luke move, or even speak. He tried to get himself to ask the boy to wait, anyway, but Andy was gone before Luke’s lips even began to move.

And Luke was alone in a crowded room, waiting for the destruction he was certain he’d begun. He took another sip from the soda, more carefully this time. It was more familiar, now, like something he’d experienced a hundred thousand times that was only beginning to come back to him.

Nothing was happening. Whatever act it was that Luke had committed, its consequences were hiding. Waiting.

Or maybe there weren’t any consequences at all. Maybe . . . maybe he hadn’t done anything he had to feel responsible for.