Heathern (8 page)

"They'll be all right," he said. "My job's just starting." A
trace of disappointment in his voice made me aware of his
sorrow; his sadness over not having yet been able to hook me, I thought it. The street we traveled ended at the island's
toe. Battery Park's old trees were cut down by the Army so
that mortars might be strategically aimed in the event Long
Islanders attacked by sea. The floodwall started rising soon
after, and now the guns pointed directly at downtown's
only defense against the water. Sirens' sound echoed across
the ocean air; damp salt breezes wafted over the wall,
bearing dry leaves from trees far afield, their currents rich
with smells of rain and oil and dead fish.

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Your job at Dryco?"

"I'll help you see what I mean," he said, lifting his arm
before me as if to restrain me from flying away too soon.
"Take my hand."

There it was: the sly valentine hand-drawn in crayon, the
first shake of the buck's antlers, the molester's unwrapping
of the lollipop. Southerners wasted no time, I thought,
recalling Thatcher's unctuous chivalry during our first
month together, before events slid my being from his
mind's upper slot. Men behaved so perfectly until their
attention spans failed them.

"Why?"

"To see something pretty." Pressing my hand into his, I
marveled at how willfully I fell into any new trap. Then, as
if in brownout, all city light dimmed, outshone by the sky as
it unexpectedly took fire. Over upper New York harbor no
spires or towers disrupt the view of heaven's bowl; I stared
freely into its millions from below, gazing up into the crowd
as if into a tornado, a mandala, a spiral of DNA. In the midst
of the angels' hurricane was an eye of blinding white light. I
heard the angels' sight, saw their music as a sound like the
roar of the sea in a shell. In knowing their movements I
looked into the painful light for so long that I thought my
own eyes might melt, but I couldn't turn away.

"They figure it's what we'd expect," he said. "I'm sure it's
different in reality. Sometimes you'll hear music, too. They
like Wagner."

I let go his hand; the vision faded as it came. The street's
chiaroscuro reappeared beneath New York's sky, free once
more of angels as it was forever free of oxygen, or stars.
Others passing along their nightly circuits appeared to have
seen no more than the sidewalk lying before their shoes;
New Yorkers looked up only to see what might be falling
toward them. Looking at Macaffrey, I thought I'd never felt
so secure in my fear. "Call me Lester, Joanna," he said. "I
don't hold much with labels."

"You'll see me home?" I asked, knowing he'd agree. A
million words raced around our silence as we sailed uptown
between Broadway's palisades. In our day the thumbrule
was that bony lies became truth rich and strange if the need
for belief was great enough. A child might rub her stuffed
animals bald, trying to wish them into life; what if she
started with a sleeping pet? Reality was never so flexible in
fact as in theory. Angels, I told myself: there could have
been nothing to see; all was but a blend of sky and delusion.

Closing my eyes, I still saw angels. Why was I chosen to
receive revelation? It made as little sense as those stories of
flying saucers landing on lonely Nebraska prairies, desiring
that farm girls alone should know the secrets between stars.
That I liked being with Lester held nothing of heaven.

"That fellow you came to the school with," he said. "You
were lovers once?" From distant Brooklyn came the sound of bundled papers being thrown onto a newstand's curb,
the nightly cannonade. No doubt I'd opened my mind wide
enough that Lester might now easily slip himself in.

"You couldn't know that-"

"It's in the way you stood next to him," he said. "The tilt
of your pelvis. It's all in the details. Let's go this way."

We headed west down Rector Street; Trinity Church's
encircling boneyard was on our right, bright beneath
floodlamp glare; arcs hung from the trees, appearing as fruit
passed over at harvest time. The yard's retaining wall rose
higher as the street sloped toward the unseeable Hudson
River. Turning north again we passed beneath a slender
wrought-iron bridge arching above the street, running from
the cemetery to an office building, as if the sextons,
foreseeing Doomsday, provided for the dead a short walk
between grave and Workfare office.

"You broke up with him awhile back?" Lester asked.

"It was a work relationship. We got overinvolved. Not
long after we started there. Our jobs got in the way. His
job."

"What happened?"

"We had this awful conversation one night," I said. "I
called him a golem. Worse than that. We kept talking and
stayed friends, but the moment passed." Midtown's distant
lights enflamed Manhattan's sky until it appeared no less
bloody than Long Island's. The breath of the underworld
rose through cracks in the pavement. The Trade Towers
stood on our left beyond a low wall of outbuildings.
Soldiers guarding the plaza searched and taunted a man
delivering pizzas; a lateworker's dinner always arrived cold.
"Why am I telling you this?"

"I asked," he said. "Seems so quiet down here at night.
Like the old days. Army's really necessary still?"

"Seen as necessary," I said. "Thatcher gets nervous
unless he's surrounded."

"Except when he's with you?" Lester asked, no trace of malice in his question. By moving farther from him, I
thought, I could keep him from driving deeper into my
mind, deliberately forgetting that I walked with one who
showed me God's lack of face.

"Please stop," I said.

"I read people well," he said. "I wish I was illiterate."

"It's as if you've had me investigated," I said. "Watching
me come and go and I never knew it. It's an awful
feeling-"

"Do you hate me as much as you hate him?" A third pair
of feet paused, a second after ours, the sound adding a grace
note to our chord. A soldier, I thought, seeing no one; a
worker, some clerk leaving a store. A nominal curfew was
on; as a Dryco exec I could have probably stepped to the
curb and hailed a tank, had I wanted. We continued uptown
through ever-darker streets. Helicopters flew over, thrashing the city with sticks of light, searching out those with
whom they refused to share hegemony. Wind glued newspapers to our ankles as we walked, losing the day's words.

"I'm sorry," he said. "It's too easy to see what people
think."

"But you have to tell them?" I said. "People don't have
enough to worry about without strangers raping their
minds?"

"People never worry about what they should," he said,
"and so often rape happens with someone you thought you
loved. You wouldn't trust me if I weren't a stranger."

"Don't they hate you for this in your neighborhood?" I
asked. "Reminding people of what they want to forget?"

"It's a sin to see wrong and do nothing about it."

"So God's the greatest sinner?" I asked, the Bernard in
my soul leaping forth.

"Yes and no," he said. We passed an old post office
recycled years ago into a Health Service clinic. A long line
of silent people awaited entry into the waiting room. Brass
railings green with verdigris guarded its graffitied walls. A sign affixed to the granite tallied late additions to the six
billion.

NEEDLES AVAILIBLE DAILY

9AM1PM

Hope Will Find A Way

"Even They have to make the best of what They've
made," he continued. "Does it make sense that in a better
world this would be a better world?"

I wondered what might be expected of God-Godness if
Their apparent messenger could sound so transcendent.
"You see what you showed me all the time or only if you
want to?"

"How else?" he asked, laughing. A wild wind, an angel's
breath, swept his hair across his forehead, for a moment
taking twenty years from his look. "I've learned to live with
what comes to me."

"Can you see the future?"

"Can't you?" he asked, sweeping his arm out before us.
The familiar whoop of an oncoming siren sounded as an
infant's wail. Facing the street, we lifted our arms above our
heads. The mayor's limo rolled uptown, surrounded by
motorcycle cops, preceded and followed by flatbed trucks
carrying soldiers thrusting their rifles forth in every direction, pins in pincushions.

"He never visits my neighborhood," he said. "When they
pass I'm always tempted to keep walking as the hearingimpaired do-"

"You'd be shot as they're always shot," I said.

"Considering how he treats the innocent, how does your
Mister Dryden deal with the guilty?"

"Depends on who's guilty of what," I said. "He never
gets his own hands dirty." My earlier question returned to mind. "You never said if you could see the future. Can
you?"

"Some people's futures," he said.

"Whose?"

"Mine," he said. "Yours."

Reaching the corner of Duane Street South we stopped
for the light; someone else stopped. There was nothing
Thatcher had taught me so well as the acceptance of fear's
comfort. Seeing no one, I knew they were there.

"We're being followed," I said.

"No, we're not-"

"Listen."

Food wholesalers still plied their trade along Duane
Street from their old brick buildings; trucks idled beneath
overhanging metal awnings as teamsters loaded them with
milk and cheese. The din was conveniently loud.

"I don't hear anything," he said.

"Let's get out of here." A dark triangle of park lay
between Duane Street's legs. Within the small plot were
dozens of sleepers wrapped in the blankets upon which, the
next morning, they'd peddle magazines retrieved from
dentist's offices. Bernard said it was easier, now, to live in
Calcutta; it was never cold in Calcutta. Growing used to the
pounding of the trucks' heartbeats I heard again what I
didn't want to hear, footsteps racing with quicker rhythm
than ours. Wishing I'd worn lower heels, I trotted leftward,
Lester close behind. I heard the pop of a firecracker; having
heard the sound, knew I hadn't yet been shot.

"God," I said. "Run!" We dashed up a side street on the
north border of the square, our feet slipping over Belgian
block. The street was so narrow that its low buildings
seemed three times as high as they were; only a solitary
lamppost broke the two-block gloom. An enclosed bridge of
almost Venetian appearance ran between buildings nearest
the light, several stories above the street. We could have as
easily run into the last century and not known, so unaltera bly ancient were our surroundings. Where the dark was
deepest we pressed ourselves into a wall.

"Why are we running?" Lester asked as we waited.

"They're shooting."

"Who?" I shook my head, imagining a deli's wealth of
selections. The assailants of Jensen, working their way
through the repertoire; Jake, having acted upon second
thoughts; soldiers taking target practice, a sniper warming
up before performance, an accountant upset with her
husband. Some shot only for the love of the sound.

"Anybody after you besides us?" I asked.

"Not anymore," he said. "Do you think he's behind it?"

"We'd never know. Gus would be handling it if that's the
case-

"The old guy?"

"He's had experience-"

"Breaking children's fingers?"

"He shot three Presidents." All remained quiet, but it
didn't matter. Patience was all; we couldn't move, if we
were to be missed. Had I been left to simmer in my own
juices I might never have moved again. A door slammed,
down where the trucks waited to pull out, and I glanced at
their lights. When I turned around I saw Lester walking into
the middle of the dead street to wait there, as if to see who
might notice. As he stood beneath the streetlamp's halflight, Lester almost appeared to glow from within, his aura
assuredly no less radioactive than numinous.